UPDATE: Thanks for the hints. This diary is excellent:
Emergency Planning
Living offshore on houseboats, or in the woods, or in campers for thirty years, does help.
I feel sadness for those sweltering in various places, as the power grid fails, refugees suffer, and all for less then twenty bucks a week (five lattes) for a year.
I've had emergency supplies of water, electricity, cooling and food for so long I forgot when I started. It seems to provide a base of psychological stability for when I read the news about the country falling apart.
Do yourself and your family a favor. Make yourself independent of the grid: power and water and food.
You don't have to travel, but you do have to sleep and eat and drink. Plan ahead for realities other than politics. Don't just be wise about who gets elected in Pennsylvania...
You can get a small very quiet and clean running (note CARB rating)
high-quality generator for $700 that will drive a 5000 btu air conditioner (800 watts) $90 OR a 7 cu ft
chest freezer (300 watts) $175 AND three compact fluorescent bulbs (54 watts) and your computer (50 watts) at once. Run the freezer for an hour and then the AC for an hour. Been doing this for a long time, but then I lived on boats and in campers.
Don't let the exhaust from the generator get into the house. This generator runs very clean, but still produces carbon monoxide, which is odorless, colorless, and highly toxic. Put the generator outside, with the exhaust pointing away from living quarters, yours or someone else's. Lock it with your bicycle lock. People steal them. When you're not using it, put Sta-Bil in the gas to keep it from going bad. Change the oil ever ten tankfuls. Use synthetic oil.
These prices current from the Internet. Locals will gouge you big time. Best time to buy generators is about a month after a big outage. Cynical, eh? Experience makes that happen.
You use a chest freezer because it's the most efficient at holding its cold, and not leaking the cold out all over the floor when you open the door to get something out. Keep the bottom full of gallons of milk as a thermal reservoir, and to make things on top easy to reach.
The small high efficiency AC window units have very low starting requirements for their compressor because they're vibrating wand type. Shade the AC unit, but don't interfere with the airflow.
Block sunlight from the outsides of the windows with awnings or white sheets so the greenhouse effect doesn't trap the heat inside the window where it ends up in the house.
You can't let the sun hit the glass. It converts the light to heat, and it can't get out. Greenhouse effect.
You need a (low power) LCD screen for your computer. The compact fluorescent lights speak for themselves. Small fans (12" or 20 breezebox) help a lot. Ceiling fans are not good at moving air across your skin for the wattage they use.
Open windows at the top to let hot air out. Draw your cool air from low down shaded areas.
Telephones work off their own electricity. Buy a cheap one for ten bucks at Target. Charge your cell off the generator or your car.
Keep ten gallons of water and a week's supply of Meals Ready to Eat per person you expect to shelter.
Use the food and water from outside your supply first. As soon as the emergency hits, think skinny and careful. Hunker down. Wait for the country to fire itself up again. It will.
Store five gallons of gasoline with Sta-Bil in it. You can rotate it into your vehicle on a yearly basis.
You might be surprised at how much it relieves your mind to know you won't starve, swelter, or go thirsty if one of the many "supply emergencies" happens.
Bonddad is right, the infrastructure is failing. Protect yourself. You don't have to last forever, but you do need a week. Remember Katrina!