“It’s your time to shine.”
“Other people will look up to you and will be able to tell the time.”
“An enlightening experience.”
“A bright idea, if I may say so myself.”
“With great brightness comes great visibility.”
“Your ability to illuminate a situation is truly outstanding.”
“You are the light at the end of my tunnel.”
“Don’t take this lightly when I say you’re brilliant.”
Provide a means for people to charge their phones = Instant Hero.
Ive said it before: do you want to be the grumpy, antisocial prepper that eats beans in his (yes, almost exclusively his) bunker until radiation poisoning finally gets him?
Or do you want to be the hero of the neighbourhood, who has a solar-powered stove to heat up the baby milk for cute single mother next door?
You’ve hit on my bugbear with most post-apocalyptic fiction: pretty much universally humans have shown that they will tend towards co-operation when placed in situations of hardship. But most writers, game designers and preppers want you to think that when civilization collapses everyone will be like “there’s no rules any more! I can murder whoever I want and take their stuff!”
I have been in a flood that turned the land into a lake, horizon to horizon. Densely populated. Utterly devastating. The railway was elevated enough to get between two mid-sized cities, and on the 12km trek I saw an amazing amount of compassion, mutual aid, and casual, natural-feeling grassroots organization to just get on with life.
I have been in a few crises and minor disasters, come to think of it. I think generally, most people like banding together and helping out when shit gets crazy.
Don’t use my love of beans against me
Beans beans beans! I will always choose beans!
Same with screwdrivers and my trusty pouch of cables and adapters. Always a great feeling to surprise someone with a solution when they didn’t even expect one.
Can we bring this kind of energy to Lemmy? Pretty please?
Werid that guy is carrying around an actual flashlight. Modern people just use their phones.
The flashlight/phone debate reminds me of the multi tool/knife debate. Do one thing well, or 20 things okay…
Modern flashlights are bright AF in a decently small form factor. This isn’t a 5D-Cell Maglite he’s hauling around.
There’s always a trade in EDC for practicality, reliability, weight, size, etc.
A decent modern flashlight with an 18650 battery is a nice pocket sized light that’s streets ahead of anything a phone could do, and a lot of them can also be used as a USB power bank, so you can get some other use out of it.
But the flashlight of your phone doesn’t have the ability to take down a fighter jet when pointing at it.
As a Kyiv resident: no, you don’t want power outages. It’s less fun after the 10th time in a week.
Yeah but check out my thick beamshots
People with hobbies are cool
My wife thought it was dumb when I picked up a lockpick set to play around with. Didn’t think it was so stupid when we accidentally locked our keys inside when house sitting and I actually managed to pick the lock.
Double edged sword. I was into lock picking as a teen. When my family found ourselves in the same situation, I leapt into action and got the side door open in no time.
My mother freaked out at how easy it was to get into our house without a key, and went on an anxiety fueled journey of kitting the house out with extra security. It wasn’t a bad idea to up our security, but I felt horrible for stressing her out by trying to do a good deed.
I’m a firefighter\emt. I’ve gotten to pick Sooo many door locks over the years and it’s saved a lot of people a lot of money and headache for it.
Anytime someone has “fallen and can’t get up” in their locked house, but says they aren’t injured, I’ll pick my way in, instead of us having to break a door or window just because they need help off the floor.
… And that’s how I got your mother to subscribe to the lockpicking lawyer.
I got the Olight Ark Pro ultra in limited edition Zombie color as my edc light. I absolutely love that thing. Gets more use than my pocket knife. It’s just the best.
Honest question: how? When?
I use my phone for light, some times the screen alone, since it’s enough.
Same with the knife, I almost never find myself needing a knife…
My everydaycarry is a Fenix AA, about 10 years old.
Uses today included: checking on the henhouse, and going out back to smoke a joint, and I stuck it in my mouth to hang the hummingbird feeder. Before dark, I used it to help me vacuum in a hurry before guests arrive (lay it on the floor to highlight everything needing a cleanup), to look into a corner of the car trunk, to poke around in the storage room briefly, and at work to better look into the guts of a computer.
My swiss army knife got used a few times today, too. Different blades and tools. I’m semi-rural so dont leave the bedroom without those two items.
I wish r/fleshlight was this wholesome.
It will not work here:
“Sir, This Is A Wendy’s”
but maybe here:
“Anyway, this is a Walmart”Power outage at the grocery store. Big day for me.
That moment where you pull out the fleshlight and it makes you a hero. People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask you where you got it and you get to talk about it. This. Is. Your. Moment.
Not gonna lie, it was the highlight of my day haha
Edit: one too many has. It’s important to accurately quote.
People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask where you got it
I’ll let them have it. I’ve got three more at home.
From either Hank, Jackson, or Simon, iykyk
Fleshgenerators on max power.
It’s plenty holesome.
I mean, looking into it (you can thank me later), it seems like a great support group!
Very little friction to speak of. I’ve seen some communities that just felt like a square peg in a round hole and this one definitely doesn’t have that vibe.
Dunno, seems more like a circlejerk to me.
It can be both
I get it. This summer I bought a battery bank and portable solar panels so I can a) take some load off a circuit that is overtaxed in the summer and b) be able to very slowly charge the car in the event of an emergency.
