My family is planning to do a Y2K trial run soon (no power, no gas, no running water, no credit cards, no ATM card, no telephone, no computer, etc). Would any of you who have already done this share your experiences with us? What would be helpful to know...

How long did your trial run last? What did you do without? What did you learn from it? Were there certain supplies that you were low on? What will you do differently as a result?

Think we'll all learn a lot from this experiment! Thanks in advance!

-- Prepared Mama (a@a.a), January 18, 1999

Answers

I'm kind of working up to it.

-- gilda jessie (jess@listbot.com), January 18, 1999.

Dear Mama, Yes, we had a y2k trial run. It lasted three days. Actually, it was an ice storm that hit Southern Missouri & Northern Ark. The part that bothered me the most was the low light all day long. I discovered that my kitchen wasn't as bright as it needs to be. I get depressed quickly in low light for long periods of time. My eighteen month old granddaughter was with us, and puzzles were tough to do in low light. Even with solar, one has to be careful when the sun isn't shining much. cooking was fine because we have propane. Cleanup takes a long time... Everything takes longer than one thinks it will. I will want a hand carpet sweeper, and more Aladin lamp backup. We heated water on the wood stove. If you have animals, its tough. I carried water from the creek to the chicken house. We have a few winder chicks, with no heat lamp, but mama hen took care of them quite well. Our solar radio came in handy for the news. This is really important when you are information starved. We expected the storm, so we filled our bathtubs with water, bathed, then saved the water to flush to toilets. Baby wipes are great for hands when you come in from outdoor chores. We were iced in for five days, and had a chance to use some of our stored food. Be careful how you store it. Ours was hard to get at, many things were at the bottom of the barrell, this makes extra work. Actually, the whole thing went pretty well. We own our own business, which stopped. The automatic shut-off of income is uncomfortable. I hope we don't have to find out what that is like for long periods of time. Good luck, Mama, let us know how it goes. Hope this ends up on the right question... Abigayle P.S. Try Anita Evangelista's book: Living without Power, and Liking it. I like this book because I know that her family actually did this, by choice, for a long period of time Best of Luck, Abigayle

-- James Greenleaf (jgreenleaf@townsqr.com), January 18, 1999.

I'm going to build a solar cooker and try to cook most of the dishes on the post-Y2K menu everyday while I'm at work, since the weather is roughly the same now as it will be.

Also going to build some solar shower apparatus and test that.

Going to try to evaporate water from large shrubs using sheet plastic.

Being a single, commuting mom, a full-scale test would have to take place on the weekend... when I'm out garage-sailing and shopping for the event (or proselytizing about it!)

Good luck!

-- Lisa (lisab@shallc.com), January 18, 1999.

Mama,

We have not done this, but thanks for the idea. I do not know if my DGI husband will go for it. He likes tv. But I have a 5" tv that runs on batteries. Maybe he would "get it" if we did a trial run. Hmm....

-- Sue (conibear@gateway.net), January 18, 1999.