Dress rehearsal for the apocalypse

I was in the basement of a thrift store trying on a skirt when it happened: The hum of electricity faded to nothing, the faint sound of music upstairs silenced, and the space descended – with no warning – into darkness.

No stranger to occasional power outages, I shuffled around the pitch black space to find where I’d set my bag and phone to turn on the phone flashlight. As I re-dressed myself: no light. As I ascended the stairs: no light. When I asked the owner what was going on, she said it was a general outage, which I took to mean the whole block had gone down.

I started south, toward my next errand, when my partner pinged my phone. “Do you have electricity? My house is out.”

Oh wow, I thought, the power outage is much more extensive than I thought. I turned around and headed toward home and my little dog.

Fifteen minutes later, with no electricity in sight along my route, I concluded it must be the whole city center or, perhaps, the whole city. The fire alarm was beeping (annoyingly) in the building hallway. The emergency lights were on. But otherwise, all was calm at home. The dog happy to see me. Even service on the cell phones still working.

Knowing this might be a larger-scale problem, I took to texting everyone. To friends and colleagues abroad, the message was I’m ok and I have supplies. Don’t worry if my service goes down. To friends in Porto, the message was Are you ok? Please come to my house if you need anything.

I paused to fill up every pitcher and bottle in my house with water in case we lost water (again: I had no idea what the issue was and if any other services were at risk).

I already had canned food. My water was still working (and I had plenty in pitchers and buckets now). But unfortunately it was grocery day, which meant I had almost no fruit, veggies, etc. With no information yet about the cause (other than a claim that it was a cyberattack, which turned out to be false) and assuming the outage could last several days, I headed to the frutaria nearby to stock up – not just for me but because I had already made it clear to my closest friends that my house could be the meeting point in case of emergencies (not just at this level, but even something as small as “a creepy guy is following me and I need to get somewhere safe quickly”). I had to assume that at least a few anxious friends would be showing up on my doorstep.

“What do you want from the frutaria?” I texted my partner, who I assumed either was or would soon be on their way to get their kid from school and didn’t need the stress of trying to also shop for themselves. The answer was bananas and apples, crackers and cookies. The latter perhaps a special treat to make things feel not-anxious for the kid.

At the frutaria, a new process was in place: four people allowed inside at a time, a line outside, and a woman (I think the daughter of our local proprietors) manning the door to let one person enter when one exited. The fruit was mostly outside, so I piled it into my bag as I approached the entrance. Apples for my partner. Pears for me. Red onions, garlic, oranges. Inside: bananas, cookies, some more beans… And then my partner and two friends appeared outside the frutaria. Unbeknownst to me, service had gone down now, and the friends had appeared to check in, seen my partner lingering outside the frutaria, and asked to poke their heads in the door and tell me to get coal. Because they had a coal-fired cook stove for camping but were low on coal.

I waddled out of the frutaria 70 euros lighter and an overflowing bag of produce heavier a few minutes later and ushered everyone into my apartment.

We made our plan: if the power was still out by dinner, they’d come to me, bring all the perishables in their fridge (which wouldn’t last a full night of no power), bring their camping stove, and we’d make a feast.

As they left to check on friends around the city and my partner left to pick up their kid, I settled in to read. More friends stopped by and I invited them to the feast. I chatted with the neighbor, who turned out to have a radio and access to up-to-date information. And I marveled at how much the community around me had everything we needed, really, between my garden and my friend’s stove and my neighbor’s radio and the rich (and random) bounty of perishables in our fridges.

A few hours later, with no power in sight, people started to return. First my partner and their kid, who spread out a picnic blanket on my living room floor and made paper flowers while I cut veggies for two huge salads. Then my friends with the stove, who went immediately to the garden to start the process of stoking the coals. Then the upstairs neighbors, with bags full of frozen veggies and unusual alcohols.

In the end, there was lemon-pepper chicken with a Georgian spice mix, chicken in an Asian marinade, two salads (one with lemon dressing and feta, another with a creamy peanut-butter-soy sauce-sesame oil dressing, pot stickers, rice, fruit, and – my piece de resistance – Champagne.

Real Champagne. Something for a special occasion.

Because this was a party. Because this was a lot of people I loved all in one place. And because when you get a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse, you toast.

As day turned to evening, solar lanterns and candles lit the garden table. People laughed and cuddled, ate and drank. And then the power came back, went out again, and finally came back for good around 8:30 or 9pm. Everyone trickled home, the dress rehearsal for the apocalypse over, the question of how they’d respond in an emergency answered.

Now, I’m thinking about A Paradise Built in Hell, a book about the community support that forms in disasters. How we are told by movies and books and media that people panic, are violent, are unreasonable. But the truth is that actually people come together. They dig a bus out of rubble to save kids (an earthquake story from the book). They donate time for free to get utilities back up and running. They shelter neighbors, feed friends, pool resources.

It’s a thing I don’t resonate with about most apocalypse novels: the way that society breaks apart, isolates. When the truth history teaches us is that disaster breeds community more often than not, and the people most likely to panic are the elites.

When I think about Monday, I also think about my childhood, growing up in hurricane country, where power outages, floods, and days worth of food supplies were normal and even fun. I loved power outages as a kid. There were candles and games and we got to eat the ice cream all at once because it was going to melt. Friends stopped by. Nobody was working.

It was, in short, fun.

So I guess I’ve been doing dress rehearsals for the apocalypse my whole life. And I’ve learned that they are beautiful in their way. That I do not want to panic; I want to feed people. I am not afraid; I am ready to pop that Champagne I have been saving for the special occasion.

In the end, this little dress rehearsal would turn out to be a multi-country outage caused by some sort of weather phenomenon I still do not understand. Spain and Portugal went down. Parts of France. I heard rumors it even hit bits of Belgium. Along the way, there were estimates of 72 hours of outage or even a week. But here in Porto it was just about 9 or 10 hours.

Just a taste. Just a test run.

I wanted to share all this because the world is fragile and full of disasters. And when one comes to you, I hope you will take some peace, some joy, from this story. Make a plan with the people you love. Pool community resources. Take care of each other.

The horrors persist, but so shall we.