A month after getting it, we got a notice on our door that they were working on poles and our power would be out for 8 hours. I kept my whole homelab, and refrigerator running the whole time and the entertainment center running most of the time. Any thought that I spent too much, given the probable utility, immediately disappeared. I wouldn’t call it pride in my decision, but it came damn close.
People will ask you where you got it and then you get to talk about it!!
That happened in other responses!
You have my exact use case energy wise (homelab + fridge). Can I ask what battery and panels you got?
I was able to get a good deal on a lightly used 3.6kWh EcoFlow DELTA Pro and this ZOUPW 480W panel. I got 380 - 395W through the July afternoon, but I’ve since learned I didn’t have the panel at a good angle given my latitude and time of year.
How do you run into a battery like that lightly used if there isn’t anything wrong with it? Seems weird that someone would get rid of it to me?
MFW the roofers came to inspect a leak a couple of weeks ago and the kid turned on his phone’s light before climbing into the attic.
Me after lending the kid my 3000 lumens pocket flashlight.
There’s an entire horror game about having only your phone flashlight during a power outage.
Actually, it looks like there are a few.
There’s an entire horror
gamegenre about having only your phone flashlight during a power outage.
I built what is basically a smart plug, but it uses 4G connectivity instead of my standard WiFi. The idea is that if my home network screws up and I need to reboot my router and modem, I can still do that remotely. There have been 2 times in my life that I really wished I had this set up because my Plex server was down while I was traveling. The ideal scenario is that I never have to use the thing, but whenever I see this flashlight post, it reminds me that I kinda do want to need it just once.
I’ve always wanted a backup network connection, no matter how slow. But i cant find anything cheap enough to be worth it. What service do you use?
It’s not a fully redundant backup network. It’s a microcontroller called a particle boron that has a 4G antenna. I bought it because there’s no monthly connectivity charge within a certain usage limit, and I’ll never go anywhere near that limit with this use case.
I learned about it from this cool YouTube video where a dude uses one to build a pizza compass.
Only works in North America :(
Dude, this is sooo cool! As a Ninja Turtle, I LOVE this!
Excellent find, thank you
Really intrigued about the particle boron with no monthly fee.
I bought mine years ago for around $40. I think they still sell it but it costs a bit more now. They have cheaper boards, but I don’t know if those have the no monthly fee thing. It’s a very cool little dev board, but be warned! Unless they changed it, there’s no reverse polarity protection on the battery connector! It uses a regular jst battery connector which can physically only plug in one way. I foolishly assumed this meant that it couldn’t be plugged in with reverse polarity, but it turns out there’s no established “correct” polarity for that connector and the battery I had fried the first board I bought. If you buy one, make sure you double check the battery polarity!
These guys are going to love the apocalypse.
No we aren’t. We like being the heroes in little emergencies.
When the big emergencies happen, we’re just as likely to die as anybody else. Anybody who says differently is a complete moron.
Prepare for the most likely scenario, and you’ll be fine. For the big problems, the best insurance against that is being an active member of your community. Prepping by being there for city council meetings and advocating for responsible city budgeting and city planning is way more likely to save you and your family than kitting your Jeep with a generator.
… For a while.
Realistically speaking, I give the typical armchair preppers a couple weeks, at best.
Realistically speaking, if any of the apocalypses they fantasize about come to pass, I hope I die quickly. I’m not fit, I have injuries and require recurring medication, and it’s unlikely I’d be any boon to any other survivors.
I’m not in any danger of self harm today, but in a zombie apocalypse, I would be.
Same. I would hang around for a few days just to vibe, but I’m not fighting for my life in the apocalypse. I’ll chill till it’s really inconvenient and then check out
You do have different sorts of prepping though. Some act like they are preparing a fallout shelter and equipment to continue for years afterwards. If you are buying a freeze dehydrator, you are going too far.
But far more reasonable is stuff like being prepared for a power/gas/water outage or local shops can’t get restocked for a few days.
Also being prepared doesn’t have to mean having equipment to replace those functions. It could also just be something to keep you going for a few days without it. Tinned food that can be eaten cold for example.
We have enough dry ingredients to last a few weeks if necessary and rainwater collection with water butts. Not ideal but if there was an emergency we could boil and drink it. Camping stove and I keep a tub of sticks as fuel for it and to leave them to dry out.
My “prep” plan is mostly hurricane based. I have a sump pump, generator, a 2-weeks supply of non-perishable food, a camping stove, plus my backyard propane grill, and of course my cordless tools, and now my little power station with solar panels. I sat my ass through Fran, Ivan and Matthew, I’ll sit my ass through the next one.
I sat my ass through Fran, Ivan and Matthew, I’ll sit my ass through the next one.
It’s nice when people think of their pets during challenging times. How old is your donkey?
I am not opposed to preparing for a disaster; in fact, I think it’s wise.
If you’re a good hang you could still be a boon. I’d rather be in an apocalypse with someone with a positive outlook and a good sense of humor than an asshole with twenty flash lights. You have to remember that even in the world that we live in now, clowns and comedians get sent to hospitals and war torn countries.
