Care to do the maths?, Take away the gas, leccy and coal.............................

[Little Lou]

I don't doubt your maths, NR - or anyone else's in this thread. I'm sure we've all underestimated our fuel needs, and it worries me a lot.

But I think the picture needn't be as black as we're painting. Your experience (and Mary N's in France) are probably based on living a 21st century lifestyle, and one of the biggest parts of prepping for me personally is changing the way I think about that.

Because the brutal truth is that we can't live a 21st century lifestyle in an 18th century world, and the true survivors will be those who adapt. If we go back even just to the 1960s we'll find it was normal for people to share baths in order to save the boiler fuel. People didn't wash every single garment after one day's wear. People in big houses often only had a fire in ONE room. The way we use fuel now would seem incredibly wasteful to those people - and they'd be right.

Maybe that sounds defeatist, to give up today's luxuries so easily, but many of them are things we can well do without. Yes, we must wash our clothes when they're uncomfortable or smelly or when there's a threat to personal hygiene, but we don't need to do it because there's a dirty mark we don't want the neighbours to see. Having a communal 'living room' seems intolerable in a family where everyone wants to watch their own televisions or play on their own computers, but when there's no TV or computers they're much more likely to be sitting down together playing cards - or knitting or preparing food or mending traps or any other job essential for survival.

People lived very happily that way. When it was cold, they put on another jumper. When they needed a wash and it wasn't 'bath night', they did a 'blanket bath' with no more than a mug of warm water. We can do these things too.

We can do more - and learn from people even further back in history. Before the 18th century, for instance, people insulated their houses the way we now insulate our lofts - they hung carpets and tapestries on the walls. A few blackout drapes and a staple-gun, and we can do the same thing.

They were more economical with their fires too. Before the liberation of the striking match, households had just the one central fire (in the kitchen) and this one fire fed all the others. If you wanted light, you'd light one candle from the central fire and use that one to light the rest. If you wanted heat, you took burning coal or wood from the central fire, stuck it in a metal bucket, and carried it to lay a new fire somewhere else - without the need for kindling. When you wanted warm water, you put the bowl under the grate of the fire you were already using for cooking and heated your water at the same time.

I doubt any of this is new to anyone, but I think all I'm saying is that we needn't despair. Obviously NR is right, and we should all stockpile as much as we can, but I do think we'll adapt better than we think. Especially Grumpy Grandpa, and all the other older folk who remember a world before the casually disposable one we live in now.