Why have we been told to 'stockpile' and what for?

Not new advice, and plenty of other countries have given that advice for years. Starmer was reluctant to voice it. Burnham quite ok to do so. It’s part of a wider plan to talk about how we should be prepared to work together and protect our communities and our country if there was some kind of war. Nobody really knows what that war might look like or if it would even happen.

at the moment it seems adversaries are just doing things like creating tension and division within communities with the aim of weakening natural resolve and cohesion. We don’t really know what “war” might look like. The tensions in France and Italy are a way of ensuring a bit of destruction through an internal “war”. The adversary does have to do much.

asking people to stockpile some water and tins of food is a very basic precaution. Theres a lot more we should be worried about like how many people believe propaganda about migrants and brexit etc and how that very belief is doing more to weaken our defences against a big adversary

I remember these! Paint your windows white, take an inside door off and lean it against an inside wall to create a shelter, do not look at the glare from the bomb, and do not go outside for days due to radiation fallout! Everyone was seriously expecting a nuclear bomb to be dropped!

This thread has just inspired me to do an Ocado order with tinned/long-life food for us all. There's a lot of tinned veg/potatoes/meat/bottled water out of stock, so obviously plenty of other people have had the same idea. There's four of us so it's not a small job to store it, but I'll clear out a cupboard. We've got a log burner and a stovetop kettle so at least we'll be able to have a brew!

For national resilience the last thing we need is fearmongering and a retreat into survivalism. That will sow division all by itself. If we want the country to pull together and to galvanise community cohesion and self-support we should be encouraging people to look outwards, not to stock up on emergency supplies and make plans to shelter under the stairs.

Burnham’s attempt at an excuse for his stupid comment about social security money winning out over defence was not only pitiful but harmful.

If 90% of the houses in a street have a few days of supplies for an emergency then that facilitates sharing. If hardly anyone does then more people will be panicking after a day or two and no one will be sharing what little they do have.

We should have three days food in the house though shouldn't we? It's a grown up thing to do. Every household should have at least one person who is capable of organising this. If we brought one tin of something each week between now and the end of the year, we'd have plenty to get through three days with extra to spare. And it needn't cost more than £10.
Aldi soup 59p
Baked beans 38p
Microwave rice 55p
Tuns chunks 65p
If we have ever bought a Christmas card or eaten chocolate we can afford this.

The three days supplies was introduced in May 2024. Do you believe that that PM was also sowing division?

Just having it come to the boil isn't enough. It needs to have a rolling boil for a while - 10 minutes or more I think? If I remember rightly from back in my school days you're supposed to drink the condensation rather than the water itself too...

You don’t just buy stuff and leave it in a cupboard, you rotate it out.

I don’t recall that at all. I don’t doubt you, but the PR on this seems to have been ramped up enormously.

I still do not see why we should be ensuring three days supplies. If Putin chooses to send his Satan missiles here I’d rather not be spooning tomato soup out of a can as I sit in the dismal scorched wasteland among the corpses. And I cannot envisage a cyber attack that would stop me going up the Tesco Local.

I suppose I can imagine power cuts from the presently badly managed national grid and energy policy. But I’d prefer some honesty about that and some advance warning, rather than buy nuts and candles.

El Nino storms coming in December

Actually, I think it’s a good question. What a great idea if it’s safe.

Call me cynical, but I suspect Wes Streeting is just trying to lay the groundwork for a bigger defence budget. Once the upcoming spending round is done, I wonder how often we’ll hear about our three-day survival kits?

Honestly, reading some of these replies makes me think UK citizens are a strange breed. Many, many countries have given this advice for years - people either listen to it and do something or they don't. What they don't do is waste time looking for ulterior motives.

You're expecting the power to stay on then...............

We're perfectly capable of stockpiling tins of beans and being cynical about politicians. It's called multitasking😉

Do you remember the national phone alerts to tell us not to use BBQs?

In times of fear/war/doomsday scenarios, studies have shown that the public become more supportive of government in power....

I studied political marketing at university (many years ago)

Why on earth would anyone be cynical about politicians when it has been suggested you have a few extra things in reserve? The rest of us seem to be able to understand the reasoning, but oh no, Brits are so special that what for the rest of the world is a perfectly understandable suggestion must have an ulterior motive there.

Do not follow the news!

It is depressing and misery..
Whatever happens.

Huh

I’d be amazed if the majority of people didn’t already have several days worth of food in their kitchens. And I think it is more pertinent for those who live more rurally.

Generally I agree with you….

However I’ve met “that person” with a young child who didn’t keep or have basic pantry staples.

Simply she hadn’t been taught to, and she also didn’t understand looking at meat per kilo prices but went on pack price instead.

im in the Southern hemisphere so its not just UK families..

Yes I didn’t sleep for weeks after that.
Basically said if there is a nuclear weapon on its way, get under the table and don’t leave the house. Shittest advice ever.

As I understand it, several agencies were asking the government at a recent meeting to begin talking to the public a bit more about emergency preparedness. There is no conspiracy here, there were even journalists in the meeting (well, at least a woman from Sky News).

To be fair, if you were CO of the Logistics Core in the army, tasked with setting up evacuation centres, it's going to make your job a hell of a lot easier if there is some degree of resilience amongst the population.

I agree with a pp that, to some extent, there is a peculiar British thing going on here. If you look at Sweden during COVID, for example, they didn't lockdown as Swedes had a natural inclination towards personal responsibility (and calm, I remember seeing videos of them sat outside cafes).
Whereas here, several government insiders have since said that lockdowns became inevitable because of the public demand for it. British people wanted to be locked down and subject to strict rules about their movements by the state.

I think there's a lot to unpack here about the British relationship with the welfare state versus that relationship in Nordic countries. But that's probably for another thread.

Other countries have done this for years. It’s just the UK catching up.