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A power outage kit should carry a household through at least three days: a light for every person, a weather radio with battery backup, a charged power bank and 1 gallon of water per person per day (CDC). Start with the Black Diamond Spot 400 headlamp, which runs on the three AAA batteries in its box.
A headlamp that runs on the three AAA batteries in its box, so it needs nothing from the wall when the lights go out.
Its rechargeable BD 1500 battery is sold separately, and Black Diamond's hours end when the beam is down to a tenth.
A bright handheld whose 30-lumen Eco mode Fenix lists at 69 hours, charged over USB-C on the light itself.
It takes one 21700 battery, not AA or AAA, so a long outage needs a power bank.
A plug-in desk radio that sounds for weather alerts in the county you program, with three AA cells to keep it listening when the power goes out.
It has no hand crank, solar panel or AM/FM, and the AA cells are not in the box.
About two or three full phone charges in all, from a bank with its USB-C cable built in.
A MacBook gets about one top-up from half to full, by one video reviewer's count.
Four 5-gallon cans, 20 gallons in all: about five days of water for a family of four at the CDC's gallon a day.
One buyer returned 4 of 5 Scepter military cans for leaks, so check each cap with the can on its side.
The lights go out at 7:40 on a January evening. Everybody flips the switch again, in case the house misheard. Then somebody opens the fridge to check whether it is still cold.
The switch does no harm. The fridge is the first thing in the house that starts counting: Ready.gov and the Red Cross both give a refrigerator about four hours of cold food, and the Red Cross is talking about one with the door shut.
So we laid this kit out by that clock: minute one, hour four, the first night, day two and day three, each with its own job.
Also on the list, with no product on this page: nonperishable food (Ready.gov), a paper copy of your contact list and a gas tank at least half full (both Red Cross), and some cash, since Ready.gov says an outage can close ATMs and banks. This page covers light, power, warnings and water. Food and first aid are not covered here.
Three days, or 72 hours, is the floor, not the goal. The CDC asks for a 2-week supply of water if you can store it, and the Red Cross asks for food and water for at least two weeks.
The first job of any outage is finding the stairs before the dog finds your feet. The Red Cross puts the rule in four words: “Use flashlights, not candles.”
Two kinds of light cover two kinds of job. A headlamp leaves both hands free for the stairs, the basement door or a toddler who has decided this is a game. A flashlight aims away from your eyes, so you can point it across the yard or pass it to another adult. This kit has one of each; add more until every person in the house has a light.
If someone heads for the breaker panel, the Red Cross has a rule there too: if any circuit breakers have tripped, contact an electrician to inspect them before turning them on.
The Black Diamond Spot 400 comes first in this kit because it needs nothing from the wall.
It runs on three AAA batteries, and they come in the box. The BD 1500 rechargeable fits the same lamp and is sold separately. In a house without power, a battery that only needs a shelf beats one that needs an outlet.
Black Diamond lists it at up to 400 lumens. On alkaline AAAs, High (400 lumens) runs 2.5 hours, Medium (200) runs 5 and Low (6) runs 200. Those hours end when the beam has faded to a tenth of where it started, so the light dims along the way. Medium is two evenings of two and a half hours. Low is for walking people to bed, a little over eight days of it if nobody ever switched it off.
“I really like the layout and settings of my black diamond spot 400 headlamp. A throw, a flood and red. Battery pack or AAA. I just dont like the light quality of the flood, a lot of artifacts and rather cool in color.” Owner on r/flashlight (post)
One owner’s lamp drained fresh AAAs in two days while it was off and locked, and the replacement unit did not (owner post). So try a new lamp the week it arrives and check the batteries a few days later. Then store it with the batteries out, as Black Diamond’s manual asks, in a small bag right beside it. The same manual says to carry a second light and enough spare batteries in critical situations. In this kit, the second light is the flashlight below.
Skip it if you want a rechargeable lamp straight out of the box: the BD 1500 is a separate purchase. The emergency headlamp guide covers the modes, the lock and storage.
Full details: Black Diamond Spot 400 headlamp
The Fenix E35R is the other light, the one that goes from room to room.
Fenix lists it at 3,100 lumens at its peak, but the outage number is the small one. Its 30-lumen Eco mode runs 69 hours by Fenix’s figures, just under three days of continuous light, and unlocking the light switches it on in Eco, so nobody at the table gets the full burst in the eyes. For an evening of real work, Fenix lists Medium at 350 lumens for 9 hours 20 minutes; 1Lumen measured 8 hours 43 minutes.
In this kit it belongs to a grown-up. Fenix’s manual says to keep the light out of the reach of children and warns that the shell gets hot in use. One owner already treats it as the emergency light: theirs “now lives in the wife’s glovebox so she has a reliable light source in an emergency.”
