When we bought our last house, we bought acreage. We have a private well that I can convert in about a day to a manual pump and I'm currently scrounging around for a possible windmill type pump. We have a fireplace in the main room of the house. We have an extensive library of paperbooks covering a wide range of topics from home first aid to blacksmithing.
I haven't quite gotten us to the point where we can do a test run and shut the electricity off for a month and see how we fare. But we're a damn sight closer than most folks we know.