You NEED one of these - prepare your Blackout Box before it's too late!

blackout [Music] hey guys it's jera with wicked prepared welcome back to our channel we're so glad you're here thank you for being a subscriber if it's your first time watching us make sure you hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so you don't miss any of our uploads we've got a lot of exciting things coming make sure to give us a thumbs up it really helps us out and we appreciate it so much today i'm sharing with you something that i put together for our family to help us be more prepared in a power outage this is our blackout box and this is what i'm going to be showing you today video is kind of a perfect follow-up to our last video if you saw the video we posted last week about the great ice storm of 1998 here in maine and other parts of the northeastern united states and canada many people in rural maine were without power for around a month no matter what part of the united states or the world you live in you're bound to experience a power outage of some duration at some point in your life probably more than once whether it's a blizzard or an ice storm a hurricane a tornado or rolling blackouts to protect the power system our power grid is aging and outdated in a lot of places and it's very vulnerable to cyber attacks as well there's no doubt we all need to be prepared for a blackout before i share with you what's in my blackout box there's a couple of things i always like to have on hand for power outages that i'd like to share with you the first is these emergency power outage flashlights now these this particular one is by energizer these um this one is kind of nice because you can pull the prongs in and out so you don't have to always have the electric prongs sticking out but these you basically leave plugged into your electric outlet at all times in the on position it's it's not terribly bright but it does the trick you leave these plugged into the outlet and when the power goes out to the outlet it will be off when there's power to the outlet when the power goes off to the outlet the flashlight automatically comes on these are pretty inexpensive it's really like having your own emergency lighting system that will come on whenever the power goes out i like to have one of these in every room and it can really help light the way if you have any kind of power outage you can either leave it in the outlet or you can pull it out of the outlet and use it as a handheld flashlight i have had these ever since my oldest child was small i like to have these at least in every child's bedroom if not every room of the house if possible so here's how they work this one is plugged into an outlet and the red light is showing you that it's plugged in it's got power now i'm going to simulate the outlet losing power by just unplugging it from the outlet because i'm not going to turn off the power in my house but as soon as it loses power the flashlight comes on the other thing that i like to have on hand all the time are these little flashlights from walmart these are only a dollar and they come with the batteries already installed i mean they're not ridiculously bright but they're bright enough to do the trick and because they're so cheap you can have a ton of these i keep these in every single room of the house you can stash them in a drawer they have these nice loops so you can hang them on a hook by the door you can tuck them away in the corner of your bookshelf or the drawer of your nightstand the drawer of your side table in your living room have these all over the place that and know where they are so that you always know where to go to grab a flashlight if you need one so now on to our blackout box this is the box that i chose i have labeled it with this is reflective letter stickers and reflective tape now this it's not really showing up right now but if you're looking for this you know out in your garage or your basement i also put some reflective tape along the sides so this will make it easy to find if you're looking for if you you can put this anywhere in your garage your basement your hall closet you know your utility room we keep this on a shelf in our garage and this helps it stand out if we're out there looking for it with one of the flashlights that we have in the house now this obviously is not going to hold anything you could possibly want in a power outage there's things you could really use in a power outage that would not fit inside a box like this things like generators things like propane heaters things like butane cook stoves but what this is is this is the first line of defense this is the first thing that you're going to go get that has everything you need to get everyone in your household situated safe and comfortable so that you can go on and set up all those other things you might need generators heaters if you have them the other thing is that some people can't afford things like that or maybe you can't afford it just yet and you're planning and you're budgeting and you're saving for things like that this most of the things in here are inexpensive a lot of these things you can get at dollar tree if you want so this is something that just about anyone can put together even if you can't afford anything else you can have this box which is a very good start in a power outage now the box itself is a 52.8 quart water tight box so i didn't have to worry too much about anything else that was in here being protected from water because the box itself is watertight and i'm planning on using all this inside keeping this inside so this has these snap latches and then when you unsnap it inside the box it has a gasket around the edge to keep it watertight i got this at bj's which is our warehouse club i think it was around 15 dollars but i think they also have these at home depot maybe for a little bit more i've seen that they might have them at target but try not to pay any more than fifteen to eighteen dollars for a container like this and you don't have to use a container like this