Its catch is the charge. The E35R takes one 21700 battery, which Fenix lists in the box, and no AA or AAA. Fenix puts a full charge at about three hours over the USB-C port on the light, and asks for a recharge every four months while it sits in storage. In a long outage that charge comes from the power bank further down, and one owner found charging fussy: only a few USB adapters worked. Try the exact bank and cable with it while the lights still work.
Skip it if a drawer of AA batteries is your whole plan. The emergency flashlight guide has every mode and its runtime.
Full details: Fenix E35R flashlight
Hour four is about where the refrigerator stops keeping food cold, by both agencies’ count. The freezer lasts longer: Ready.gov gives a full one about 48 hours, and the Red Cross gives a half-full one about 24, with the door closed. Both agencies suggest coolers with ice if you need them.
So the fridge gets a plan before anyone gets hungry. Decide what comes out, open the door once, close it again. Ready.gov’s rule for afterward is short: “When in doubt, throw it out!” That means any food that has been at 40°F or higher for two hours or more, or that has an unusual odor, color or texture. A thermometer in the fridge turns that from a family debate into a reading.
By bedtime the outage has two new problems: news and charge. The Red Cross asks for communication devices that work without home power, including a crank or battery radio and chargers or batteries for your phones. Ready.gov names a portable charger or power bank, and asks you to find out now whether your home phone works in an outage and how long its battery backup lasts.
The Midland WR120B is a plug-in desk radio that listens to the National Weather Service’s broadcast and sounds for alerts in the county you program it for, for the alert types you choose.
It is Midland’s WR120, sold in a box. Midland’s own advice for home is a plugged-in weather radio with battery backup for overnight alerts, and that is what this one is.
When the wall power goes, three AA cells keep it listening. Midland gives them about two days of standby on basic alkaline cells, or about three on high-quality ones. The cells are not in the box, so buy them the day the radio arrives, and Midland says to replace them once a year so they do not leak. The rest of the time, keep it plugged in: the owner in a 2020 video review says AA cells alone drain quickly.
“For us, we can’t hear the tornado sirens unless our windows are open and it is quiet in the house. We have the Midland WR120 and it alerted us to an incoming tornado last year, allowing us enough time to get to safety.” WR120 owner, r/CBUSWX (comment)
A siren you cannot hear from the bedroom is a warning for somebody else. That is why this radio goes on the nightstand.
It does one job. It has no hand crank, no solar panel and no AM or FM. For an outage that outlasts its AA cells, our NOAA weather radio guide covers the hand-crank Midland ER310, which adds a crank, a small solar panel and AM/FM but cannot be set to your county.
Program the county in daylight with the manual open, and tell the house what the alarm sounds like before it goes off at 2 a.m.
Skip it if you need a radio to take out the door. It is a desk unit, and it stays home.
The Anker A1383 holds 20,000mAh, about 72 Wh by reviewers’ figures.
Plan on two or three full phone charges from it in all, so a house with three phones gets about one full charge each. One owner got a bit over two full charges of a Samsung Galaxy with a 5,000mAh battery.
It is in this kit for one detail: the USB-C cable is built in, so the cable is wherever the bank is. A USB-C port and a USB-A port sit beside it, and all three can charge at once. One owner says their built-in cable went bad after a year of use. The USB-C port still takes an ordinary cable at up to 65W, so keep one plain USB-C cable in the same drawer.
“No idea what I’ll do with this A1383. Maybe save it for power outages or something.” Owner on r/anker, who got it as a recall replacement for another model (comment)
Saving it for power outages is the whole plan of this kit, minus the “or something.”
When the power comes back, Anker gives it about 1.5 hours to refill on a 65W charger, and there is no wall charger in the box.
Skip it if a laptop has to work through the outage: one video reviewer says it takes a MacBook from 50 to 100 percent about once. The emergency power bank guide covers a second, faster bank for that job. If the list includes a CPAP or a fridge, this page cannot help: no source in our research timed either one on this bank.
Full details: Anker 87W Power Bank
By day two the flashlight and the phones are living on the power bank, and refrigerated medicine is running out of time. Ready.gov says that if the power is out for more than a day, any medication that should be refrigerated gets discarded unless its label says otherwise, and to ask a doctor or pharmacist right away for a new supply. For medical devices that need power, it asks for a plan made with your medical provider before the outage. The Red Cross says to evacuate if you have medical devices that need power, and notes that communities often provide warming or cooling centers and power charging stations. If heat or cold is extreme, Ready.gov says to go to a community location with power.
