When the power goes, two things are missing at once: information and light. Both are cheap to get, and both are still often bought wrong. A world receiver with twelve bands helps nobody in Germany, and a flashlight with a claimed hundred thousand lumens shines for twenty minutes, after which the evening is dark. This is about what matters in a radio, in lamps and in batteries, and which of it has been sitting in my cupboard for years.
Why radio, and why FM of all things
In a power cut the mobile network fails within a few hours because the backup power at the masts is limited; the post on the first twelve hours without power describes how that plays out. After that, broadcast radio remains. The authorities feed their warnings through the federal modular warning system straight into the broadcasters, and the large FM transmitters keep running on backup power. Radio is therefore not the cosiest source of information but the last one still working.
The band matters. FM is mandatory, because that is where the regional public broadcasters transmit, and they are the ones carrying the situation reports for your district in an emergency. DAB+ is a nice addition but draws considerably more power and is thinly covered in some areas. Medium wave and short wave no longer play a role in Germany; anyone highlighting them in the brochure is selling you a travel radio for other continents.
What a hand-crank radio can really do
A crank radio is at heart an FM radio with three power sources: a built-in battery you charge over USB beforehand, a hand crank and a small solar panel. Usually there is an LED light too. Around the crank there is a lot of advertising and few honest numbers, so here is the order as it looks in practice:
- The battery is the real benefit. Fully charged, the radio runs on it for many hours. Maintenance means plugging the device in every few months. A crank radio that has sat uncharged in a cupboard for three years starts with an empty battery.
- The crank is the reserve. One minute of cranking buys a few minutes of radio at low volume. That is enough for the news on the hour and is exactly what it is for. Charging a phone with the crank works on paper; in reality a quarter of an hour of cranking yields one or two percent, and your arm gives up first.
- The solar panel charges slowly. A day on the windowsill does not replace a socket, but it keeps a half-full battery half full for weeks. Expect no more than that.
- The built-in power bank is small. Five thousand milliamp hours on the box is about half a phone charge in practice. The phone is the job of a real power bank; the radio is only the reserve for the reserve.
What to look for when buying: FM reception, all three power sources, a compartment for ordinary AA cells as a fourth route, a headphone socket (saves power, and at night saves everyone else's nerves) and a housing that survives a fall off the kitchen table. What you do not need: an SOS siren, a compass on the housing, Bluetooth, a strobe mode on the lamp. The devices all cost about the same; the differences lie in reception and build quality, not in the length of the feature list.
Light: the order of priority
The candle sits at the top of most people's list and belongs at the bottom. Not because it gives poor light, but because an open flame in a dark house with stressed adults and children is the most common cause of fire during an outage. Fire brigades warn about it during every larger blackout. The sensible order looks like this:
| Light source | For what | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Headlamp, one per person | Everything that needs both hands free: cooking, the fuse box, the cellar, dressing children. | 100 to 300 lumens is plenty. Runtime on the low setting matters more than brightness, and a red mode spares your eyes at night. |
| LED lantern | Room light for the one room everyone gathers in. | Dimmable, batteries in the same size as the lamps. Being able to hang it is more useful than being able to stand it. |
| Flashlight | The look outside, the walk to the neighbours. | A solid lamp on AA batteries beats any gadget with a proprietary battery that cannot be recharged without power. |
| Candles | Reserve for when everything else is empty. | Only in a closed lantern, never unattended, never in a bedroom. Tea lights are light, not heating. |
A tip from practice: every lamp in the house should use the same battery size. Otherwise on the second evening you have forty AA cells in the cupboard and a lantern that wants AAA.
Batteries: a strategy, not a brand
Batteries are the least spectacular and most important part of this kit. Three rules are enough:
- One size for everything. AA is the most common and you can get it at any petrol station. Check it when buying the radio and the lamps, and avoid devices that want another size.
- Alkaline as a stock, not as a blister pack. Unopened alkaline cells keep for around ten years. A bulk pack of forty is cheaper than forgetting, and it sits in the cupboard instead of inside the remote control. Take the batteries out of devices that do not run for months, otherwise they leak.
- Rechargeables only if you can charge them. Rechargeable cells are better in everyday life but need a charger and therefore power. For the stockpile, alkaline is the right choice; lithium AA is only worth it for devices that live outdoors in winter.
How many? Add up the compartments: radio, two headlamps, lantern, flashlight. That is usually ten to fourteen cells for one set, and you want two to three sets. Forty cells for a household is therefore not an exaggeration.
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What is actually in use here
Nobody buys categories, so here are the devices that have been ready at my place for years. They are deliberately not expensive specialist gear. The gap between "nothing" and "something usable" is large; the gap between "usable" and "perfect" is not.
- A crank radio with solar panel, battery and LED light. Mine is a device with crank, solar panel, built-in battery and lamp. FM reception is good, the crank is loud and slow, the solar panel is small, and the compass on the housing is decoration. What counts: it receives FM without anything else in the house working.
- Batteries as a bulk pack. Mine is a bulk pack of alkaline AA. Check beforehand which size your lamps need; AAA is just as often the answer.
- A large power bank for the phone. Mine is an Anker 325 with 20,000 mAh. It really belongs in the backup-power post, but it is here because it does the job people wrongly expect from the crank radio: charging the phone.
What is missing here and still sits at the top of the table: the headlamp. I do not yet have one I would stand behind, and there are no recommendations here without my own use. Buy a mid-priced one on AA or AAA batteries with a red mode; any more guidance than that would be invented.
What you do not need
Flashlights with lumen figures that are only reached in pulse mode. Tactical lamps with a strike bezel. Ten-in-one tools with built-in radio, compass, fire steel and whistle that do everything a little and nothing properly. A world receiver. And a stock of candles as the main light source. The money is better spent on a second headlamp and a pack of batteries.
And where this lives in Keepilo
Radio, lamps and batteries belong in the inventory like the rice: with quantity, storage place and, for the battery, a reminder date for recharging. The emergency area holds the checklist that gets ticked off when it matters, and the emergency backpack list shows which of it also goes in the rucksack. All of it lives on your device, with no account and no network, so it is there even when only the radio is still running.