HEAT

That’s hard!

Other than the usual, dress in layers ect..I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Unless you can find some sort of solar heating alternative. It’s pretty hard in an apartment.

Yuck...apartment prepping, the very reason I bought a house in the country.
Your first source of heat would be passive solar...if you have south facing windows, keep the blinds open during sunny hours and closed for non sunny hours.
They do have indoor safe propane heaters, but they make me quite nervous as well. Crack a window just a little when in use and invest in a CO alarm. (battery powered of course)
Propane & kerosene heaters are about your only option, just remember to get some fresh air in when in use.

The carbon monoxide alarm is an excellent idea and should give you plenty of warning in case there's issues. Another thing you can do to keep warm is to not try and heat the entire house. Choose one room with the best layout for this, and a window that can be cracked for ventilation, and make sure you have the means to insulate it a bit. Everybody moves into the room for the duration of the emergency, keep the door closed, and if possible drape the walls in cloth or something similar to help keep in heat. My bedroom has a perfect set up for me, and if necessary, I have plans to move all my bookshelves to the outside wall (six inches of paper makes excellent insulation 🙂 ) and there's enough on them they're pretty much floor to ceiling and wall to wall.

Not to mention moving a metric tonne of books should keep me nice and warm for the beginning of the emergency. I can tack extra blankets and such over the walls and doors, and the window is still acessible to open so I can use my heaters sparingly when necessary. The final step is curl up with one of those many books I have on the wall, slide into a sleeping bag and have my cat/foot warmer in there too... and use a candle for a reading light, which incidentally will also help with the room temperature.

With the blankets tacked over the door, leaving the room wont sacrifice all your heat so long as you're prompt about closing things back up.

I also live in an apartment condo, and have been wondering, too, about staying warm in the winter if the shtf. Granted, this is Victoria, BC we're talking here, so any cold spell is generally short lived. (well, assuming it's not a Nuclear Winter 😯 ) My biggest worry would be frozen pipes. But, ignoring that for the moment, there are a couple of things I might try, like using my dining table as a tent frame, make myself a little sleeping fort with a quilt over top. It would make eating my oatmeal easier, reading myself to sleep at 6:30 pm, and the cat would be pleased. I have several all-wool blankets. (note to self: get rid of crap sleeping bags, and buy a good quality one)

I had an idea for generating radiant heat using tea-lights in a fondue pot holder with a metal cookie sheet on top. Sounds like I need to experiment with that, see how much heat I'd get.

I was just reading the "What did you prep this week?" thread and Calora mentioned that she bought some oil lamps at
a flea market, and that it is surprising how much heat they throw off.

Heat is a tough one...

As a large back up generator is not in my budget I too have had to look at more cost effective alternatives.

I recently invested in a new Bar-B-Cue and a Volcano Cook Stove for this very purpose, but due to the high Carbon Monoxide Risk these will likely only be used for cooking in an open well ventilated area.

I also have a number of large candles put aside for the sole purpose of generating heat, it is surprizing how much heat a candle can provide for a small room.

I'm also looking at Propane Heaters that are made for indoor use.

Although I do have CO Detectors they are all currently Electic, Battery Powered ones are on my list

Don't forget heavy plastic and good old duct tape! :))
I lived in rural Manitoba for several years and those 2 things became my best friend. We had more then a few outages where we were located. There is the thin plastic for windows as well where you hold your heat dryer over it to shrink it and give it a tight seal, but I also find it too flimsy, it seems to tear if you even look at it!

One year we couldn't get the heat shrink kind however and used good old duct tape and heavier grade clear plastic... while it was a 2 man job to get it up, it really did work well! It will not solve all the warmth issues but would be a good start to blocking out the drafts.

Don't forget heavy plastic and good old duct tape! :))
I lived in rural Manitoba for several years and those 2 things became my best friend. We had more then a few outages where we were located. There is the thin plastic for windows as well where you hold your heat dryer over it to shrink it and give it a tight seal, but I also find it too flimsy, it seems to tear if you even look at it!

One year we couldn't get the heat shrink kind however and used good old duct tape and heavier grade clear plastic... while it was a 2 man job to get it up, it really did work well! It will not solve all the warmth issues but would be a good start to blocking out the drafts.

With Fall Weather finally here, most of my Non-essentials windows are now all sealed using the the Shrinking Plastic used on windows that you mention (hair dryers have multiple purposes 🙂 )

I have also finally found some battery powered CO Detectors, so should the power grid go down and I lose my furnace my camping stove might be safe to use for short periods inside as long as I limit it to rooms with windows that can still be opened and keep working CO detectors close by 🙂

I'm not ready for an extended winter power outage yet, but I'm getting closer 🙂

Propane heaters made for safe indoor use are still on my list.

This post has had me pondering the heat and inclement weather issue living in an earthquake zone... the windows would be gone in a heartbeat... so heavy plastic and a little lumber to limp by with are currently being added to our inventory wish list till we figure out a better solution.

Paintergirl, we lost a window pane in a storm last year. All I had to cover it with was cardboard and duct tape. When we move to our longterm home, I'm planning to have plywood cut to cover every window as a "just-in-case". We lost a ton of heat out of that one little window pane, let me tell you!

We do not have a fireplace,wood or gas, and if the power goes off will be without heat other than what is generated by our bodies, candles and any solar heating through the windows.

But, if you have ever camped you already have some ideas about how to stay warm in the winter. This article discusses a lot of the ways people can keep warm that some of us may have forgotten http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/01/how_not_to_freeze_living_witho.php

A timely reminder - many people will be without electricty for several days due to this storm. http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2011/10/30/power-outages-could-last-for-days-after-deadly-snowstorm-hits-northeast/

Yay! Found it again. Came across this article awhile ago, thought it was pretty cool (I mean hot. lol.) But I hadn't saved it, so forgot where I'd seen it. I'm going to try making one.

How to make a candle heater

http://www.tacticalintelligence.net/blog/how-to-make-a-candle-heater.htm

I was just reading the "What did you prep this week?" thread and Calora mentioned that she bought some oil lamps at
a flea market, and that it is surprising how much heat they throw off.

Was just at Canadian Tire on Monday and picked up a couple of $9.99 kerosene lamps (pretty glass ones) that we plan to test out this evening--hoping they provide a good light source and have read that they put out a lot of heat as well as a bonus.

We have a fireplace in a room off our kitchen that we can block off from the rest of the house should we need to use it as our primary heat source, so we are mostly ok in that department but we hope to put in a basement wood stove in the next couple of years as more insurance and also to cut our natural gas bill.