HM Gov telling us to get tinned food and bottled water?

[DecisionTime123]

Call me old fashioned, but isn't this sort of thing likely to provoke a run on toilet rolls? Couldnt find any other threads on it, but I think there is a "preppers" topic on here somewhere. In any case, what do you think? I'm sort of concerned, should I be? Or has this gone under the radar?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/25/uk-to-warn-citizens-to-stock-up-on-food-amid-threat-from-climate-crisis-and-hostile-states

It will create absolute panic, even more extreme and bizarre behaviours than we are seeing already and yes, people who can afford to stockpile stuff will absolutely do that leading to shortages of items.

Everyday life as we used to know it seems more like a distant memory

I generally think preppers are delulu, but I do keep a few bottles of water and some tins in the cupboard. It just seems sensible.

How are a few tins of food going to help with the 'climate crisis'? 🙄

The Economist is running a story in it’s cover asking if AI will become conscious and yet we are being told it should be embedded in all systems and we are also told it will kill
off many jobs and we are also told it uses huge amounts of energy and water and we are told climate change as a byproduct of our energy use habits will further impact on the availability of water. Rather than prepping, I’m going out the back to introduce my arse to my elbow. Then at least one person in amongst this mess definitely knows the difference.

Esp if your house has burned down through wildfires!

That advice came out a few weeks ago. How odd to make another story about it now.

I know it did because I ordered 5 5l containers of water and stored them in the back of the shed, and the kids have teased me relentlessly about being a prepper.

I just figured if it was about £2 for a whopping big container of water and the government thought there was any possibility of an interruption in the water supply, have a day's water stored may be a help for bugger all outlay. It's not like it goes off.

Read between the lines people! I’m no prepper but even I have tinned food, water, candles, torches and wind up/solar powered radio.

And it’s nothing to do with climate change!! This will be the first of a “gentle” campaign.

Hopefully we won’t be advised to be planting vegetables in our garden this time next year! Plan for the worst, expect the best!

Nah, it’s been raised again and again and again that we don’t have nearly as much gas storage as most other countries. Government does nothing about it. We don’t want to grant licenses to further explore the North Sea and it’s not because we think we have enough local sources. The actions of our government don’t suggest they are too worried about the availability of key resources. I’ll go by what they do, not what they say.

It's so much easier to do this than to take on the water companies. Craven, the lot of them.

We won’t even support our actual farmers properly so I don’t think the focus is going to switch to growing food in gardens any time soon. Look at what they do not say etc. Water and food willl just get stolen from you if things go to shit anyway, have none of you watched The Walking Dead?

No, but the bottle degrades. Best to swap those bottles now and then, esp in a hot shed.. or keep for washing rather than drinking.

Bloody hell. This is really unhelpful advice for most UK people. Prices of food are already unaffordable for many and due to the hot summer prices were going to shoot up inevitably. And now wealthy people will stock up for themselves while poorerry households can’t. It’s like the Covid era social disparity replaying once again.

This is just common sense, no? Farmers have only been able to cut one hay yield, and then fields have lain barren and haven't regrown. Animals have had to graze fields set aside for winter and when the drought took those fields, the hay and silage set aside for winter has had to be fed for them.

So there's no first crop stored for winter, no second crop stored for winter, animals still going hungry, and farmers already having to sell off their herds to make ends meet.

Then arable crops are poor or failing, and later crops can't be planted because the ground is rock-hard and the ploughs are breaking apart when they try to get through the soil, and if they work the softer soil land, they'll fail anyway because there's no rain to make them grow.

And that is of course aside from the wildfires that has ripped through existing crops, or have been purposefully started in stored hay, straw and haylage.

I think this winter is possibly going to be like nothing we've ever experienced, a bit like this summer.

This is old news, haven't the Guardian got anything more up to date to report on? Talk about scraping the barrel.

Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia have been telling their citizens for years to have enough food etc to cover a minimum of five days. Makes perfect sense to have enough in to cover for emergencies such as winter storms.

We got told the same thing years back over some war threat, i`ll say the same thing, whats the point in doing it.
Scaring people in to doing things.

With any luck, AI will set to work looking at tackling the causes of climate change, realise that the huge quantities of water and electricity used by computing is seriously detrimental to all life on the planet... and switch itself off.

Move to Scotland if you can, there’ll still be no food and nearly as little water plus the grass was still brown for a while but it wasn’t boiling this summer. I think it hit 28 degrees one day bur was mostly low twenties. Definitely no run on air conditioning up here. So that’s something. All gone to shit still but you’ll be less sweaty.

Hurray!

Listening to a radio near candle light and eating tinned food is not going to save your life if war happened.

It’s bog standard common sense advice which the government have had on their website for. If it hasn’t caused people to empty shelves and panic buy in the last few months it won’t now. (And I know you all know panic buying is very different to stock piling)

Thia years harvest is however, fucked. Which is going to lead to shortages and increased prices. If you can afford an extra bit here and there to put to the side it would be wise to do so. And give to your local food bank so those that can’t afford to have a bit of extra food in will be able to eat if it does all go tits up. Because they are unlikely to be able to afford to eat once the prices do rise.

Im sure we will survive.

Don’t get me started. My dad has (in the last few years) started just brining me tinned food whenever he comes round so we can “be prepared”. It’s kind of sweet but the assortment isn’t exactly balanced and I don’t know how good a frey bentos pie and tinned custard will be come the end of days.

Is it war, then?

Sometimes I can understand why people do murder-suicides. I know how horrific that sounds/is 😔

and yet when covid happened they were the ones to say we told you so, to be prepped etc

Maybe don’t eat the fray bentos with the custard 😂