35,000 Dead in Europe's Heat Waves — EU Cut Staff's AC While Keeping Leaders' Floors Cool

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The Ready Brief #178

Practical preparedness for uncertain times

After a neighborhood ice storm, my wife and I cooked a big pot of chili for about 15 people on our street using our camp stove and stored ingredients. Rice, canned beans, canned tomatoes, onion powder, chili powder. Total cost: about $8. Total effect: a warm meal for people who hadn't eaten hot food in two days. Community cooking during a disruption is one of the highest-impact, lowest-cost preparedness actions you can take.

Here's what I've got this morning:

Cooking for the Block When the Power's Out

We covered cooking without power (Issue 29), pressure cooking (Issue 122), and food from stored pantry (Issue 106). This week scales up: how to feed 10 to 20 people using stored ingredients and basic equipment when the grid is down.

The one-pot meal is the format. Soups, stews, chili, and rice-and-beans dishes scale linearly: double the ingredients, double the servings. They're forgiving (precise measurements aren't critical), they use shelf-stable ingredients, and they're warm and filling, which matters more during a disruption than you might think.

The math for feeding a crowd: one cup of dry rice or pasta serves 2 to 3 people as a side. One can of beans serves 2 to 3. A large pot (12 to 16 quarts) holds enough stew or chili for 12 to 15 servings. Two large pots cover 25 to 30 servings. The ingredients come entirely from standard pantry storage.

The equipment: a camp stove or propane burner handles the heat. A large pot (which you may already own) holds the food. Disposable bowls and spoons eliminate the need for washing dishes with limited water. Paper towels serve as napkins. A folding table creates a serving station.

A community cooking station can be as simple as a camp stove on a folding table in your driveway. Announce it to neighbors: "We're cooking chili at 5 PM. Bring a bowl if you have one." The social effect is as important as the nutritional one. A shared meal during a disruption transforms isolated, anxious households into a functioning community.

The recipes that work best for crowd feeding: chili (beans, tomatoes, spices), rice and beans (rice, beans, bouillon, seasoning), pasta with sauce (pasta, canned tomato sauce, canned meat), and soup (broth or bouillon, canned vegetables, pasta or rice). All use shelf-stable ingredients you likely already have.

Cost per serving is remarkably low. A pot of rice and beans for 15 people costs about $5 in ingredients. Chili for 15 costs about $8. The preparedness investment is minimal. The community impact is significant.

Plan one large-batch recipe using only ingredients currently in your pantry.

Rice and beans, chili, or a big soup. Can you make enough for 10 servings right now? If yes, you're ready to feed your block during a disruption. If not, what's missing? A bag of rice? A few cans of beans?

70% of Americans Don't Feel Ready for a Property Emergency

Seventy percent of Americans say they aren't prepared for a property emergency, according to a First Onsite survey of 1,007 adults conducted in March. The financial fear outranks the physical one: 82 percent worry most about rising insurance costs, ahead of power outages (72 percent) and repair costs (69 percent). Extreme heat topped the list of feared disasters at 70 percent, followed by winter storms (62 percent) and wildfire smoke (60 percent).

The survey doesn't measure neighbors, but the gap it describes, feeling unready while costs climb, is exactly what a shared cooking station or a pantry buffer starts to close. Preparedness that only covers your own household still leaves you exposed if everyone around you is equally unready.

Source: First Onsite

Creek Stewart's survival school regularly feeds groups of 10 to 20 students using camp stoves and stored ingredients. In Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag, he writes about the social function of shared meals during stressful situations: cooking and eating together is a primal bonding activity that reduces anxiety, builds trust, and creates cooperation.

Stewart considers community feeding capability a "force multiplier for morale." The household that can feed the block becomes the social anchor of the neighborhood. The cost is negligible. The effect on community cohesion is enormous.

Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag, about $17 for the paperback.

Europe's Heat Waves Have Killed at Least 35,000 People This Summer

At least 35,000 people have died from heat exposure across Europe this summer, according to a report compiling national health data, and the count is incomplete. It covers roughly half the continent and excludes August entirely. Germany's Robert Koch Institute reported 14,000 heat deaths from April 6 through August 9. Spain's Carlos III Health Institute confirmed 4,947, its worst year on record. France counted 7,300 excess deaths through late July.

Roughly 90 percent of US homes have air conditioning. In Europe it's closer to 20 percent, according to Carbon Brief, mostly the legacy of decades of milder summers rather than a coordinated ban. But real restrictions do exist and stayed on the books after they were adopted: Italy's 2022 energy-saving decree capped air conditioning at 25°C in public buildings and workplaces, and Spain's capped it at 27°C. Whatever combination of climate history and policy explains the gap, the coverage disparity itself is real, and this summer it was lethal.

The disparity showed up inside the EU's own headquarters. During a June heatwave, E&E News reported that the Berlaymont building in Brussels cut air conditioning on floors 1 through 7, where roughly 3,000 staff work, while floors 8 through 13, home to President von der Leyen and her commissioners, stayed cool. Staff called it "feudalism."

Cooling access isn't guaranteed by wealth or good intentions. Know your household's real capacity to stay cool without depending on someone else's infrastructure, or someone else's policy.

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16-Quart Stock Pot on a Camp Chef Explorer

The Camp Chef Explorer (Issue 29) puts out enough BTUs to bring 16 quarts to a boil efficiently on propane. I've used this combination three times for community cooking: twice during outages and once during a neighborhood cookout. Each time, 12 to 15 servings from a single pot.

The stock pot runs $30 to $80 depending on brand, with a basic stainless model landing around $32. The Camp Chef Explorer itself runs about $170 to $175 new. Combined, it's a complete outdoor community kitchen. A second pot doubles capacity. Disposable bowls and spoons (about $5 to $10 for 50 of each) eliminate cleanup.

Budget alternative: Any large pot on any heat source. A 5-gallon bucket stove (a homemade wood-burning stove from a #10 can) costs nothing to build and heats a pot using scrap wood. The cooking happens regardless of the heat source.

Overrated: Individual MREs for community feeding. At $8 to $12 each, feeding 15 people with MREs costs $120 to $180. A pot of chili from stored ingredients feeds 15 people for $8. The math favors bulk cooking overwhelmingly.

Underrated: The morale effect of a hot, shared meal. During the ice storm chili dinner, three neighbors told me it was the moment the outage stopped feeling scary. Not because of the food (though it helped). Because eating together meant they weren't alone. Community cooking is emotional first aid served in a bowl.

Hazardous materials in your home. The chemicals, fuels, and cleaners already under your sink that pose risks during earthquakes, floods, and fires.

PS: That pot of chili cost $8, used ingredients I already had, and fed 15 people. Three of those neighbors have since started building their own pantry buffer. The chili didn't just feed them during the outage. It showed them what preparedness looks like in practice. Sometimes the best recruitment tool is a warm bowl and a spoon.