This is mainly aimed at apartment dwellers, as I know we have some from NYC and the Chicago area here- what is your plan to stay warm past two or three days in winter if both the gas and electricity fail? I can't imagine that you'd have real fireplaces in an apartment, for the insurance reasons if nothing else.

well i'm from holland, which is warmer in the winter. I have never turned on the heat in my room, people around me seems to loose enough heat to warm mine space. I just put on warmer clothing, when it isn't sufficient.

Personally i don't think heating you room is efficient nor safe. I would rather use the fuel of other form of power to boil water for a cup of tea. And let the stove cool in the room, to raise the temperature.

I'm from NYC, but not in an apartment - where I live in the city is more like suburbia. I've got a couple of cords of firewood for my fireplace.... I figure that should cover it

My plan is to use poly pro long johns, and blankets, sleeping bags, etc.
I also have enough military issue casualty blankets where I might staple them to a wall with the shiny side facing toward the room. Maybe it would act as a heat reflector.

That's my plan.
Fielddoc

We live in an apartment-sized condo outfitted with a wood-burning fireplace, for which we are pretty grateful. We'll also bundle up with layers of clothing, and enjoy plenty of hot drinks. I think that's about all we can do.

I don't have to worry about it so much here as the temp stays nice enough year round that extra clothing and/or blankets would work for the few months of the year that it gets 'cold' (avg winter high is 69.9, avg winter low is 43.3) with one or two nights a year below 32-34.. but the house I grew up in only had an old natural gas wall heater in the living room for heat in the winter (avg winter high of 65.8, avg winter low 28.6), which was on the far side of the house from my room, and I kept my door closed which further lowered the almost ineffective use of the wall heater that was just about as far away from me as it could be and still be in the same house.

Luckily I had east and south faceing windows so the sun shone in at least one of my windows for most of the day. I found that if I taped flat sheets of clear plastic over my windows that my room would stay much warmer (relatively speaking) day and night. Of corse I still used a wool blanket, light down comforter, and an old square cut synthetic filled 0 degree sleeping bag on my bed at night when it got real cold.

I still keep some of the large drop cloth sheeting on a roll in storage from back then.. if I needed to do it now for an emergency I'd hang several 'walls' of plastic from the roof a foot or so apart and at least one plastic 'roof' in the smallest chamber to reduce the size of the area I had to heat... though pitching the small tent inside would do the same thing and be less work..

PS the avgs are over the last 100 years and seem a bit high to me.

I lived in Manhattan in a bunch of different apartments and frankly, I don't know if I could have heated any of them if the "heat" had been out for an extended period. Something not too uncommon but generally an isolated problem, is having a boiler go out for a while in an apartment building. The electricity and gas will still be on and people will resort to all kinds of scary means to keep warm, like running the oven with the door open or using the burners for heat. Some try heating pots of water and then putting them in other rooms to try and warm them up. Some people develop elaborate systems of opening and closing doors in sequence to move heated air to different rooms in the apartment. Of course, hot plates and other electrical items often get overused and overloaded, too.

Many of these apartments are old, not insulated, the doors and windows are drafty, very little sunlight enters, no fireplace--it's not a great situation to be in. Without putting yourself and your neighbors in danger by actually burning something inside your apartment, trying to seal off a room and hunkering down with lots of blankets and such is probably the best you can do when all the utilities are out. Candles might warm your hands, but that's about it.

Within the last two weeks, I read something that said a single candle puts out about the same BTU as an inactive adult. I don't remember if it was sleeping or awake and just laying there.

It said that in an emergency, if you were alone or with an insuficient amount of people, in a small enough space where body heat could make a significant difference, you could use a candle or two to heat the area, providing they were used in a safe manner (such as placeing the candle inside a cleaned and vented soda can) and with adequate ventilation.

Sounds like a line from the Matrix movie. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Ok, not the same source I read it from but this site has these numbers:
A human body produces at least 240 BTU/hour
Basal metabolism = 1 kcal/min * 60 min/hr = 60kcal/hour * 4 BTU/kcal = 240 BTU/hr
A single candle flame produces 850 BTU/hour

So a single candle is more like ~3.5 bodies..

The site also has what looks like formulas that you might be able to use to figure out the inside temp vs outside temp with the BTUs you calculate are heating the area vs the BTUs you calculate you loose.. but I only scaned the whole thing quickly after I found the information so I'm not even sure what its talking about heating in this site...