Do we actually need to get two weeks of food in?

You should start your own AMA post.
As long as anyone doesn’t ask you how to cook food without electricity.

If the electricity is down in the shops how will we cook the food?

It is possible to cook food without electricity.

”We” are lucky, our cooker is LPG and failing that we can cook on a wood fired stove indoors. Plus, we have a public water pump fed from a spring in the road outside. We also have a generator and numerous oil lamps, but sadly not an infinite supply of fuel.

I've always kept supplies in. Not really sure why, just how I was brought up, I guess.

When covid happened it meant that we didn't need to go shopping for a couple of months as I've always bought in bulk and already make my own bread, etc.
Even when we started to need to go, it was generally just for basics like fresh milk and eggs, although we still had dried versions of each for cooking, etc.

I have always tended to buy enough toilet paper for 6-12 months at a time (when it's on offer), so we didn't need to shop for that for a long time, same with pasta and rice, cleaning products, etc.

I also have several large freezers and could probably last for a year without shopping with regard to meats, fish, etc.(as long as the power was still on).

This meant that during covid, if we came across someone that was struggling, I was able to help them out by gifting them things from my supplies .

Eg, we got talking to someone at a halfords type place(but independent). who we saw on a twice yearly basis for car related things (so not a friend), and she was being laid off without pay, so money was tight and she was struggling as she didn't drive and all the local shops had no supplies left, and they were down to using hand tissues for toilet paper, and were almost out of that, etc.

She was really upset, and it affected me, we didn't say anything, but we drove the half hour home grabbed a bag for life and filled it with the basics, eg, 6 pack of toilet rolls, 3 tins each baked beans, tomatoes, soup, plus a couple of tins of tuna, 1kg pasta, 1 kg rice, some bread, 40 teabags, small jar of coffee and 2 packs of biscuits.

We then drove back and dropped it off to her. She was so surprised, but appreciative and wanted to repay us, so we just said to pay it forward if she was ever in a position to do so.

We did this a few times for various people during the lockdowns, so prepping/ having supplies to hand is not just about helping yourself (to me, at least), as it also means you're able to leave what's in the shops for those that really can't keep any stocks at home, and help out others when needed.

My biggest tip is to only purchase things that you and your family eat.... there's no point stocking up on baked beans if no one likes them, and to rotate what you do buy so as you use 1 item up, you replace it asap, and put the new one at the back so items are used in the right order.

If possible, I'd suggest keeping at least 3 of each of the things you use, so that when you've used 1 up, you still have a spare in case you can't get to the shop straight away. (If it's something you'd use 2 of, then keep 4, so you have another 2 spare, etc)

We lived rurally so I used to keep 8-16 tins of each item, and then would replace it in the weekly shop whenever it was used.
When covid struck, I had ~200 tins of food, 30kg flour, 2kg dried egg, 1kg dried milk, ~15kg pasta, ~15kg rice, ~10kg sugar(various), 3-4kgs of dried fruits, nuts. 2kg couscous, many various dried pulses, etc.
My pantry is 3m by 2m and has floor to ceiling shelving which was always full.

Friends and family liken it to a shop, which they happily used during covid 😀
It also contains stores of cleaning and self care products, as I bulk buy these kind of things every 6-12 months when they're on offer.

I realise that I'm in a very lucky position to be able to do this, though.

If it's any help to anyone.

My basic list used to include:

4 tins each of chicken, tomato and lentil soups
12 tins of baked beans
6 tins of beans with sausages
16 tins chopped tomatoes
4 tins green lentils
4 tins borlotti beans
4 tins chickpeas
6 tins red kidney beans
6 tins butter beans
6 tins white kidney beans
4 tins carrots
5 tins mushy peas
4 tins peas
8 tins sweetcorn
4 tins mushrooms
16 tins tuna
4 tins salmon
8 tins of mackerel/ pilchards/ sardines
10 tins coconut milk
1kg dried onions
Herbs, spices, stock, condiments, sauces
12 tins of canned meats, eg, bacon grill, corned beef, etc
12 litres bottled water in 2l bottles.
10-15kg various pastas
10-15kg various rice
5-10kg other grains, eg, bulgar,couscous, quinoa, polenta, semolina, etc
6 tubes tomato puree
2-4 jars of passata
5l olive oil
5l veg oil
1kg coconut oil.

There's probably more, but my memory is awful.

There's only 2 of us nowadays, so I don't keep anywhere near as much in. Previously, I was catering for 4.