if you don't want to or if you can't find it you can use any kind of tote if you don't have money to spend you can use something you already have in your home you could use even just a cardboard box or a five gallon pail anything you can use to contain your supplies and keep them all together so you know where to go look for them so a quick overview of what's inside the box the very first thing i have here is this is a pair of work gloves there's another pair of these jersey gloves which are actually from the dollar tree and there is a reflective safety vest this is because you might have to go out side of the home someone from your home might have to go outside the home check for damage you might have to go check for debris in the road move debris in the road all kinds of things you might have to go outside for and remember in a power outage it could be dark it could be there's not going to be street lights there's not going to be exterior lights it's going to be very dark so you want to make sure that you're visible especially if you have to go near the road and you want to make sure your hands are protected if it's cold if you have to clear any kind of debris anything like that so next we've got a couple of battery powered fans that i will show you i've got a couple of good big flashlights that we can use then we've got these bags one is open so i can show you everything that's inside but we have one of these bags for every member of the family there's more underneath i have this little bag here that just has a lighter and matches anything you have to light candles if you have a wood stove or a fireplace you want to make sure that you don't have to go scrambling around looking for the things you need to light that and then of course we have some lanterns batteries things of that sort so i'll show you everything that's in this tote so the first thing i've already mentioned is that we have the reflective safety vest as well as work gloves and these jersey gloves these jersey gloves from dollar tree we have found this winter we started buying these they're very thin and they have a grippy palm and mr wicked prepared puts together some christmas light shows several light shows so he spends a lot of time working outdoors in the winter in the cold but he needs to have manual dexterity with his hands so these work to protect a little bit they're not super warm but he's still able to do what he needs to do when they're the only gloves we've found so these are actually really good for you know doing little tasks that you might need to do with your hands and because they're from dollar tree they're only a dollar they don't last too long before they wear through but you can buy a whole stack of them because they're only a dollar so the next thing we have is a couple of big flashlights big heavy duty flashlights because we have all sorts of flashlights of different sizes in this kit this is a coleman it's got battery guard so it's supposed to protect the batteries because most of the things that i keep in my kits like this i usually store them with the batteries out so they don't actually accidentally get turned on and the batteries get run down i've put batteries and things so that i can show you how they work but this one is supposed to be okay to keep the batteries in which is pretty handy it's got um a bright mode and a lower mode and it's it's a pretty decent flashlight it's a good size then we've got another one here that has high and low and it is focusable you can widen and focus the beam which is pretty handy now the next thing we have are these battery operated fans i love these they're nice and narrow they fold up they've got a base that unfolds and this is what they would stand on these run on 6d batteries i have taken my label maker and they've try to label everything with what type of batteries it takes so that i don't have to open it up and look if i'm replacing batteries or if i'm buying batteries i know what i need i may or may not have showed up for a camping trip an hour from the nearest store with c batteries for something that required d batteries or vice versa so this was many years ago before i was as wicked prepared as i am now and before i had mr wicked prepared who's very detail-oriented and would never let something like that happen but anyhow these fans have a little on off switch they have a high power and a low power they have a good a good amount of breeze on them now these would be really handy for obviously a summer power outage when your air conditioning is not working and you need to stay cool but they could also be helpful during a winter power outage if you have a wood stove or a fireplace or anything like that and obviously your blower would not be working without electricity and this could help move the warm air around the home or around the area that you're heating like i said they do fold up nice and narrow they do have a power adapter that they can use to be plugged in if you have electricity and we do store that in the box with them we have two of these and we store the power adapters right in the box with them in case we do use them during a time when we do have electricity so i don't want to have to go looking around for these adapters now next of course we have these mesh zipper pouches one for every member of the family i do have them labeled with the family member's name and what's inside and i'm going to show you one of these what we keep inside i do have a smaller flashlight inside each of these pouches i like this flashlight a lot this is very bright this one also has um the focusable beam that widens out and focuses in and these came in a two pack so they're really not too expensive so these are really nice flashlights and then we have a headlamp inside each one of these bags if you've ever spent any time camping you know how handy headlamps are this one is from energizer and this one has several different settings it's pretty bright you can hold down the button and it will dim and brighten so this is a really nice one this it wasn't too