Anyone planning on buying a wind up FM radio?

We have a couple of those and they are brilliant. We are rural (He's a farmer, I'm a GP) and have a home full of wheelchair users, so I keep one in my car all of the time and we have a couple in house which we keep charged and ready to go. We also have a battery one too.

We have a Nokia PAYG which my husband keeps in the tractor in case of emergency which will withstand anything.

This year, we have already had a 48hr water drought and numerous powercuts lasting more than 24hrs.

As part of the UK food supply chain, we are vulnerable due to the lack of infrastructure which has a knock-on effect to food in your supermarkets.

@Ginmonkeyagain I live in a city. Zero power outages during 1987. You must have lived very rurally. All I remember was cancelling a trip out as it really was too dangerous to go outside.

I am early sixties and have never experienced anything like this. So please don't pretend this is normal. It isn't.

I could just about forsee a region being off long enough for a radio to be useful (not in the UK but we were off for 36 hours last winter, local radio - FM (VHF) went off as well, so having AM was useful ) but agree if disruption gets really widespread and prolonged you'll quickly need more than a radio,.food and water.

Usually you have around 2 years before you shouldn't drink water bottled in plastic. Check the bottle for the expiry date. I label all my water bottles so I know how much time they have left. They'll also start to deform as well, so become more of a leakage risk, but it does take while, I found some 5 year old bottles of water I'd stored in the shed and they had deformed a bit but not leaked. I used them to water plants during the hot summer.

@Ponoka7 I live in inner London and have needed bottled water a few times in the last few years - no zombie apocalypse - just ageing pipes and a crap water company!

You can heat water over nightlight candles.

We have one for camping but its terrible and seems to drift off the radio station. We definitely need to replace it so I'm checking out all the recommendations on the thread. I'm not bothered about it having a torch etc. Just something we can reliably listen to classic fm and R4 on (boring and old here!)

Power cuts or water cuts of more than a few hours.

This! I'm also being targeted by Use Less Water ads as AI usage massively ramps up

@Constantrunner I grew up on a farm in rural SE Kent - many villages in Kent have overhead power lines and no mains gas - it took ages to reconnect us after the 1987 storm because of all the downed trees that had to be cleared first - our village was cut off to traffic for two days because the roads were blocked.

It is not normal in cities yes - I have lived in London for 25 years and the only long power cut I have been impacted by was two years ago when some idiot builders next door to us drilled through a main power cable and took most of the road out - but you don't have to be too rural to experience quite significant service disruption in bad weather.

Just buy a battery one and have spare batteries. If disruption is so severe you run out of and can’t buy any new batteries then a wind up radio isn’t going to save you.

We needed bottled water a few years ago when the weather was bad, there was some mechanical failure and the local processing plant started to overflow into a local river so processing had to stop. We were without running water for a week. The problem was widespread and local shops and delivery services ran out of bottled water. No roaming gangs, no machetes and no fighting. Since then, here in the south, there have been shorter numerous water outages for various reasons and a few longer ones. Do you not watch the news?

Because it’s not about Climate Change. It’s about Russia. They just added the climate change and weather bits to try and avoid panic.

🙄

Yes, it makes me weep. The folly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj65jzj8dy4o

This sort of thing is sadly a rather regular occurrence in London - so we are well used to having bottled water available.

If one goes, you still have one. In prepping, they say, "2 is 1 and 1 is none".

I think most people who live in fairly isolated rural areas are pretty well prepared already.

We do have a radio/torch which winds up and also has a solar cell. It's made by Midland.

I lived in London in the nineties and never had bottled water. Water outages are usually very short term. A few hours at most.

Goes where?

As the name says I live in the sticks although not miles from civilisation. We do get frequent power cuts lasting a few hours every winter so I already have a power cut box. However I think it needs a good refresh.
I have a radio that works on mains, battery or wind up. I have a light that can be charged by solar, mains, usb or battery.

The main thing I really need to do is get the solar panels linked to a socket. It's so frustrating when the power goes off we can't use solar.

@Constantrunner yeah in the intervening 30 years things have deteriorated somewhat on parts of the Thames Water network - in our area of SE London alone we have had three seriously major pipe bursts in the last two weeks (serious enough to close roads and take out water supply for a day or so)