The only value I see in tea lights (for emergency or camping purposes) is they are light and easily packed/carried. Otherwise, not enough light and not enough burn time. 'Same with the religious candles in terms of their usefulness. The ones I've seen give off VERY little light, even though the tall glass cylinder does increase the safety factor.

I have 4 oil lamps for stationary light, a couple of battery flashlights for moving around, and a couple of tiny Coleman LED battery-powered lanterns. The LED headlamp is on the list to buy.

I don't even bother buying tea lights anymore, not worth it IMHO. I just use my oil lamps for power outs and at bedtime I just blow them out and go to bed. I'm not afraid of the dark and it's not dark that long. I do keep an LED flashlight by the bed just in case I need to get up for anything. I've never felt the need to stay up to see when the power comes back on. It may be a psychological thing but I know people that can turn off all the lights and sleep like a baby but if the power goes off they can't sleep til it comes back on.

"...I'm not afraid of the dark..."

Me either. But in the winter time (when most power outages seem to occur, at least where I am), it can get dark a long long time before I am ready to hit the sack. Cheap light can be handy in those times...

The last power out we had, we played poker and drank hot tea til we got tired. We stay pretty prepared so power outs don't really bother us.

Power outages don’t bother me at all either. I look at them as an adventure and a reason to pull out some survival gear and play with it.

I know there is something wrong with me. But I would guess many others here do the same thing…

Nothing wrong with that at all. That's why we all prepare in the first place. Power outs just give us a chance to use what we learn.

A power outage is kindasorta an emergency, what we prepare for in the first place. Couple of years ago we were in WA state, people were DIEING, just trying to last thru a lengthy outage...

That's funny! Don't forget to kneel...

I have tons of tealights available in the house... Not overly practical in an emergency situation, but it does provide some light, or at least provide mood lighting in an emergency... LOL!

I do have a good 4D maglight, 2 mini-mags, an oil lamp, 2 coleman tent lights, a battery flourescent light, and 2 Gerber Infinity single AA led lights... (These suckers seem to run forever on a single AA, even ones that I thought were drained...)

The misses has quite a few aromatic candles that we could use in a powerout, and probably would. In addition I have (2) 4 packs of the pink 6 hour emergency candles. A 9volt pals light (little rectangular blocky thing that when "off" still throws a very pale light to indicate where it is so you can fing it when the lights do go out. A wally-world camping battery lantern that runs off c-cells, a d cell mag light, 4 different surefires (good light, crappy run times) an Inova LED light that's bright as all get out and also runs on the lithiums that the surefires do, my gerber infinity, an original cmg infinity with a blue LED and probably a spare flashlight or two that the wifey came with
All in all, unless I'm gonna be weeks without power I'll have light. Living in Florida I'll worry 'bout the ac long before light

-Bill Liptak