At the start of June 2007, the Australian city where I live (Newcastle NSW) was hit by a monster “1 in 30 year” storm that flooded hundreds of homes and ran up a damage bill of over $1 billion Australian dollars.

As a consequence, our house was left without electricity for around 5 days. It’s winter here, and although temperatures are relatively mild (no lower than 4-5 degrees Centigrade overnight), it was cold enough when one is accustomed to home heating.

So as I sat there in my small circle of candlelight, in my 4 layers of clothes, socks and beanie, I decided to make use of my situation by thinking about how it might provide some insight into some of the issues likely to confront us as peak oil and gas approach.

The first thing I did was to start two lists – they are titled “items I’m glad I had” and “items I wish I had”. I brainstormed a few initial points for each, and then added to them over the next few days as events dictated. I will present both lists below, and then discuss some of the issues that arise. I have linked some of the items to their Amazon counterparts in case you’re not sure what I’m talking about. The items in bold got an asterix from me as being the most important ones.

Items I’m glad I had
Candles
Matches
Head Light (Petzl Tikka Plus - 3AAA)
Trangia Stove + fuel (TRANGIA 25-3 ALC STOVE NON STK)
Warm Sleeping Bag (Columbia 0-Degree Elk Meadows Mummy Sleeping Bag)
Water Containers
Powerful Torch
Good Raincoat
Warm Hat
Warm Socks
Wind-up Torches (Dynamo Wind-Up Flashlight)
Skylights in house (for natural lighting)
BBQ and gas
Shovel (to clear blocked drains outside)
Tarpaulin

Items I wish I had
Gas Camp Cooker
Gas Lantern
Wind-up Radio (Emergency Weather Radio - Solar Crank Radio Flashlight with Weather Band)
Nightstar Torch (Nightstar Magnetic Force Flashlight Hi-Tech Clear)
Solar Mobile Phone Charger
Old-Fashioned Stove-Top Kettle
Spare Batteries for everything
Candle-Lantern (More efficient lighting and easy to walk around with candle)
Dried Food (easy to prepare in one pot)
Waterproof Safe (mainly for photos and important records)
Spare petrol (Hard to get due to power failure)
Pot-Belly Stove (for heat, cooking and light)
More Skylights (quite dark inside as days were overcast or raining)
Generator (perhaps  mainly to prevent food spoilage + light)
Lap-Top Computer (could recharge at friends house and stay online)
Solar Hot Water (hot water emerged as the main modern-day luxury that was hard to go without)

Comments and Observations
I was able to live in a lot less space (as I had rooms closed to conserve heat, and it was hard to see in the day to do finely-detailed work or read).

I used a lot less things (as all the high-tech stuff was deactivated), and they tended to be general purpose rather than specialised.

Battery-powered items will fail fairly quickly unless you are able to recharge them, or have a cache of copper-tops. Likewise, mobile phones are only of continued utility while the people that you want to talk to are able to charge them up, as well as yourself.

I was surprised to discover how quickly the survival instinct kicked in. For instance, I developed an increased sense of self-reliance, solving problems with low-tech fixes. I also became increasingly frugal with my use of “consumables’, as I didn’t want to exhaust my supply of batteries, stove fuel and candles.

I was amazed to see how important light (both natural and my limited artificial resource) was. I really was governed by the sun; I could only work outdoors in the daytime, and at night it was hard to do things by candle-light (and also why waste candles when you don’t need to). It really came down to a trade-off between the amount of candle-burn versus the need to get something done at night. I was amazed that I was thinking in these terms, given that the blackout was artificial and short-term (compared to the long emergency). Another thing – you need light to cook at night (preferably keeping one’s hands free – hence the value of my headlight).

Conclusion
I gained a lot more insight into these issues than I thought I would (given the short-term nature of the event). Newcastle really was a mess for a few days, and it was hard to get things done. Candles, gas stoves and lanterns disappeared immediately, so if you didn’t have it at home you missed out (hence my list) – get prepared now!

I would suggest that you try going for 24 or 48 hours without electricity twice a year (winter and summer) if possible and safe for you to do so. If you want a real challenge, do it right now to simulate a storm or unexpected blackout. The insights that you find might surprise you.

While blogging is part of the Web 2.0 revolution, it only gives the illusion of true interactivity. Why? Sure the content is dynamic, and readers can interact with the author and (to a limited extent) other readers by leaving comments at the end of a post. But there is no true reader to reader interaction: While there is a GROUP led by the blog author, there is no COMMUNITY.

And to face and overcome the challenges posed by peak oil, climate change and other looming calamities, we need more than such a group. We do need a true community (or NETWORK) of like-minded individuals willing to share information, ideas, problems and solutions. And through the magic of modern technology, we can achieve this vision.

Enter the social network (think MySpace ©). Why are they so successful? One reason is that they allow people with the same interests to hook up (no matter where they live) and form what is essentially a distributed super-intelligence: A living, synergistic organism that is more than its members, moving towards a common goal (think bee-hive or ant nest). And it is this type of entity that we need to create if we are to successfully face the future.

Introducing the Peak Oil Healthcare Network (POHN), the first (to my knowledge) social network dedicated to peak oil and healthcare. So what exactly is a social network, and why are they so useful?

Firstly, a social network usually contains several Web 2.0 features that promote networking and community building: They usually have a home page for each member that can be customised to their liking with a personal blog, member profile, and space for photos, videos and podcasts or mp3s. They usually contain a forum and often other way that users can organise themselves into groups with common interests or goals. And they often have some sort of invitation system to allow their users to invite family, friends and peers to join the group. The system hosting the POHN has all these features, with many more in development by the platform owners (who have nothing to do with me, by the way).

My vision for the Peak Oil Healthcare Network is that it will be a rapidly growing and passionate community of people who want to take action on peak oil and climate change, people who know that one person can make a difference, especially when they are a member of a group. So that we can become an effective agent of change, influencing more and more people in increasingly large ripples, our numbers need to grow: If you really want to do something about peak oil, rather than sitting on the sidelines, visit www.peakoilhealthnet.com .

The Australian government admitted today that the Iraq deployment was “partially driven by the need to secure oil supplies, although…the main reason was to ensure that the humanitarian crisis did not worsen.” This statement is in stark contrast to their denial in 2003 that the deployment had anything to do with oil. Read the full story here.

I’m just about ready to start blogging again. I am also putting the finishing touches on a new peak oil website that I will launch here next week. Stay tuned.