Solar Power Won't Save You, but It Will Buy You Some Time

So, we’re prepping for collapse—sooner than expected.

A lot of preppers flock to solar power setups. So did we at first. They’re appealing because they offer a sense of control and comfort. Maybe things will be okay if you can still turn on our microwaves, even if the stores are empty. Maybe things won’t get too bad if we can still type on our computers, even if there’s no internet to speak of and everyone else is running from giant squids.

As comforting as it might sound to have rooftop solar, I’ve often wondered how much it would really help in the late 2030s, once we’ve surpassed 3C of global warming and the world has slid into constant war. What would you rather have, a bunch of solar panels and dead lithium batteries, or $40,000?

It’s an honest question.

A few weeks ago, I promised to write a series of guides called a Survival Notebook. Nothing fancy. No links. No videos. No external content. Just down and dirty guides. Something you could print as a reference. I’ll be writing them on several topics, from growing food to harvesting water. To start us off, I spent some time digging into the details of solar power and trying to decide how much we can really count on them during a full-scale breakdown of civilization. I also wanted to know more about how they work and how to build one. I’m not talking as a seasoned expert, just someone who wanted to answer basic questions. We’re not trying to become experts. We’re trying to earn a sufficient level of knowledge and skill across a wide variety of subjects, all in a compressed timeframe. We thought we would have a decade to learn all this, but we don’t. We have a few years.

Here’s what I’ve found out: