Government advice to keep in some supplies and order of importance

It's pretty common where we live in Northern Scotland, we don't call it prepping just Winter ready!
Longest we have been without power is 8 days (it's why we have a wood burner and double stacked logs)

We have solar chargeable power banks, keep 20 litres of water (the 5 litre bottles don't take up too much space). Food wise anything we can cook on the wood burner quickly but also have a single camping gas ring. Tinned meals, packets of cooked rice, quick cook noodles, macaroni pasta (takes 5 mins) tinned soup, baked beans etc. Also have uht milk and bread flour/yeast (that's more for snow cutting off deliveries).
Anything we don't use over Winter we use up the following summer when we go away self catering or camping.

I don't have much store cupboard food essentials because I'm never sure what to buy - I've got some tinned fruit and beans and always have rice & pasta in the house and a little tinned fish. I make my own bread. I could get by for a couple of days I think, although I wouldn't be feasting.

I have an electric heater now anyway (thanks cost of living) and plenty of warm bedding and clothes.

In the last year I've stocked up on some bottled water, purification tablets, spare batteries, a torch and small lantern. I have a couple of power banks and a wind up radio - I've written down the bandwidths for key bbc & local radio stations too.

Have a tiny garden so no room for even one water butt. Try to keep petrol tank in car full so I can manage if there is a petrol rush. I also have a camping stove & gas canister.

I'd run out of loo paper and toothpaste pretty quickly I think but otherwise I could probably manage 3 days without power or water. What I don't have is a grab bag which I've started to think is a good idea given the number of wildfires this year!

Exactly. My kids and dh don't put things back. Hence more bulbs. Buy cheap power banks. Hide the decent one for you. Survival of ge finest.

Get a bucket and pour from.hright yo flush loo with less water. My kids don't flush half the time. Do it would be business as usual

My adult kids have 'borrowed' my power banks for thier holidays...
We have some tins, not many as we are moving and running down supplies.
No water, but plenty of wine and gin, l guess l will just drink.
We however have a good supply of toilet roll, not sure what good that is if toilet flush.

This has prompted me to buy more USB mobile plug lights. £7 for 20 on Ebay. Stick them.in a power bank.

Well you can't mix the green one with the Tesco 48p pasta sauce for a start. I made 1.5kg of pasta with one jar of pesto, jar of 48p sauce and some tins of chopped Tom's when ds uni mates stayed over.

Now that WAS a emergency! But I was prepared. Never buy four teen boys Dominoes. You live and learn.

Oh see that makes sense - so prep in general instead of ‘stockpile everything chaps, we’re all doomed’ 😬

I thought we were told to prep for bad weather.

You have made a key point there.
Threads keep coming up that the government have advised about preparing for emergencies, but the threads don’t refer to the government advice, and any posters have their own thoughts on what the emergency could be - often going the whole hog to war.

But the campaign website refers to emergencies such as your house is on fire, a power cut or flooding
For a fire check your risks, smoke alarms and make
sure the family knows how to evacuate
Allow for a few days without power (they also point out that you may not be able to cook or heat water)
And they refer to looking up local risks such as flooding

prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/

Given that nobody seems sure what we are being told to prep for (including the Govt I assume) then isn’t it a bit pointless? Should we have enough supplies for a week? A month? Ten years?

Keeping red pesto for an emergency seems very MN for some reason 😬

So looking into this, the advice is about food shortages rather than power outages etc.

in that regard stocking up is relatively easy. I buy a month’s meat in advance, batch cook as much as possible. Bread you can freeze, or make your own. If not having space to store loads of flour, yeast etc you can buy £1 bread mixes in the supermarket.

I’m visually impaired so no need for candles or matches or torches. And who said there weren’t ever advantages 🤣

You would need a camping stove with gas canisters

I think if I was without electricity more than a day I would go completely insane in any case.

Presumably things like pasta etc would be useless in a power cut though?

Im not usually the anxious type but got a bit worried when the Ukraine war started, and have never touched the stuff.

Bought
Wind up radio which is also a power bank and phone charger
USB rechargeable lanterns
Tea lights
Matches
USB heat pads
A storm kettle with cooking set

I haven't bought any emergency food but have about 40l drinkable liquids, a cupboard of random tins, a freezer with random meat and bread, a waterbutt for flushing loo. I should prob buy some actual water.

El Niño

I have been looking at this. No idea what level of disaster I am prepping for, so I bought 6 pack of 2L bottles of water. Not enough I know but no idea where to store more!

A bunch of pasta!! Like seriously loads. And then stocked up our tin supply. And trying to keep the loo rolls one step ahead.

Thinking again reading this thread I need to keep the petrol topped up. If something major happens I am straight out the door and heading to somewhere extremely remote where we have a second home. Walking if required! So we wouldn’t need huge supplies. It would be too far to carry this. Really we need a small tent. Purification tablets and a way to make fire.

I have enough dry goods and tins and stuff in the freezer to see out a power cut, I’m not going to be too fussy about eating a cold can of soup by candlelight. And if we’re talking about the apocalypse I figure it’s going to be a free for all and I’ll just loot other people’s supplies, that’s kind of how this shit goes down.

Yes thats run towards the mushroom cloud time. We are surprisingly close to key military sites. I wont prep for war.

If applicable, register for the “priority services” with your utility suppliers if there is anyone “vulnerable”
That won’t stop a power cut, but changes your position on the priority list and could mean anything from just extra communications to them turning up with a generator

You dont need to spend much at all. Try to add a few bits each month. I prep for power cuts, being cut off by snow and the water being lost (no power = no pumping station and floods have also contaminated suppliers where we live)

50p 2l bottles of any pop
the cheapest bottled water you can find (or refill empty pop bottles)
29p dried spaghetti
the cheapest tinned tomatoes
cheap red pesto (combine all three for a surprisingly ok pasta dish) in fact the cheapest tomatoes based own brand pasta sauce is good for this (full of sugar so tastes yum and your cut off in the snow with nothing else does it matter by that point?
Power bank and usb blubs to plug into your phone
Matches and candels
One usb head torch per person.

Thats my minimum. Put the torches into a Tupperware pot on a bookshelf with the matches for ease when the lights go off at night.

You can add more if / when you fancy. We get a few power cuts and loose water a few times a year. Finding and setting up candles and torches distracts my kids who all have various SEN.

If we are supposed to prep for nuclear war then screw that - I’m going out there and hoping to die in the first wave!

That depends on the underlying cause.
A power cut could be fairly local and not affect the mobile masts in the area, and / or the backup battery supply to masts may keep it going and “infrastructure” may be prioritised

Total loss of power stations or the grid will result in phone networks gong down, but storms taking out power lines may not depending on where they are hit and are easier for the suppliers to rectify

Given the panic buying during Covid, I’m surprised there’s anything left in the shops now.

Are we planning for a nuclear war, climate change, or what exactly?