I have never been a big prepper. Our plans usually involved being able to leave work, get the kids from school or daycare when they were young, and get home. When out in the woods I traveled light - carrying on me a cell phone, folding knife, light, sparker, and a whistle, and in a daypack adding additional first aid, poncho, water bottle (usually filled), compass, GPS, headlamp, batteries, fixed blade knife, Leatherman, paracord, toilet paper, bandanas, ... and probably more. Most of my outdoor time as an adult was as a Boy Scout leader in the "wilderness" of Illinois - a far cry from the wilderness of many other states.

Twice now we've had storms knock out power for 5-7 days - once when we lived in the far northwest Chicago suburbs and again after we retired/moved to northeast Wisconsin.

At our Illinois property the two biggest issues we faced were (1) obtaining sufficient water for our horses - eventually we contacted our local township and they brought water in for our horses, and (2) limited ability to use our toilets because without electricity a septic system lift pump was inoperative - we took a lot of trips to the local McDonalds and used garbage bags in a 5 gallon bucket as a last resort.

At our Wisconsin property we chose to install a natural gas powered whole house generator, so we were able to live relatively unaffected for seven days without power. Our horse barn water and electricity run from the house, so it was also covered by the generator. We turned the generator off at night and when we left the house. It was expensive ($7K) but well worth it as the days rolled on.

Luckily, both of these outages were during the summer. The cold disaster in the southern U.S. states made us think about home heating alternatives in the event that we lost natural gas. If we had electricity, then we'd run several electric space heaters.

If we don't have electricity, then we'd pretty much be out of luck (even our fireplace runs on natural gas and uses an electric fan). We wouldn't be able to leave the horses, so we'd have to stay on property. I'd probably had to drain the water pipes, pour RV antifreeze into the toilets and drains, and bundle up in the house. Getting water for our horses would become our biggest concern, because even the 100 gallon water trough would quickly freeze over in winter without a heater. We'd have to turn to our city or county for help.