When the lights go out...

An interesting point I seem to be encountering more and more often on the Internets - especially the Russian side of it - that people should be preparing for some Huge Crap. Not that many can verbalize the actual source of the threat of it, but the opinion generally seems to be that the cities are doomed, and that the civilization will soon end up without electricity. It can be rubbish, or it can be real. It could be a mass paranoia ring that feeds itself by finding circumstantial evidence and cooking up conspiracy theories. But it could also be real. Question is...

What do you do when the lights go out? Can you survive with no lights? No heating? No gasoline? With hungry crowds marauding the houses in search of food and supplies? An interesting thought indeed.

*shrug* Regardlessly, I treat this more as a paranoia result at this stage. Thanks to the Internet, one can easily find like-minded group of panicking folk, and a panicking crowd tends to make more noise than normal people normally do. However, it doesn't mean that people shouldn't actually try and train up some sort of survivalist skills, for whatever reason, they may one day be needed.