It’s midnight and the combination of cold air, a woozy half-tiredness and bleak darkness reminds me that I’m all alone in this. I’m about to tap out.

Last month, the Government published advice encouraging households to “take small, simple steps to stay prepared in an emergency” that could “affect services like power, water, and the internet”. This emergency could be catalysed by events “such as severe weather”, the notice added, yet in the time since, Russian-linked hackers have driven fridge and freezer temperatures soaring across northern Europe. It’s not inconceivable that our own National Grid could be targeted.

People have heeded the Government advice to stockpile three days’ worth of bottled water, non-perishable goods, wind-up radios, fleecy clothing and power banks. And preppers have been giving their own tips and recipes for how to get through a blackout.

But does all the advice work? To test it out, I prepped, then shut off all my power sockets to simulate my own private blackout.

Hour zero

Just before midnight, I got myself into bed with all my pyjamas, a T-shirt, a trusty Patagonia fleece and a woolly hat. Under both a duvet and a blanket, I had a supremely cosy sleep.

Hour eight

Eight hours in, I wake up. My phone, uncharged, has just 60 per cent battery, so I slap a portable solar panel on the windowsill in the hope it’ll magic some oomph out of the gloomy clouds. Normally, a run would warm me up, but without the promise of a hot shower, I daren’t get so sweaty.

Effortfully, I decant some drops from a five litre behemoth bottle of water so I can splash my face – festival style – and brush my teeth. Wet wipes attend to the unspeakables. 

What happens to the toilet? Claude tells me that, in the event of a power outage, it’ll take a while for pressure to dip, so right now, I can still flush.

I keep my toasty, ever so slightly clammy, overnight clothes on, haul on a jacket, then carry my bike downstairs for a spin round central London. This’ll get my circulation going! I navigate traffic that I truly believe a blackout might actually improve, and am shocked at how normally everyone is behaving. They’re all on their phones (mine’s down to 42 per cent battery already), jumping on e-bikes and blowing on cups of freshly-brewed coffees.

After an hour or so wandering about, I head back to mine, which, now my circulation’s up and I’m indoors, feels warm. Ugg boots help, and I pad into the kitchen for breakfast. The fridge is out of bounds and the overnight oats – with dates in – are OK, but tepid. I’m sure this qualifies as gruel now.

Had I decided to plunge my freezer into blackout, it’d be thawing out right now, and I’d have needed some heavy duty bins to dispose of all the associated crud. But, of course, I’m not wasting good fish fingers for my art(icle).

I try to get some work done, but with no wifi, I’m struggling, so I get back into bed and watch a Channel 4 film I’ve downloaded onto my laptop. I chose in an attempt to pick up some extra tips, which came out in 2013 and uses real and filmed footage to show how a Russian cyberattack on the National Grid could impact the UK over just one week. Broadly, it’s a grim tale of how close we all are to anarchy, but more specifically, it features a prepper who has developed a poo bag-based toilet system. While the current Government advises on items needed to supply our bodies with warmth and fuel, it neglects to mention the waste that will soon leave our bodies. I live alone, so I can suffer the indignity of just… not flushing for a bit. But apparently any serious prepper should order in some Labrador-appropriate poo bags for personal use.

Soon, it’s lunchtime, and I can barely be bothered to use my dwindling energy to cook. But I give it a go, opening up the kitchen window and put camping stove near – crucial if you’re using one indoors, something the Government and various fire brigades recommend the public does not do. I also deploy a carbon monoxide detector to ensure I don’t poison myself, which plenty of patients in ’s hospital scenes have done. All this for some super noodles with a bit of peanut butter.

I’m not wasting my water on washing anything up, so wet wipes will have to do. I then head back to bed. My core is warm, but my nose soon aches with cold. And my smartwatch says my heart rate is under 60. Is that normal? I can’t Google it, or text my doctor friend. I nap, though.

