‘This is another installment of my series of articles on how to light up our lives in TEOTWAWKIville. This article covers the results of my week-long experience testing my lighting preps.
I expected this preps test to be a fairly simple but, as always, it proved to be more useful and eye-opening than I would have guessed. As with other tests I’ve done, it showed where my preps were insufficient, but more importantly, I learned several things I hadn’t even considered with respect to lighting and therefore hadn’t even thought about preparing for. Another testimony to the importance of testing all our preps over a realistic time period, not just for a few hours.
During this week-long test of my lighting, it was quickly evident I needed to upgrade most of my lights to be ready for a long-term grid-down situation. One of the things I hadn’t considered, light temperature, turned out to be so important I was online ordering replacements during the first 24 hours.
A Quick Review of Part One on Lighting Our Post-SHTF Homesteads
See my April, 2025 SurvivalBlog article: Post-SHTF Lighting (Part 1 [1], Part 2 [2], Part 3 [3])
I hope the point was clearly made in that article that while candles and oil lamps might be sufficient for a three-day power outage, they’re not viable choices for long-term grid-down lighting. Individually, a candle only puts out enough light intensity to read a book from two feet away. Because you’d need to burn several candles at a time to be useful, the math shows you’d literally need more than a pallet of candles costing thousands of dollars to get through a full year of post-SHTF life with just a bare minimum of adequate light.
Oil lamps worked for our ancestors only because there was always a mercantile up the road where they could buy more oil when needed. In a TEOTWAWKI lifestyle, oil lamps aren’t feasible due to the amount of oil (two 55-gallon drums = 4.8 oz./day) which would have to be stored in our preps to provide a year’s worth of minimally adequate light. There’s only so much light produced per drop of oil or ounce of candle wax so the numbers are easy to calculate.
In all likelihood, most preppers are planning on candles or oil lamps due to conventional wisdom. That is what is listed on most prepping lists for providing light, including TEOTWAWKI lists. Too many of us haven’t done the research to explore other options, or done the math to understand just how many candles or much lamp oil or kerosene we’d need to provide a year’s worth of light after the SHTF. It’s also unhealthy breathing petroleum-based fumes on a daily basis.
Part 2 Review: Portable Power Stations
See my three-part May, 2025 SurvivalBlog article: Post-SHTF Lighting: Portable Power Stations (Part 1 [4], Part 2 [5], and Part 3 [6].) Portable power stations (PPS) were explained and the many options of lighting that can be powered by a PPS were discussed. Part four of this series will cover the basics of how to make a DIY PPS as well as how to repurpose other lights we already have.
The least expensive, least space consuming, healthiest, and highest-quality lighting for a world without electricity is provided using 12-volt DC or 5-volt USB lights, powered by the repurposed 12-volt batteries from our post-SHTF vehicles, charged with a small plug-and-play solar panel. Not only is this option the most practical, but it can also provide enough high-quality light to be almost comparable to what we have today, rather than the minimal amounts candles and oil provide. For serious preppers, a PPS is the best choice to provide light. If we lack DC lights after the SHTF, we can repurpose the many different ones from our vehicles: dome lights, headlights, tail lights, visor lights, etc.
Rather than needing pallets of oil and candles, the smaller PPS’s can almost fit in a breadbox. Unlike some of our preps, instead of buying it and keeping it on a shelf waiting for the next hurricane or EMP, it has everyday uses such as working outdoors without an extension cord, or camping.
What I Hoped to Learn From Testing My Lighting Preps
For me it’s always an adventure to do a 7-10 day test of my various preps. Not only was this test of my lighting options was as fun as the rest, it was one of the most eye opening as far as my failure to properly prepare for an important item like lighting. The last thing I want to be saying over and over again after the SHTF is, “So soon old, so late smart!” and “Oh well, hindsight is 20-20!” Those who test and fine tune their preps will be glad they did.
In our discussions of beans, bullets, and bandaids, bulbs might be a worthy topic to include.
My hope with this article is that serious preppers will more fully realize the importance of lighting in our everyday lives, then upgrade their preps to include lighting that comes as close as possible to what we enjoy today. Most of these ideas will be useful whether we’re planning for a three-day or a three-year event.
My Own Situation versus an Average Prepper’s Readiness
For myself, I was only testing the actual lights that I have on hand to see whether or not these would suffice. Since I have a 3,000-watt solar-panel setup, currently grid tied, a PPS, and a 122 amp-hour deep-cycle battery as part of my everyday operations, I wasn’t concerned about how to power or recharge the lights I had on hand. But to make the information more useful for the average prepper, I didn’t use any of these during this test. To that same end, in this article I’m also speaking about what I’d do in the situations discussed below as if I didn’t have my solar panels and batteries.
