Preparedness in the UK - or lack of

https://news.sky.com/story/britons-should-have-three-days-worth-of-tinned-food-and-water-government-says-13141114

From 2024
which links to the Gov website
https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/

• Consider what supplies you and your household might need during an emergency lasting a few days, such as a power cut or water outage, or situations where you are advised to stay at home or to leave your home (evacuate) for safety reasons.
• It can be helpful to keep these items in one place in your home and ideally somewhere easy to find if the lights aren’t working – if you are escaping your house due to a fire you should not take anything with you at all. You could consider keeping items you might need to take with you if asked to leave your home quickly in a spare bag – you might hear some people call this a ‘grab bag’.
• You should ensure you have enough of the medication you need to keep you going for several days.

If only the milk of human kindness could be stockpiled!

We got a woodburner put in. We have a large 5 bed house that literally freezes without heating but we’re preparing for energy costs to go through the roof.

I know it's not what you're asking, but there is a Preppers topic on Mumsnet which might interest you.
I half-heartedly prep. I think the most likely near-term threat is loss of internet/comms.
Which would - if widespread- mean: no supermarkets, banks, money, hospitals or healthcare, travel infrastructure, police, well everything really because the whole lot now depends on it. Which is a bit nuts.
We're much more vulnerable than anyone wants to admit. Hey ho. I do believe it'll happen, sooner or later. Let's face it with nutters like Elon Musk in charge of it all it's not exactly stable, is it?
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/preppers

I think it’s wise to prepare individually for your household. If food supplies ended tomorrow or the power grid destroyed, my family would be okay for 3/4 months. It’s smart to be prepared for a number of situations, anything from war to sudden unemployment to severe weather/flooding…etc.

The UK in general is hugely unprepared for a war, whether that’s using weapons or not. Hopefully that changes rather quickly but the manpower, time and funding required would be huge and I just can’t see our current government making the right decisions.

Who in their right mind doesn't already have a week's worth of supplies. Any of us could be faced with illness, power cut or no tap water at any time. Some folk mums wander through life with their in the clouds ( or more likely in their phones) If you don't have emergency supplies you deserve the chaos.

Quite literally no need to be a dick. Particularly when you aren’t even making a valid point.
OP stated the advice in “other counties” to have 3 days of food available, and her outrage that the UK government didn’t explicitly advise this.

You would be hard pressed to find a UK household that couldn’t survive for 3 days with the amount they current have in their home.

Well, I still have 4 five-litre bottles of mineral water I stashed away during, or in anticipation of, some crisis or other. Maybe Covid? Out of date now, but could be boiled in an emergency, I suppose (on my gas bbq - I have an almost full gas canister fortuitously!), if that counts?
I have also inadvertently stockpiled a load of cat food, mainly due to the cat constantly changing his mind about a particular favourite just after I’ve stocked up. So he should be ok for a couple of weeks, but knowing him he’d rather go without than cave in, if it’s not to his
current taste!

No, you numpty, it would need to be stored long term prior to the catastrophe starting.

I think the idea is that when disaster strikes you won't be able to pop to the shops for 3 day of provisions.

It’s an interesting point. I heard a fascinating piece on the radio yesterday about how other countries are preparing their galleries and museums to move and maintain antiquities in the event of a war rather than a flood or fire. Throwing a blanket over priceless artefacts and sticking them in an old mine or underground station will ruin them forever and apparently the countries closer to Russia are spending a lot of money on how it can be done properly, locations, trial runs etc.

If that’s the thinking on stuff you’d hope and expect they’re taking similar measures to protect their people and prepare their people to care for themselves.

We’ve got bottled water, a pantry with plenty of long life stuff like beans and a small stove in the attic, cash, wind up radio and wind up torches. We can’t stockpile asthma meds which would quickly become an issue.

Maybe they still remember covid days and toilet paper stockpiling? As I said, there is no need for the government to create a panic when most households have "a few days" worth of supplies anyway.
Maybe people of Europe behave differently to Brits. I don't remember my parents ever saying that they couldn't buy toilet paper when the lockdown hit in their country of residence.

90% of Britain has more than 3 days food in the house at any one time I’d imagine. I don’t know anyone with empty cupboards all the time

Just get a water butt and a filtration straw. Thankfully we are a rainy country filled with streams and other fresh water sources. Very few people would die if they couldn’t eat much for 3 days and those that would likely already have food stored.

Who on earth defines 3 days as “long term storage”??
The culture in the uk is weekly shop, the majority of people will have more than 3 days of food available at any given time.

Yes it's very useful not to need to rush to the shops if infrastructure goes down, if you can survive without doing that for a week or more. I do think everyone should prep something, even if it's only 3 days worth.

Another month, another I know people high up in the military, why aren’t we preparing for war thread 🙄

Surely most households have 'a few days' worth of stock at any given time.

Blimey, we haven't had one of these threads for a while 😂