Power & Light
When the grid goes.
Generation, storage, and consumption all designed for indefinite operation. Solar + battery as the base; generator and propane as the bridge; load discipline as the spine.
The power & light domain →Grid-down long-term resilience
Long-term grid-down resilience — generation, water, food production, and the community posture that turns indefinite outage into a managed lifestyle.
Long-term grid-down resilience is the posture of a household that has decoupled from the grid as a load-bearing dependency. Power comes from the property. Water comes from a well or catchment. Food is partly produced, mostly stored, and entirely independent of weekly grocery runs. The household is a node in a small community of similarly capable neighbors. This is not a checklist. It is a way of operating that takes years to build and rewards anyone who builds it.
The load-bearing domains
What this combination actually depends on
Every event–duration combination weights the nine domains differently. Here are the two or three that decide the outcome for this one.
Water
Clean, store, source.
A well with redundant pumping options, plus storage, plus filtration. Water security at the household level, not the utility level.
The water domain →Food
Eat well, store smart.
Storage, preservation, and production. A garden, a pantry, a freezer, a canning capability. Long-term resilience eats from a system, not a supply chain.
The food domain →The long-term resilience list
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Common questions
Questions that come up
Can I really live without the grid year-round?
Yes, with the right investment and load discipline. A well-sized solar + battery system covers a typical household's electrical needs in most US climates. Heat usually shifts to wood, propane, or geothermal rather than electric. Cooking often shifts to propane. Water comes from a well or catchment with backup pumping. The off-grid household is not roughing it — it is operating a different system, more deliberately.
How much land do you need for a productive resilience garden?
For 25–50% of household calories, roughly 1,000–2,500 sq ft of intensive garden plus 500–1,000 sq ft of fruit trees and perennials. Less if you are skilled and the climate cooperates; more if you want surplus. For full household calorie production including grains and meat, you are in the multi-acre range — a different lifestyle.
Is HAM radio still relevant in the era of mesh networks and satellite phones?
Yes. Satellite phones depend on a corporate constellation and a paid subscription. Mesh networks (Meshtastic, goTenna) work in clusters but degrade fast as nodes drop. HAM is the resilient layer: peer-to-peer, low-bandwidth, works on infrastructure as small as a handheld and an antenna. Long-term resilience layers all three: cell when up, mesh as backup, HAM as the floor.
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Same event, different scope
Other grid-down durations
Same scope, different event
The long-term version for other events
Run the numbers
How much water and food, exactly, for this duration
The list above tells you what to stock. The calculators below tell you how much — sized to your household and this duration. The calculator matrix stops at 3 months; for long-term planning, treat the 3-month numbers as the per-quarter baseline.
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