Vehicle and mobility depth

The parent page's fuel discipline line is right and incomplete, because it does not say how much you may lawfully hold, and it assumes a vehicle that burns something.

How much petrol you may keep

Rotating it so it is never old

Petrol has a usable life of roughly six months, extended somewhat by stabiliser. Old petrol does not simply lose power; it gums up carburettors and injectors, and a generator or a mower that will not start on stale fuel is a common and avoidable annoyance.

The rotation that works needs no discipline at all: keep two cans, and every time the car needs fuel, pour the older can into the tank and refill it at the pump. The stock is never older than the interval between fills, and you never make a special trip.

Do the same with the small engine fuel. Anything with a two-stroke mix goes off faster still, so mix small quantities and label them with the date.

And keep the tank above half as standing policy, exactly as the tripwires page says. It is free, it is permanent, and a half tank is a couple of hundred miles of options. In any fuel disruption, the queue forms on the day the news breaks, and the household that never goes below half never joins it.

The electric car changes both halves

The parent page has no coverage of this and roughly a fifth of new British cars are now electric, so it will apply to more households every year.

The bad half. An electric car cannot be refuelled from a can. There is no equivalent of the jerry can, no siphon, and no borrowing a litre from a neighbour's mower. In a power failure, public chargers are down too, and the car's range is whatever is in it when the power went. So for an EV household, the standing policy is the charge level, not the tank: keep it above half, and charge it as soon as a storm is forecast rather than when it gets low.

The good half, which is genuinely significant. A car battery holds several tens of kilowatt hours. That is enormously more than any household battery in the energy chapter, which talks in terms of a 100 amp hour unit, roughly one kilowatt hour.

Many models support vehicle-to-load, giving mains sockets from the car, and some support vehicle-to-home with the right equipment. Where that exists, the car is the household's largest energy asset by a wide margin: days of lighting, phone charging, the fridge and the router, from a thing already parked outside.

So find out three things about your own car, now:

1. Does it do vehicle-to-load, and what adapter does it need? Buy the adapter before you need it.
2. What does the twelve volt battery do in a power cut? Some cars will not open, unlock or move with a flat twelve volt battery even when the main pack is full.
3. Can you open the boot and the charge flap manually? Find the mechanical release and try it once.

A hybrid sits in between, and is often the best of both for this purpose: it can be fuelled from a can and many can act as a generator.

The five jobs to be able to do

The parent page lists them and they are the right five. Practise them in daylight, in your own driveway, before you need them at night in the rain.

1. Change a wheel. Find out whether you even have a spare, because many cars now carry only a sealant kit, and a sealant kit does nothing for a sidewall tear.
2. Jump start, and own a lithium jump pack, which costs little, needs no second car and works in a lay-by at 2am.
3. Plug a tyre, which is a ten pound kit and a genuinely useful skill.
4. Check and top up fluids: oil, coolant, screenwash. Know where the dipstick is on your own engine.
5. Use a tow strap, and know where the towing eye lives, because on most modern cars it screws into a hidden point and lives in the boot with the tools.

And keep the winter kit in the boot from October: blanket, water, snacks, torch, high-vis, shovel, boots, gloves, phone battery. Being stuck for six hours in a closed road is a British scenario that happens every couple of winters.

Why the bicycle is the sleeper

The parent page calls it a strategic asset and understates it.

A bicycle moves a person plus 30 kg indefinitely on no fuel, over ground a car cannot use, past a queue a car cannot pass, and it needs no licence, no charge point and no fuel discipline. In flooding, snow and traffic collapse, it is often the only thing still moving.

• One per adult if possible, and one that fits and is comfortable, not a bargain that hurts to ride.
• Panniers or a trailer. A rucksack on a bike is miserable; a trailer carries a water container, a child or a week of shopping.
• Four spare tubes, patches, a pump, chain oil, cargo straps, exactly as the parent says, plus a multitool and knowing how to use it.
• Ride it now. A bike that has not been ridden in three years has flat tyres, a rusted chain and seized cables, and its owner is unfit. All three are fixed by using it occasionally.
• Lights and a lock, because it still has to survive being left outside a shop in ordinary times.

And a wheelbarrow or a folding sack truck deserves a mention beside it. Most of what a household actually needs to move in an emergency is water, and water is heavy, and carrying it by hand is how people hurt their backs on day two.