I think sometimes of writing a novel about a viral apocalypse, and to that end, I like to read or view materials about surviving without modern infrastructure.
I watched a video today about how not to freeze in your own home if the grid fails. I’ve stressed “in your own home” because, although the presentation referenced several times the fact that you’d be in your own home, it seemed to forget that most of the time. I suspect that’s because the content is AI.
So the presentation starts with the main character sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor in a tent in the living room.
Wait, what?
First, why is he in the living room, which likely has a door to the outside (drafts) and is likely bigger than a bedroom? The only reason I can see is to be by the fireplace, but let’s face it, a modern fireplace is not good at heating the room. Plus, if you let it burn overnight, you have to watch it so it doesn’t burn down the house and to add wood so it doesn’t go out. It’s not practical.
Second, why is the sleeping bag on the floor? If you’ve ever been camping even once, or if you’ve ever even read about camping, you know better than to have your sleeping bag in contact with the ground. Depending on your house, you may have a crawlspace so the floor isn’t really on the ground, but if your house is on a slab, it definitely is.
So why sleep on the floor at all? The presentation suggested using a cot to get you up off the ground, but why not sleep on your bed, with the mattress, box springs, and an airgap between you and the ground? It eventually got around to suggesting that you have a plastic bed skirt to prevent convection under your bed, which did make sense. Given that you probably don’t have a plastic bed skirt, it occurred to me that you could tuck trash bags under the edge of the mattress to get the same effect.
A commenter who’d actually been homeless suggested putting a mylar emergency blanket under you and another on top, trapping as much of your body heat as possible. That makes sense. Strip the bed, put an emergency blanket on top (shiny side up), make the bed, tuck your sleeping bag under the covers, and put an emergency blanket on top of it all (shiny side down). Close the bedroom door, block out any drafts, and you should be in pretty good shape.
If things are really bad, I suppose you could even screw a hook in the ceiling and rig up a tent over the bed to further reduce the amount of air you need to heat with your body heat.
The presentation then went into some detail about proper clothing, particularly that you don’t want cotton next to your skin in cold weather, because it traps moisture against you. I suppose that’s why cotton is good in summer: it traps moisture against you where it can evaporate and cool you.