Luke you should email me sometime, I am always traveling around the East Coast now so meeting up with you would be awesome.

French Press?

Vacuum is so much better, and you can run it on an alcohol burner.

@ Eric Daum:

Well, the only problem is that some oil lamps is the smoke. Granted, you can probably get something that’s designed for indoors use that doesn’t leave smoke stains on the ceiling. :P

Also, nice crank radio!

@ AP²:

Passive radio you say? What is this wizardry you speak of. I have never seen these things in retail, but you would think these sort of devices would be in high demand for camping/outdoorsy type activities.

We have a percolator; they’re still reasonably common around here. That said, if I can’t have expresso, instant coffee is as good as any, in my opinion.

Regarding 7: Portable Radio, I actually still own a fully passive receiver I made as a kid! It’s AM only, of course, and it can only power headphones at a low volume, but it works fine as a source of news. As for entertainment, I’m pretty sure I’d rather read a score than listen to most radio music (ugh).

I have not been in a disaster where I have to live without power for more then a few hours yet. I do camp however. I have a drip Coffee maker that is made by Coleman. It sits right on top of my camp stove and uses it as a heat source. You could go real old school and get a percolator to make coffee with.

Oil Lamps or propane lanterns are probably a better choice for lighting you then battery powered lamps. They seem to last longer.

They make hand crank radios that have cell phone chargers built into them.

http://www.rei.com/product/844635/eton-american-red-cross-solarlink-fr 370-radio