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Ezine Ready

Preparing For The Unknown: Your Emergency Flashlight

There are many reasons for the power to go out. The most often cause in my area is wild fires taking down electrical poles or burning up the electrical stations. You may face tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, or rolling brown outs, what ever the reason, electrical outages are difficult to predict as far as exact times and conditions, but it's easy to understand that at some time and place, you will be without electricity. What else is going on at that point you can't predict, but if you know you can provide your own light in such situations, whatever they may be, you'll rest easier and feel more secure as you go about your life.

Many nocturnal animals are equipped with eyes that function well in low light levels. We humans are not; our eyes need light to see. In our modern times where we live with so many conveniences, lighting up the dark is easy with just the flick of a switch. And that is great, as long as the electricity can get from its source to us, but it's prudent to remember the electrical grid is fragile and can easily be wiped out by so many possibilities. So keep some emergency lighting around; keep your family secure by planning ahead and being prepared.

It's a generally accepted fact that at least some of your emergency lighting will be flashlights. Candles will work if they're all you have, but for ease of use, portability and reliability, flashlights are the way to go.

There are many different flashlights available on the market today. Let's look at what your basic options are.

The most basic and common flashlight option is a traditional flashlight which uses batteries to light an incandescent bulb. This is a very inexpensive and readily available form of flashlight. Batteries, while expensive, are also common and have a pretty good shelf life. Probably the biggest drawback to the traditional flashlight is that the incandescent bulbs use a lot of energy (relatively speaking) and tend to burn out rather quickly. So, you'll need a good supply of batteries and bulbs if you're relying on a traditional, incandescent flashlight.

If you want to get away from batteries, you can look to kinetically powered flashlights to fill your emergency power needs. These lights generally work by the user shaking, cranking, or squeezing to produce power in the unit. Obviously, not depending on batteries is the best feature of these lights. Do note that their light is not as strong as a battery powered flashlight nor will they light for very long before needing to be powered up again. But not needing batteries is a big plus, and you should also note that the quality of these lights goes up with price. Look for a more expensive model from a reliable brand for a truly better battery-free flashlight.

A true improvement on the traditional battery powered flashlight is the LED bulb. These bulbs address most of the problems associated with incandescent bulbs: they use less energy (that means fewer batteries), last longer (literally thousands of hours), and are quite shock resistant (no need for replacement bulbs). Light and beam quality is not quite a good with LED as with an incandescent bulb, but technology is improving all the time, and, as with the manual powered flashlights, buying a higher quality (yes, that means more expensive) flashlight will yield a higher quality light.

So, for your emergency flashlight needs, I recommend a combination of LED battery powered lights and a manual powered light or two. Look for quality lights that will pay for themselves in the long run since you won't have to replace them nearly as often. Keep a flashlight in your car, in your emergency kit, and in your home so that you'll be ready the next time the lights go out.

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Emily Sandberg is passionate about emergency preparedness. You can learn more about the best shake flashlight from Emergency Flashlight Now.

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