My family doesn’t have a generator or anything but I am glad we have a natural gas cooktop and oven. It’s by no means ideal, but if we lose power we can still cook and heat the main living area of the house. We were without power for 12 days during a huge ice storm that laid an an inch and a half of ice over my area (northwest Arkansas) in January of 2010. The gas stove kept us all warm and fed. Thankfully have never had to do that again! Although, I did enjoy the comraderie and closeness that my family developed through that particular hardship. Without power there was no tv or video games or anything so we had to entertain ourselves by actually interacting with each other. We played a lot of board games, cards, listening to music on battery powered radio, just sitting around talking etc. It’s amazing how struggle can bring people together!