AndyC wrote:… I liked One Second After, a tale of how America turns to crap after an EMP attack. Not that I liked the the writing in the first one, but rather the premise and how workarounds were created to solve problems without power.
Slightly off-topic — I had a somewhat elderly uncle (now deceased) who lived near Port Arthur (upper Texas coast) and refused to evacuate when Hurricane Rita came through several years ago. My brother took my mother and left. A week later, they were allowed to go back into the area for four hours (Highway Patrol took brother's wife's DL and said "Be back in four hours 'cuz I go off shift then and I'm taking this with me!"). They went to mom's place and theirs, throwing away perishable items from refrigerators like milk (it eventually explodes and then the fridge is pretty nasty), and lastly went by to check on the uncle. Power was still off, and they found him sitting in his truck listening to the radio. They asked how he'd been surviving, and he said he'd been living off of hot dogs (so many preservatives they never go bad?) and drinking water from his hot water heater.
When I was in grade school, we were taught some of the basics of disaster preparedness. It's part of living in a coastal region. We learned that we could drink water from the toilet tank, but I don't recall anyone ever mentioning the hot water heater.
My brother's wife asked the uncle if things had "gotten scary" when the hurricane went through. He replied "Well, when the ceiling in the living room started coming down and the front porch blew away, I got a little nervous."