---
title: 'How to eat in a blackout'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=FS2F2dYq3jg'
video_id: 'FS2F2dYq3jg'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 505
---

# How to eat in a blackout

> Source: [How to eat in a blackout](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FS2F2dYq3jg)

## Summary

This video covers essential food safety tips during a power outage, advising that fridge food lasts about 4 hours while a full freezer can keep food safe for up to 48 hours. It also discusses practical cooking alternatives like gas stoves and charcoal grills, and emphasizes the importance of community interdependence over individual prepping.

### Key Points

- **Fridge food safety duration** [0:21] — Government guidelines state food in the fridge lasts about 4 hours without power.
- **Freezer food safety duration** [0:38] — A half-full freezer can last 24 hours; a full freezer can last up to 48 hours.
- **Minimize door opening** [1:00] — Opening the door repeatedly lets cold air escape; open once and take out everything you need for an hour.
- **Quality vs. safety after thawing** [1:53] — Food remains safe after 24-48 hours but quality suffers—e.g., freezer burn or gummy texture.
- **Flash freezing vs. home freezing** [2:16] — Factory flash freezing creates tiny ice crystals; home refreezing makes large crystals that damage cell walls.
- **Best use for partially thawed food** [3:01] — Use thawed meat/veg in wet dishes like stews where falling apart is fine.
- **Shelf-stable items** [3:19] — Soda, beer, and similar items don't require refrigeration; leftovers and milk are unsafe after 4 hours.
- **Feast on spoilable food** [3:38] — Consider eating the most perishable items by candlelight during an extended outage.
- **Gas stove use in blackout** [5:41] — Modern gas stoves have electric igniters; use a fire stick or match to light them, and ensure ventilation.
- **Charcoal grill as alternative** [6:06] — A charcoal grill or chimney starter can cook food and boil water when power is out.
- **Interdependence over prepping** [6:46] — Modern survival depends on a global network of sharing; prepping for short disruptions is fine but don't ignore systemic issues.

### Conclusion

Prepare with canned goods and bottled water, but focus on maintaining the societal systems that keep us all fed—individual bunkers won't replace collective interdependence.