expensive this was i think around 12 maybe there are all sorts of different options for headlamps you can get them even more expensive than this and you can even get these are just like the little flashlights these are a dollar at walmart they do the trick just on and off they do have um where you can tip them to aim them down at the ground where you're walking and these are from dollar tree these don't come with the batteries like the walmart ones do but they're very very bright i actually really like these they don't tip like the walmart ones and you have to put the batteries in yourself but other than that for a dollar these are really great so there's a lot of different options for headlamps they're really handy to have though because anytime you need your hands-free to be doing anything or even if you're just reading a book or you know playing cards or something it's nice to have your hands free now you can a lot of the headlamps they have these days are rechargeable and a lot of the flashlights a lot of everything you can get nowadays is rechargeable and i'm steering clear of those um very deliberately because i have a hard enough time keeping you know my phone charged and maybe a couple other things like that i don't want to have to be worrying about keeping all these things charged and recharging them every so often and you know i can store lots and lots of batteries if you have an extended power outage and you don't have a generator or you don't have a solar generator something to charge them up then they're going to be useless to you whereas you can store as many batteries as you can possibly store and you can keep replacing the batteries you can store rechargeable batteries if you don't want to you know have a single use throwaway item store rechargeable batteries but i'm making a very conscious effort not to use rechargeable items in my kits so after the headlamp we have this is a little reusable reusable like battery operated glow stick flashlight it has a flashlight on it it has the glow stick and the flashlight blinking solid just the glow stick just the glow stick blinking and off and then on the other end it has um a if you pull this off there's an emergency whistle inside it has this lanyard which is a safety lanyard it'll come open really easy so these are actually probably more of a novelty item and a fun item than anything else because i mean they do have some handy features they do have a flashlight it's not but we have other lights but if you have kids this can be something that can keep them occupied that they'll really have fun with so we each have one of these in here and they are pretty handy the lanyard there's two places you can attach you can attach it to this end or you can attach it to this end i originally attached it here and then i realized if you're wearing it around your neck you're not going to want to have the light shining up at your face probably you'd rather have the light shining down towards your feet so we each have one of those and then we have these battery operated necklace fans you just put them put them around your neck and turn it on and it blows blows up at you a nice breeze this obviously is for more of a summer power outage or a power outage in a warmer climate now i have items in my kit that are for both power outages in the winter in the cold and power outages in the summer when it's hot if you wanted you could swap those items in and out i prefer just to keep them all in my kit so i don't have to worry about if i forget to swap them out or where i'm going to keep them in the off season but you definitely could swap them out now of course where you live might play a factor in what you have in here but i think if there's one thing that we've learned lately it's that you can't count on the weather being a certain way you know you may not think you'd ever have a freezing cold power outage where you live but you very well might and you may not think you may be in sweltering heat where you live but that could definitely happen so it's always best to prepare for any possibility now for the cold power outages in the winter which is like what we would have coming up now the ice storm anything like that i have got everybody has some sort of a beanie hat and that can be something you already have around an extra one it can be something you get at dollar tree just something that's warm because that really goes a long long way towards keeping the heat in your body if you put a hat on your head and when you are sleeping if you keep a hat on your head that can really help keep you warm when you're sleeping that's something that i learned from the cub scouts and the boy scouts not that i was a cub scout or a boy scout but i was a scout mom and a scout leader and that was something that we learned for winter camp outs and i actually bring these even when we go camping in august because we've had weather here in maine in august that was really cold so everybody's got a hat and a pair of mittens i choose mittens over gloves because it keeps your hands warmer partly because your fingers can snuggle with each other but also you can put a hand warmer right inside of here right down with your fingers the only thing is you don't have use of your fingers as well but you can get convertible mittens where the top pops off and it's like glove fingers underneath or you could take a really thin pair of gloves like maybe the touch the touch pad finger gloves or like these jersey gloves like i mentioned earlier from dollar tree and put them inside here and it'll actually keep your hands even warmer and then if you have to pull your hand out of your mitten to use your fingers they're not completely exposed then the other thing we have in there is a pair of thermal socks for everybody we really like these heat holders brand these are really great the way that the liner is inside does something with trapping the heat and keeping your feet really really warm my daughter uses these when she works out on the horse farm in the subzero temperatures and it keeps her