Power backup for medical equipment
If someone in your home depends on an oxygen concentrator, a ventilator or refrigerated medication, a backup battery and a plan agreed with their medical team are the measure that applies. Eight people died in the Iberian blackout and none for lack of food.
- Level
- Personal
- Cost
- Medium cost
- Effort
- Hours
- Evidence
- Observed
What it does not solve
It is not a general measure: it applies only to someone dependent on a device or on cold-chain medication. And it does not cover a weeks-long outage, which is a grid problem rather than a battery problem.
It works if somebody in your house depends on electricity to breathe, to sleep or to keep a medicine cold. The Iberian blackout of 28 April 2025 disconnected 31 GW of load and left Spain and Portugal without electricity for between 12 and 16 hours. Eight people died: carbon monoxide poisoning, a fire started by candles, the failure of an oxygen machine and a mechanical ventilator’s battery running out [1105]2025 Iberian Peninsula blackoutView source ↗.
Read that list again. Nobody died from lack of food or water.
It does not work if nobody in the house depends on a device. It is not a general measure and should not be sold as one.
Evidence. The official US guidance asks for exactly this: talking through with your medical team the plan for devices and medicines that depend on electricity, carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup, generators outdoors only and more than six metres from windows and doors, and never heating with the gas cooker [399]Power OutagesView source ↗. The Iberian case validates that list with real outcomes.
Cost. Medium. A battery sized to the device, genuinely tested, not bought and put away.
What it does NOT solve. An outage lasting weeks, which is a grid problem and not a battery one. Nor anything specific to AI: this works just the same if the blackout was caused by voltage oscillations, which is what the investigation into that case concluded.
Works if…
- Catastrophe through misuse · Works
The cyber branch of this scenario arrives at a home as an extended power cut, which is exactly what this measure covers.
- AI as normal technology · Partial
Blackouts happen for far more boring reasons than an attack, and the measure holds all the same.
Does not work if…
- The intelligence curse · Does not work
- Gradual disempowerment · Does not work
Risks it addresses
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Sources
- [399] Power Outages · FEMA / Ready.gov (DHS) 2026
- [1105] 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout · Wikipedia contributors 2026