## Transcript

It's thunderstorm season here in East
Tennessee, and we live in a neighborhood
with tall trees, so it's only a matter
of time until one of them falls on the
power lines again. How do you feed
yourself when the power goes out? What
about all the stuff in the fridge? How
long is this stuff going to last without
power? Well, let's start there. The food
safety guidelines that you will get from
any government generally tell you the
same basic ballpark figure, which is
food in the fridge lasts about 4 hours.
Now, that's the government safety
talking. And so, it's probably a pretty
conservative figure, but nonetheless one
that we should all keep in mind. The
freezer, on the other hand, is actually
a lot more forgiving. Even according to
the officials, uh, a half full freezer
could last 24 hours. If it's chock full
of stuff, like my basement freezer here,
this is just a whole lot more mass for
the same amount of ambient heat to warm
up. So, the stuff in here can last for
up to 48 hours. This is assuming that
you aren't opening and closing the door
constantly. Every time you open the
door, the denser cold air sinks and
spills out the bottom of the opening.
This creates a vacuum inside the box,
allowing warm air to push in. Opening
the door a few times to get what you
need is like no big deal. Most of the
cold inside the fridge is effectively
stored inside the mass of the food
itself and the walls, etc. So, even if
you fill this box with warm air, the
ambient temperature in here is going to
drop again as soon as we close the door.
But definitely minimize door action.
Open it once, take out everything you
think you might need in the next like
hour or so, and then close it. Why is
the freezer different? Do the laws of
thermodynamics work differently in here?
No, of course not. It's just starting
off way colder than the stuff in the
fridge. Plus, it doesn't really like
last 24 to 48 hours. It just remains
safe after 24 to 48 hours. The quality
is going to suffer. Like the
construction crew that we have working
down here right now accidentally
unplugged this freezer the other day and
it was off for almost a whole day before
I noticed. Look at these nuggets. Look
at the freezer burn on them. I mean,
they're still safe to eat, but they're
not going to taste as good. Most of
today's frozen food is flash frozen at
the factory. They get it incredibly cold
incredibly fast, and that results in
tiny, tiny little ice crystals. When we
freeze or refreeze food at home with our
home technology, it doesn't go as fast
and the result is big ice crystals that
puncture the cell walls of vegetables
and meat. Like look at all this meat
that I've got frozen in here. This stuff
partially thawed and then refroz. Which
means that if I were to just like grill
it up, it would come out super dry cuz
it would lose a lot of juice and the
texture might be kind of gummy. I mean,
if you use it in a stew or something,
then you're going to be fine because
it's a wet dish where things are
supposed to fall apart. And that's why
I'm saving this stuff. I'm going to use
this in like sundae sauce. And that's
what I think you should probably do if
you lose power for a day or two. Don't
expect your meat and veg to be anywhere
near as good once it refreezes. It's
going to fall apart. So, make a big old
stew or something where the food is
supposed to fall apart. As for the stuff
in the fridge, the the soda and the beer
and all of that, that's going to come
back just fine. It's shelf stable. You
don't even need to refrigerate it. But
like the leftovers and the milk, yeah,
that stuff you probably are going to
need to throw out after you've had an
extended power outage of more than 4
hours. So, if the power goes out,
consider having yourself a little feast
of your most spoilable food over candle
light. It'll be fun. And remember that
your most effective food storage device
is uh your own body. Once calories go in
here, it can actually be pretty hard to
get them back out again. Don't I know
it. Of course, you may need to cook your
most spoilable food before you can eat
it. And if you have an electric stove,
that could be a problem if the power's
out. So, you might consider the sponsor
of this video, the Jackaryi Home Power
3600 Plus, the standard essential home
power solution. This thing holds enough
power to get a family of three to six
people through a pretty extended power
outage. For example, you could plug the
fridge into the utility hookup right
there and you could run it for up to 2
weeks. You can just plug it into the
wall to charge it in advance. But if the
power is out for a long time or you're
off the grid, you can buy these super
portable solar panels and charge it up
with about 4 hours of sunshine or 2 and
1/2 hours with a gas generator. Plug in
your phone right there while you wait.
Plug in the stove to cook, or you could
plug in a little hot plate. In a
snowstorm, I can use it to power my
greenhouse, keep the heater and all the
pumps working for my plants and my
fishies. It's the lightest, most
portable 3.6 kW LFP power station. Great
for road trips, camping. There's an app
to monitor everything. You can even set
it to charge during low demand periods
when power may be cheaper. It comes with
an extendable three-year warranty, and
it lasts a long time. You just leave it
unplugged in the closet. It'll only lose
5% of its juice every year. Great gift
for dad. Check out my link in the
description to learn more. Thank you,
Jackie. Anyway, if you have a gas stove,
you're going to have a much easier time
in a power outage. Gas lines are just a
much harder target than power lines
because a gas leak is a much bigger deal
than a power outage. The gas lines are
generally all buried and they're pretty
tough. But modern gas stoves generally
have electric igniters that might not
work when the power is out. Here, let me
unplug this to simulate. You might turn
the knob and nothing happens even though
you can smell the gas coming out. That's
bad. This is a reason to keep one of
these uh fire sticks around just to
light it up and then turn the gas on and
it ignites just fine. My grandma used a
match. And just remember that if your
power is out, that means your
ventilation system is out. So, don't
cook with a gas stove unless you've got
big old windows that you can open. But
this is one reason I always keep a
charcoal grill around along with some
charcoal to grill on. All you need for
this is just some chunk of the out of
doors and you can cook your food on it.
Uh if your water isn't safe to drink,
you can boil it on here. And even if I
didn't have the grill, I could just cook
with my charcoal chimney starter right
here. These things are great not only
for lighting charcoal generally, but
also just as a cooking device. You can
just start it going and then when it
gets hot, you just take a grate and you
can cook directly on top of the starter.
Or you can take some hot charcoal, put
it into like a metal bowl or something,
put the grate on top of the bowl. All
kinds of things you can do with
charcoal. Now, if I've got you feeling
like you can survive the apocalypse, uh,
no you can't. These are all just
techniques for coping with momentary
disruptions to the systems that make all
of our modern lives possible. By
suburban standards, I live on a pretty
big piece of property. It's a full acre.
If I wanted to grow all of the food that
I would need to feed my family of four,
I would probably need about five times
this much land. And I'm lucky that I
live on dirt and not on rock or sand as
so many other humans do. And obviously,
I would need to cut down every single
tree and then bust up all of this turf.
And then I would need inputs. I would
need seed. I would need fertilizer. I
would need a lot more equipment than I
have. And even then, think about the
lives that our ancestors lived. People
who had ancestral subsistence farming
knowledge that you and I have lost. Even
with all that knowledge, they still
starve to death all the time in horrible
famines when there was just uh one
summer of bad weather or when uh one
warlord came through and took your
harvest to feed his men. Most of us on
this planet are only alive right now
thanks to a delicate web of
interdependence or let's call it
sharing. We're only able to survive
because we have this global network of
sharing. Prepping is not an excuse to
opt out of the difficult social,
economic, and political work of keeping
all of these delicate systems up and
running. Your bunker may be nice, but
believe me, bro, you don't want to ever
have to use it. By all means, stockpile
the canned goods and the bottled water.
Prepare for the worst, but let's work
real hard to avoid the worst. Okay?