For those wanting to keep it as inexpensive as possible, the most basic equipment for off-grid lighting can be acquired for $30 – $75. It can be upgraded from there once you see how simple it is to use.
Here’s how the preps test of my lighting went.
Let the Test Begin
I had been thinking about testing my lighting preps for a long time but had never quite gotten around to it.
The best tests are done on a spur of the moment without any previous thoughts or preparation for the test. After mentioning “test our preps” while writing a previous article, that was my signal to drop everything and start the test. This was to more closely simulate a real post-SHTF grid-down situation, with no time to even charge batteries and electronics. Everything else in my day-to-day living was normal, only lighting was tested.
To begin, I unscrewed all light bulbs which were easy to do, turned the breakers off for others, and taped two wall switches in the kitchen to the off position. I did my usual excited testing-my-preps fist pumps, then told the cat how fun and informative this was going to be. He looked disinterested and only cared that I’d have enough light to get his feline MRE’s (Mice, Ready-to-Eat) and freeze-dried sardines into his food dish.
Lights Inventory
Since the test began in the late morning, there was no urgency for immediate lighting. That gave me time to do a leisurely inventory of what lights, batteries, and portable solar panels I had on hand.
I thought I had a pretty good idea of how many DC (non-120-volt AC) lights I had around the homestead but while doing the inventory I quickly realized a few things.
First, I have more DC lights than I expected. Second, I have far fewer desirable lights than I’d want in a grid-down world.
Overall, I have 31 various lights from flashlights to reading lamps to tiny keychain flashlights on the zipper pulls of all my jackets and hoodies. Of all these lights only eight were rechargeable or use 12-volts to run directly off a vehicle battery. The rest all use AA and AAA batteries which are unsustainable for a long-term post-SHTF life so they weren’t used in the test. The first note to myself was to buy more rechargeable lights.
Here are the types of lights I used in the trial:
Three non-rechargeable lights which must be connected directly to a vehicle battery or USB port.
– One reading light [7] with flexible 14” goose neck
– One DIY light made from 1” x 1” LED chipset lights [8] similar to those used in various vehicle lights
– One 5-volt USB hanging light [9]
Six rechargeable USB (5-volt) lights:
– Two 4” flashlights which I now call pocket flashlights
– Two lantern-style lamps [10] 5” tall
– One headlamp
– One large flashlight
Non-rechargeable lights:
– Eight “button” flashlights, aka keychain flashlights [11]
Battery Inventory
I inventoried the batteries next.
Small Batteries – as part of my everyday buying-in-bulk philosophy, I always have plenty of AA, AAA, C, D, and 9v batteries on hand. They’d be impractical to use for post-SHTF lighting due to their short life span. They would however, be worth their weight in gold for the various remote sensors and other must-haves I currently use which are not rechargeable. These includes sensors to monitor freezer and well-house temperatures, as well as driveway motion sensors. In these devices the AA and AAA batteries last slightly more than a year. The spark igniters on my off-grid stove are also powered by 8 AAA batteries which last for 5+ years.
I also have charger [12] and rechargeable versions of these battery sizes which could provide many years of power for the above-mentioned devices. These same batteries could be used to power radios of various sorts, and at least one of the electricity sources in this experiment could power a ham radio as well as whatever unknowns are on the TEOTWAWKI horizon. Since most people probably don’t have this type of charger, it was not used or considered during this test.
Vehicle-type Batteries – For post-SHTF lighting, 12-volt vehicle batteries will be the most practical. Most of us will have at least two of them on hand and others may also have motorcycle or riding-mower 12-volt batteries.
My inventory includes the following:
– One deep-cycle battery, used seasonally
– Two vehicle batteries, in use
– One riding-mower battery in use
– Three core batteries, tested at 12.5, 10.9, and 7.6 volts when the test started.
Note: A “core” is the old weak vehicle battery you trade in when you buy a new one. Vehicle batteries hold a smaller and smaller charge as they age. Most begin around 13.2 volts when new and slowly degrade to below 12 volts, meaning that’s as high as they can be charged. But even when carrying only a minimal charge, they’re still useful for many applications, especially lighting, the light will just be dimmer.
At the beginning of this test, I used only the three core batteries to see how the worst-case scenario would pan out. If necessary, I could switch to the two batteries in my vehicles. Core batteries will be discussed more fully in an upcoming article.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)