I emerge in the early evening twilight, and the temperature is beginning its decline to 7°C. To warm up, and make use of this lonely time, I start sweeping the flat, moving stuff about, doing whatever chores I can by head torch light. I listen to BBC Radio 4 on the wind-up radio, because this station is, the Government advises, “designated for official emergency guidance and public safety advice”. This wind-up radio is the best bit of kit I’ve used today – it doubles up as a torch a power bank. Does it actually charge my phone when I plug it in? Er, no. But neither did that solar panel I had laid out all day.

As night falls, I cook some butter beans, pesto and peas, as per a food editor’s stockpiling recipe I found in The i Paper recently. It’s a well-intentioned dish, but I’m making it from memory – my phone’s entirely dead – and it feels like I’d rather just accept I’m having a crappy dinner than make such a hubristic attempt at something decent. Oily pesto is not exactly easy to clean up, either, and I start to wonder whether I should have just stocked up on dehydrated meals from the camping shop.

I’m also wondering if smaller bottles would’ve helped me drink or if something psychological is going on – I’ve barely drunk at all, such is my desire to conserve necessities.

I sneak back into bed, wrapping the sleeping bag over the blanket over the duvet over me, and begin watching a download of , the 1984 nuclear war film. I don’t think I’d recommend this bleak tragedy at any time, let alone when I can see my breath turning to mist before me. I clutch onto the last warmth of my laptop before it dies, my fingers too cold for me to pick up my guitar. And I’m spiralling far too much to read, as I wonder what would happen should an actual blackout occur. 

The last time I had to put my life on hold was during the pandemic. We all lost so much in those two years, but at least we were all in it together. In , our individualist prepper has thought of every practicality required to look after himself and his family, but makes no effort to consider that, like it or not, he is part of society. His descent from pompous YouTuber to vicious beast in fisticuffs with an injured man over some tins of dog food, proves the film’s most important lesson: it’s not just heat and water that keeps us going, but other people. 

And during my self-imposed blackout, I realise that although I’m really cold, my chest is getting heavy and my heart rate’s still so low, at least if the worst were to happen, my loved ones would be looking out for me. Just like I’d be looking out for them. 

Twenty four hours in and I cave. (I was initially attempting 48 hours.) I may not be able to summon a friend to my side within minutes, but at least I can whack the heating up, command Alexa to turn the lights on and marvel, flabbergasted, at how the life-enabling necessities of water and power, delivered to me in ways I can’t even explain, only cost me about £100 per month.

I plug in my phone while I make a Lemsip. I check my WhatsApps. I arrange to meet up with some friends at the weekend. I catch up on memes and gossip. It’s mostly dross, but it’s my dross. And nothing fuels me like it.

The takeaways

In hindsight, as well as the bin bags and poo bags, I should’ve got myself a fleecy hat, and those puffer slippers that I see outdoorsy YouTube men wearing in -50°C Alaska. I should’ve actually located my thermals beforehand, rather than just assuming they’d be where I last put them. (They inhabit such a hybrid status that I can never decide whether they go with my underwear draw or with my other clothes – so they just exist in limbo now.)

Food wise, I never want to have to clear a pot out with wet wipes  again. Dehydrated foods would be far easier to prepare, and boiling tins of food in water, in a pan, could be a far more effective way of cooking. An array of flapjacks would’ve been far more fun than that gruel.

As for entertainment, I wish I’d engaged with stories about life’s brilliance, rather than hoping to pick up tips through dystopic fiction. And I’m kicking myself for not just finding somewhere up high to hang my little lantern up, so the entire room could’ve been lit nicely.

The main thing that would’ve made this all a lot easier, though, is some comradery. A Dutch friend tells me that over there, the government tells people to stock up on walkie-talkies. And I wonder, why isn’t that sort of connectivity on our Government’s Be Ready list? Surely, the best way to prepare for anything is to know that, when it all falls down, we’ve got each other?