> Hint, it is cheaper to make your house warm than it is to keep it cool. The problem is people insist on heating their homes far beyond what is strictly neces

> Hint, it is cheaper to make your house warm than it is to keep it cool. The problem is people insist on heating their homes far beyond what is strictly necessary. They demand a 25 C / 80 F indoor experience in the dead of winter so they can walk around inside in shorts like it were summer. Modern homes require heating to prevent pipes from freezing, but anything much more than that is pure luxury, not a necessity. Turn the heat down to 10 C / 50 F, then buy more blankets for your bed and some long-sleeve shirts for during the day. If you have an infant or elderly person in the house that need more heat, you can heat individual rooms a lot cheaper than an entire house. The power goes out completely, you can even double-bunk to stay warm. That isn't considered comfortable in modern culture, but our not-so-distant ancestors used to think nothing of it. It's certainly better than freezing. If freezing to death is a real concern, then you're in a survival situation and need to stop obsessing with comfort. Elderly people living alone are at the greatest risk, but none of this is an insurmountable problem, particularly if a community has the wherewithal to plan for it before it happens. However to make people change their behavior will probably require rationing. Without rationing, everybody feels entitled to luxury and will greedily take as much as they can, collapsing fragile grids and generally wasting energy on robust grids. If you have common sense and think ahead, cold temperatures are easy to survive. The scenario you should fear is the power going out during high-humidity heat waves. You can wrap yourself with more blankets if you get cold and survive near-arctic conditions, but if you've got a 40C wet bulb heatwave and no power to run AC, you're in seriously dire straights. Stripping nude won't help, evaporation cooling stops working, and staying in the shade won't keep you cool enough to survive. If the power is out, many people won't even have access to cool tap water; their only option would be to jump in rivers and lakes.