Think of 7 or 8 easy meals that everyone will eat, and base your stores around that,eg,

Jacket potato with beans/cheese or tuna,etc
Pasta bake
Chilli
Curry
Dal
Roast
Pizza
Fish fingers/nuggets
Casserole

And then keep those ingredients in stock, so you have enough to make all those meals if need be.
If you don't have a gas hob, you can buy a camping gas stove ring with a couple of gas bottles fairly cheaply. Also handy to have an old fashioned kettle that you can put on a stove top, although a saucepan would do the same job.

I can imagine that there are some posters on this thread who would heat the beans with the wind power they generate from their flailing around trying to convince us the world is flat, the hot air they generate with their own asininity, or perhaps a combination of photovoltaic power and the sun that shines out of their arse.

Once they've eaten enough cold beans they could then fuel their own gas hob.

😂

You seriously can’t conceive of a situation where your local shop might run low or run out of supplies?

@FoolMeTwice2 Do you also keep medicines etc?

My children have moved out, but are always joking that they will just go shopping in our garage (which they sometimes do..we seem to go through a lot of pesto!)..

I don’t understand why you’re upset. The whole point of this thread is to discuss whether there is a need to stockpile food. People seem to be strangely emotionally attached to the idea but cannot explain how it would actually help anyone at all.

You’re in a very unusual and privileged position that doesn’t apply to the vast majority of the country.

Or a single cyber attack targeting Visa and 80% of card payments stop working. Or 5 attacks targeted at the the big 5 supermarkets only. Put those out of commission and the country starves.
People don’t realise just how incredibly vulnerable we are in this country.

One local shop? Yes. The local shop, and Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, M&S. all of the corner shops and the mini supermarkets all running out of all foods so quickly that people cannot buy anything at all and must starve for three days because they didn’t stockpile noodles and beans? No, I think it’s ridiculous.

Quite the opposite.You have sensible advice and facts from so many posters, far from emotional at all. You should do what you believe in though.

There are, I'd say, millions of people in this country who have access to things like log burners, gas hobs fed from bottles or tanks, camping equipment, BBQs etc and if they don't they probably have family/neighbours who do who would likely help them out in this sort of scenario.

Well if you're old enough to remember news footage in the 80s of the soviet union, people were queuing for hours for shops which had almost empty shelves, so while extreme, it does happen

You’re in a very unusual and privileged position that doesn’t apply to the vast majority of the country

I am aware of that. Hence the “We”.

However, it is still possible for most people to cook without electricity. It may take a degree of self reliance. A concept alien to some.

If Visa went down then people would withdraw cash.

It would be highly unlikely that there’d be five separate successful attacks on five different supermarkets simultaneously. But even if there was, that still leaves the other supermarkets and all of the independent shops. No one would need to reply on tins and dried food.

If there's no electricity, they can't cook food, everything in their fridge/freezer is ruined, hence why food trucks are rolled out (eventually).

I will, yes. The ‘advice’ hasn’t been sensible. It just been people describing extremely unlikely disaster scenarios in which a few tins of food wouldn’t help whatsoever, and repeatedly saying this is sensible.

Yeah, I have a pretty good stock of most basic medicines, including paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, antihistamine, diarrhea relief tablets, constipation tablets, cold and flu remedies, vitamins, cough medicines and sweets, bandages, alcohol wipes, dressings, etc. I even have a suture kit, lol, as well as water purification tablets.

I also have about 4 months worth of stronger pain meds, and my regular meds. As well as basic meds for my animals. I shop for their food, etc, every 3 months so they would have enough to last that amount of time. Never keep less than 4 weeks worth, and reorder/buy a it reaches that mark.

As we found at the start of covid, there's no resilience in the food supply chain. So if a major supermarket "goes down" for more than a day or two, all the others soon run short of food too as the supply chain can't ramp up production and deliveries soon enough. The remaining 4 big chains can't suddenly cope with a 25% increase in demand (assuming the "down" supermarket customers spread themselves evenly over the other 4!). Small shops would soon run out too as they have even slower supply chains and less stock in warehouses/store rooms. A bit of panic buying and the shelves soon become empty.

Have you so quickly forgotten the empty shelves in all supermarkets at the start of covid??

I will add charcoal to the list of things to stockpile.

What if the supermarket has to close because of no electricity or their till system goes down?? You'd be buying nothing from them!

That wasn’t an unforeseen emergency. That was due to governmental incompetence and political ideology.

Yeah, you see the thing about disruptions is by their nature no one knows how long they are going to last. The gov doesn’t post a message saying “Please be advised, this latest Russian cyber attack is scheduled to last 3 days”. When things happen, people panic. They panic buy and strip the shelves and you don’t have petrol or bread or toilet roll for week. Honestly were you living in a cave during covid? During the recent Iran conflict?