Prepping for disaster situations may seem like a stressful activity, but in reality, the reason people do it is to avoid the massive stress that comes with figuring things out on the fly in the midst of an already stressful situation. For example, how do you keep your fridge cold if your power goes out?
That was the topic of a recent post on the r/preppers subreddit, where one user posed the question, "If you expect a power outage, should you add water bottles to fridge?"
The idea behind this question was not, as a couple of commenters mistakenly thought, to have very cold water on hand during a blackout. Rather, putting cold things in the fridge is a fairly ingenious way of keeping your perishables cold — at least temporarily — even without electricity.
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The temperature in my home 🌡️ "I believe they're talking thermal mass of cold water to help keep the fridge cool during an outage. I put frozen water-filled gallon milk jugs inside, works great," one commenter explained.
Other commenters expanded on this idea, laying out steps that they would take in similar situations.
"For added benefit, fill a water bottle only 3/4. Put a dime or cent on top of the ice after the water bottle freezes. If you have an extended power outage, you can see if your freezer stayed cool by checking the water bottle and coin to see if it sunk at all. That will give you an idea of how much the fridge thawed out," someone suggested.
While the public perception of preppers often involves people hoarding guns in a bunker (not entirely unfairly, given the way that many self-professed preppers have talked in the past), more and more people are beginning to look into common-sense ways to keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe during weather-related disasters.
As we are likely to experience an increasing number of these disasters in the near future due to the effects of air pollution from burning dirty energy sources such as gas and oil, it simply makes sense to have plans in place.
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