You drink from the first hour, but day three is where the CDC draws its line: the gallon per person per day covers drinking, cooking and brushing teeth, and the floor is three days of it. Ready.gov lists water among the services an outage can disrupt, and water contamination among the things it can cause.
The sum is people times days times one gallon. Over the two weeks the CDC asks for if you can manage them, a family of four needs 56.
The Scepter Military Style Water Container 05177, 5 gal (20 L), green, 4-pack is four tall cans with a wide fill cap and a small pour cap, 20 gallons in all.
At the CDC’s gallon a day, that is about five days for a family of four: three cans cover the three days, and the fourth is a start on the two weeks. Scepter lists “Food Grade Material” and “BPA Free” for this can.
“I have the scepter MWC and they are bomb proof. I filled them, laid on side and jumped on them….and I’m not a light person…I’m fluffy.” r/preppers owner (comment)
Not every can seals, though. One r/prepping buyer returned 4 of 5 Scepter military cans for leaks (size not stated), so check each cap with the can on its side before it goes into storage. One video reviewer weighed a full can of the same design at 45 lb 8 oz, and there is no spigot in the box, so the pouring happens through the small cap.
Our emergency drinking water guide covers cleaning a container before the first fill, and what to do when the stored water runs out.
Skip it if nobody at home can lift about 45 pounds, or the water has to stack: these cans stand upright and do not. The emergency water storage containers guide covers containers that stack.
Full details: Scepter Military Water Container
How long each piece of the kit lasts, and how long the fridge and cold medicine have, by the maker or the agency behind each number.
| How long it lasts | Who says so | |
|---|---|---|
| Refrigerator, door shut | About 4 hours of cold food | Ready.gov, Red Cross |
| Freezer, door shut | About 48 hours full, about 24 half full | Red Cross (Ready.gov gives 48 for a full one) |
| Medicine that has to stay cold | Discard after more than a day without power, unless the label says otherwise | Ready.gov |
| Spot 400 on alkaline AAAs | Medium 5 hours, Low 200 hours, each until the beam is down to a tenth | Black Diamond |
| E35R on its own battery | Medium 9 h 20 min (8 h 43 min in 1Lumen's run), Eco 69 hours | Fenix, 1Lumen |
| WR120B on three AA cells | About 2 days of standby on basic alkaline, about 3 on high-quality cells | Midland |
| A1383 power bank | Two or three full phone charges in all | A reviewer's measurement and an owner's count |
| Scepter four-pack | 20 gallons: about five days for four people | Our math on the CDC's gallon a day |
Three days keeps turning up in that middle column: the CDC’s floor for water, just under three days of Eco on the flashlight if it never went off, two to three days on the radio’s AA cells. So plan the first three days in full. Past that, the spare AAAs and the fourth can keep going; the bank and the flashlight need the wall again, and the radio needs the wall or fresh AA cells. For an outage measured in weeks, a larger battery class holds more, and this page does not cover one.
Nothing on this page burns fuel. Some outage gear does, and it never comes inside. Ready.gov says generators, camp stoves and charcoal grills should always be used outdoors and at least 20 feet away from windows. It also says never to use a gas stovetop or oven to heat your home. The detectors on the checklist are there because carbon monoxide, in Ready.gov’s words, “is a colorless, odorless gas that can kill you, your family and pets.”
A power outage kit is not one box. Each piece belongs where its job starts, and each one has a date. Most of this kit does not fail in the storm. It fails in the drawer, on a date nobody wrote down.
Next January the lights go out at 7:40 again. Somebody flips the switch twice, because no kit fixes that. Then the headlamp comes out of its drawer, the radio by the bed is already listening, the bank in the hall drawer is at 60 percent, and the fridge door stays shut.
The other version of that evening has a candle on the counter, a phone at 9 percent and the fridge standing open while everyone argues about dinner.
Black Diamond Spot 400
Check price on AmazonA light for every person in the house, with spare batteries; a radio that works without home power; a charged power bank for the phones; at least 1 gallon of water per person per day for 3 days; and nonperishable food. That list comes from Ready.gov, the Red Cross and the CDC. Add a fridge thermometer, a paper copy of your contact list and carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup on every level.
Three days at the least. That is the CDC's floor for water, and the CDC asks for a 2-week supply if you can store it; the Red Cross asks for two weeks of food and water. By their makers' figures, two pieces on this page run short near day three: the flashlight's Eco mode and the radio's AA cells. Plan day four before you need it.
The Red Cross says to use flashlights, not candles. A headlamp on AAA batteries, like the Spot 400 on this page, needs no flame and no charger.
