General Chat

… follow the tips for surviving a blackout.

Bleach - I’ve got toilet bleach - what is household bleach ( found under the kitchen sink apparently) I’ve got sprays but they contain other things.
- added: that is to put in your drinking water.

Drink from the water butt. Wouldn’t have dreamt of it a year ago, we bought a disc which has cleared the water a lot - but drink it! I’d have to be desperate.

Low alcohol beer - maybe I’d suffer that ( don’t like beer) whilst watching OH fade away as he can’t drink beer.

Will we get booklets outlining all the things we would need to do. Never got a booklet about 20 years ago. Can’t think what it was warning us about.

Putting bleach in drinking water doesn't sound like a good idea!

Why drink from a water butt? What's wrong with tap water?

What kind of "blackout" are we talking about? :-S


ADDED:
Oh, I see - it's a water supply outage - I think.

I don't fancy bleach in my water!! If there's no water supply what are we supposed to put it in, anyway? As for beer, it wouldn't be long before the shops sold out - even if they introduced rationing!

On the few occasions when we have been without mains water the Council have come round delivering packs of bottled water.

Where has this originated. I have not seen any news today.

It’s contingency planning for major outages, possibly due to cyber attacks.

I suppose that if the power was completely out for ages water wouldn’t run through the taps as somewhere down the line power would be needed.

Our water was off one morning just before Christmas so got in some more water from the shop, which we didn’t need as it wasn’t off too long. However, we used the water butt water for the loo, which I think I would be doing in that scenario.

Edit: it was in several newspapers. The Covid Whitty was involved.

I wonder how much bleach it would take before people became ill from it's effects?
Only a quarter of a teaspoon is suggested for 10 litres of water, but not many would have a container for 10 litres, so would just use guess work.

Living in an area of the country, which may have been the first to have compulsory water meters and have lived in a country, where water supply was cut for many hours a day in summer, we know how to limit wastage, but I do rely on being able to just get a drink of clear, safe water from the tap numerous times a day.
So yes, the water would be what would most effect me in a national outage.

Rats!

The power went on my ipad just as I was about to press submit. :-|

How can you measure out safely 1/4 teaspoon unless you've got measuring spoons for baking. Then if you've only got a 5L container how are you gong to measure half a 1/4 teaspoon? I wouldn't want to add too much.

Public health message will ony be via the radion on the day. Not my first thought. The radio comes later once I've sorted out what I can and then porbably need to use candles to find the spare batteries because th old ones have rotted in that old transistor radio - if you can find that :-(
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15430887/Drink-BLEACH-low-alcohol-beers-blackout-Sir-Chris-Whitty-survival.html

Years ago you could get tablets to purify water. Not sure if they are still available. :-S

I remember K got some when we took the caravan to the remote highlands and also used them when his walking group did long sponsored walks.

Joy you can still get such tablets but you need some that last a while and to check

their use by date but it’s quite long.

We used them many years ago when we travelled to Spain.

Personally I wouldn’t dream of using bleach. :-0 :-0 :-0

I’ve mostly camped without electricity and camped on mountainsides before now even eating emergency dried rations.

I would have to stock up on canned food and stock up on bottled water ;-) ;-)

Not a cyber attack, but I'm glad South East Water are not the suppliers in my area :-0 :-|

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1klvz7le29o

Too true.

Can’t remember who supplied us when we were in Kent.In those days there were several small companies.

Added: OH looked it up - it was Md Kent water now taken over by southeast water.

Those big water supply points are only any good for car drivers - no one thinks about those without cars.