While people did survive without electrical gizmos for eons, any reasonable disaster kit in the modern era includes at minimum a flashlight and a radio. Yeah, there are those hand cranked radios, but they have rechargeable batteries inside, which go bad just like non-rechargeables. They are also pretty silly, like wearing a wind-up wristwatch to avoid possible battery failure from an electronic watch. So you're back to the battery issue and you might as well find the best way to deal with it, instead of trying to ignore it.