A while ago, we had a big fire in a scrap yard, right under the main pylon that feeds the town. When the cables melted, it took about 12hours before the electricity boads to repair them. Probably small beer for those who live in remote areas, or are being pounded by the current srrom.
But having some basic preps in place, we had a comfortable time of it.
It was winter time, so by the time I got back from work, it was dark. The paraffin pressure lamp came out first, as that is a good reliable unit.
Not very bushcrafty, but the next thing was to get the little cheepo 2stroke generator out, and the suicide lead (a length of cable with a 13A plug on both ends). Knock the main isolators off the consumer unit and back power the house through a socket in the shed.
So where as most houses had the odd flash of torch light and a candle in the window, we were fully powered up. We could also run the central heating, so kids baths could be done and the house warmed through. (Supprisingly we still had gas, as I'd have expected the distribution to have been down, given the wide area of the outage. Otherwise more camp kit would have come out.)
Those simple steps and we pretty much didn't notice any difference from a typical evening.
Later on, I shut the generator down, and we dropped back to camp lighting. As my daughtrer was about 5yo at the time, it was all just fun. The next time she came to see me, she asked if we could have another power cut.
But being in a large town, outages are so rare that people don't have any backup options. I suspect that others around me had a less pleasent time of it.