Hm. I have a hard time evaluating how handy it is without concrete examples, and I struggle to think of concrete examples of where either would be particularly handy. I guess that’s why I went with “seems”.
Are there concrete examples that come to your mind? For light, the thing is that I am able to get light from the windows and from my phone, so the time that a flashlight would be useful is if I’m not able to get light from either of those sources. Which does seem possible, but doesn’t seem plausible and consequential enough to be “really handy”, although my intuition here isn’t particularly refined.
Light from your windows depends on time of day/year etc. It also assumes you’ll be looking at/for things in places where that light reaches. I doubt this would be likely, and if so you’d have bigger problems, but I’m guessing a cloud of volcanic ash would massively limit the available light?
A little headband type light can last for weeks if you’re careful. A phone will probably die after a day or two. Probably fine, but it limits your options. I don’t really use my phone for anything, so I’m biased.
Growing up we used to often get power cuts (e.g. the neighbors would steal the power lines for copper...). So we’d always have candles and matches in an easily accessible place. In summer this was mainly used for going to the toilet (often can have small or no windows) or into cellars/pantries. In winter this meant that you could still do things after 3pm.
A portable light is very useful if you have to fix things (like sinks, cupboards etc.), as those places tend to not have good lighting.
A knife can be used to cut things, which is the obvious usage, but also can be used as a screwdriver, a level, to open cans, open bottles, pry things out, etc. If I had to choose one thing to have with me in an unspecified emergency, I’d want a sharp knife, as you can use it to bootstrap basic versions of most of the other tools
Good points. Volcanic ash, and I suppose other natural disasters could screw with light. Personally I have a battery pack for my phone so I imagine that’d last for some time—enough time to get me through a large majority of disasters—but it’s possible my phone breaks or doesn’t work, so the redundancy that flashlights provide is good.
Hm. I have a hard time evaluating how handy it is without concrete examples, and I struggle to think of concrete examples of where either would be particularly handy. I guess that’s why I went with “seems”.
Are there concrete examples that come to your mind? For light, the thing is that I am able to get light from the windows and from my phone, so the time that a flashlight would be useful is if I’m not able to get light from either of those sources. Which does seem possible, but doesn’t seem plausible and consequential enough to be “really handy”, although my intuition here isn’t particularly refined.
Light from your windows depends on time of day/year etc. It also assumes you’ll be looking at/for things in places where that light reaches. I doubt this would be likely, and if so you’d have bigger problems, but I’m guessing a cloud of volcanic ash would massively limit the available light?
A little headband type light can last for weeks if you’re careful. A phone will probably die after a day or two. Probably fine, but it limits your options. I don’t really use my phone for anything, so I’m biased.
Growing up we used to often get power cuts (e.g. the neighbors would steal the power lines for copper...). So we’d always have candles and matches in an easily accessible place. In summer this was mainly used for going to the toilet (often can have small or no windows) or into cellars/pantries. In winter this meant that you could still do things after 3pm.
A portable light is very useful if you have to fix things (like sinks, cupboards etc.), as those places tend to not have good lighting.
A knife can be used to cut things, which is the obvious usage, but also can be used as a screwdriver, a level, to open cans, open bottles, pry things out, etc. If I had to choose one thing to have with me in an unspecified emergency, I’d want a sharp knife, as you can use it to bootstrap basic versions of most of the other tools
Good points. Volcanic ash, and I suppose other natural disasters could screw with light. Personally I have a battery pack for my phone so I imagine that’d last for some time—enough time to get me through a large majority of disasters—but it’s possible my phone breaks or doesn’t work, so the redundancy that flashlights provide is good.