feet nice and warm because that's another thing that can really go a long way to keeping you warm is keeping your extremities warm your hands your head and your feet so it's important to have a pair of thermal socks and you could put those on if you're just hanging out in the house waiting it out you can have those on if you have to go outside your feet get cold or wet you can come in and put them on the other thing is before you go to bed at night if you're sleeping in the extreme cold taking off the socks you had on all day this is another thing we learned from scouts even if you don't realize it they don't feel wet they do have dampness from the perspiration just from you know just from the day even if your feet don't feel wet or damp they are so putting on a dry warm pair of socks before bed can really help so to go along with that we've got toe warmers and hand warmers for everyone that you can put right inside of those socks or those mittens and keep your hands and feet nice and toasty a pack of glow sticks these are the bracelet type of glow sticks these are from dollar tree i like to get the bracelet ones because you get 25 of them for a dollar this is the biggest package and these are really handy you can loop them into a chain and have a long chain you know that can be good for the kids to hang up next to their beds if they're sleeping and it's dark they'll last a night there's plenty of these in here you can hang these around like your pet's collar if you want to be able to know where your pet is when it's really dark you could hang these around anything you wanted to be able to locate in the dark these are handy for so everyone has a pack of glow sticks and then the last thing in these personal pouches is a cooling towel now this is something that would be more for summer power outages keeping cool without the ac but things like this can serve dual purpose you know you can use this to dry off with if you get damp or wet and it's not the summer you could also if you had like a wood stove or a fireplace where you could heat baked potatoes or even big rocks or something you could wrap it in this and use this to warm your bed or you know put warm any place that you needed to warm up really so that is what we have inside of the personal pouches another thing that you can put in if you want to is some entertainment things if you want to keep something like a deck of cards or something like you know a card game this actually little mini uno is from dollar tree so it's the deck of cards dollar tree has all sorts of little books um of sudoku and crosswords and word search anything like that you could put in with a pen and a pencil if you wanted to have something right there to keep people occupied you know especially kids when there's no power there's no tv and none of the stuff that they're used to and some of the other things that we have in our tote we have these pull-up lanterns these are kind of handy they have a handle they have if you pull them up the lantern goes on or they have a switch here and it becomes a flashlight out the top of it these we get at tractor supply and they're like 6.99 they're not very expensive at all every member of the family has one of these we've used them when we go camping we keep them in our blackout box they're just handy to have for an inexpensive price to light up a room we have some other little lanterns also stuck in there that would fit this was something that we just picked up it's a little um it has a little hanger these are kind of handy we've also taken these camping but just a lot of different options for lighting if you're without power for an extended period of time and then i did mention that i don't keep the batteries in the items when they're put away because you don't want the battery to be drained accidentally or just something gets turned on in the box so i have a lot of these um these are nifty little and they're not very expensive just a few dollars you can get them in lots of different sizes these will hold your batteries and keep them together and keep them from you know touching one another and rolling around inside of the box and so i use these to keep the batteries for all the items i have and i do for example this lists everything that i have in this pack and after certain things i have listed how many batteries in what size and then at the bottom i have made a note of how many batteries of each size that i need for everything in this bag because like i said if i'm out purchasing batteries or gathering batteries i want to know easily what size of batteries that i need how many i need it's just easier for me if i have it readily available so that's our blackout box now like i said there's other things that could be helpful in a power outage and i'll be doing another video or series of videos on some of those things especially winter power outages since that's what we may be facing here in maine coming up and that adds a whole other level of danger because people freeze to death during winter power outages i hope you've enjoyed this video and i hope you've gotten some good ideas maybe learned something let me know down in the comments do you have a kit like this for your family if so what do you have in your kit and where do you store it i love getting ideas from you guys let me know if there's anything that i've forgotten that i could include in mine because i'm always looking to make improvements on everything that we have there's always room for improvement if you made it all the way to the end of the video leave me a blackheart emoji for blackout if you found this video helpful or learned anything please share it on your social media like subscribe and share i'm jera with wicked prepared survive today thrive tomorrow we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Wicked Prepared

Views: 83,424

Keywords: blackout box, black out box, power outage kit, prepping, prepper, preparing for power outage, preparing for grid down, no power

Id: bqXmcxzyXSY

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 09 2022