About four hours of cold food in a refrigerator that stays shut, Ready.gov and the Red Cross say. A full freezer holds its temperature for about 48 hours, or about 24 if it is half full. Throw away food that has been at 40°F or higher for two hours or more, or that has an unusual odor, color or texture.
Charge a power bank before you need it. The Anker A1383 on this page gives about two or three full phone charges in all, so three phones get about one each. Anker's safety guide says to store a bank at about 60 percent and recharge it every three months. The Red Cross notes that communities often provide power charging stations.
The Red Cross asks for communication devices that work without home power, including a crank or battery radio, and Ready.gov says an outage can disrupt communications. The WR120B on this page sounds for alerts in your county and keeps listening on three AA cells when the wall power goes, for about two to three days by Midland's figures.
Where each job starts. The headlamp in one spot everybody knows, with spare AAAs beside it; the flashlight locked and out of children's reach; the radio by the bed, plugged in; the power bank indoors and out of a parked car; the water somewhere cool, between 50 and 70°F and away from gasoline. Tape the list to the fridge door.
We cannot tell you: no source in our research timed a CPAP or a fridge on the A1383, so this page gives no hours. For medical devices that need power, Ready.gov asks for a plan made with your medical provider, and the Red Cross says to evacuate if you have medical devices that need power.
No. Ready.gov says generators, camp stoves and charcoal grills belong outdoors, at least 20 feet from windows, and that a gas stovetop or oven should never heat the home. Put carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup on every level.
Sources checked October 22, 2026. Every product fact on this page comes from the documents below. We have not handled or tested these products ourselves.
Flashlights for every household member, a portable charger or power bank, the home phone, medical devices and refrigerated medicine, carbon monoxide detectors, generators and grills outdoors, fridge and freezer hours, food at 40°F, medicine after a day, ATMs and banks. Last updated June 4, 2026.
Flashlights, not candles; a crank or battery radio and phone chargers; two weeks of food and water; fridge and freezer hours with the door closed; a paper contact list; a half-full gas tank; tripped breakers; charging stations; evacuating with medical devices that need power.
1 gallon per person per day for at least 3 days, a 2-week supply if possible, replacing stored water every 6 months, 50 to 70°F, away from sunlight, gasoline and pesticides.
Output, battery options and what comes in the box. Plain text, no link.
Runtime table on AAA batteries, the ANSI FL-1 definition, storage with the batteries out, a second light and spare batteries. Plain text, no link.
One unit drained fresh AAAs while off and locked; the owner later reported the replacement did not (follow-up: https://reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/1c5szj4/black_diamond_spot_400_headlamp_parasitic_battery/lt0t7gt/).
Likes the three lights and the two battery options; dislikes the color of the flood beam.
Peak output, Eco and Medium runtimes, unlocking in Eco, the included battery, charging time, a recharge every four months in storage, the hot shell and keeping the light out of the reach of children. Plain text, no link.
Measured runtime on Medium.
A reply about keeping it in a car glovebox (https://reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/1qvfc3q/new_one_to_collection_fenix_e35r/o3h9ozo/).
Only some USB adapters charged it.
The page labelled Model WR120B: S.A.M.E. programming for your county, a choice of alert types, wall power, three AA cells as backup (not included). Plain text, no link.
The WR120B as the boxed version of the WR120. Plain text, no link.
How long the WR120 runs on AA cells alone; which ER portable radios lack S.A.M.E. county filtering. Plain text, no link.
Replacing the AA backup cells once a year. Plain text, no link.
A plugged-in weather radio with battery backup for overnight alerts. Plain text, no link.
What a weather radio receives, and S.A.M.E. receivers that respond only to the areas you select.
No hand crank, solar panel or AM/FM; run it plugged in because AA cells alone drain quickly.
A tornado warning in time, with the windows closed.
Hand crank, solar panel and AM/FM radio. Plain text, no link.
Capacity, the built-in cable and ports, output, recharge time, what is in the box. Plain text, no link.
Storage at about 60 percent, a recharge every three months, 32 to 95°F, no parked car. Plain text, no link.
One Pixel 7a charge used about 30 percent of the bank.
Measured 61.6 to 65.4 Wh coming out.
About 72Wh.
Tops a MacBook up from 50 to 100 percent about once.
A bit over two charges of a 5,000mAh phone.
A built-in cable that went bad after a year.
Got an A1383 in place of a recalled model and thought of saving it for power outages.
Food Grade Material and BPA Free; 5 US gallons per can; fill and pour caps. Plain text, no link.
Filled, laid on their side and jumped on.
One buyer returned 4 of 5 Scepter military cans for leaks.
A full can of the same design weighed 45 lb 8 oz.
