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

and these people are breeding.....

I find Neil McCoy-Ward is pretty much on the money with what's going on and it's not good. Here he analyses the events of the last week and what's going on with Russia and the UK.

Unfortunately we can't all move to the Isle of Man! Nor many of us get residency elsewhere, like he has done. So we'll be stuck with whatever Burnham has ignited this week.

Hope your family members are staying safe x

I have distant family all over that region, and they all have pretty detailed plans of what they will do in certain emergencies. It helps that anyone under 40 will remember the early '90s with frequent power and water cuts, and food shortages.

And yes, absolutely, there can be all kinds of emergencies. I once got shingles and was living alone, so having food helped. But in the UK an emergency can easily be flooding, which is common around here, or petrol shortages, also not unheard of, or being snowed in.

You realise that this man is no authority on foreign affairs? He's just some loser influencer selling courses on how to generate passive income to naive people - one of many of them on social media. He in fact mentions passive income in 10:20 in the linked video, of course this is what it is all about.

Start getting your information from reliable sources and people who are actually an authority in a given discipline. Russia is not a normal, democratic country and it's worth listening to actual experts who understand how it operates and what their methods are.

Not to mention Russia pays influencers to make propaganda videos and spread misinformation

oi! the over 40's remember too!

Haha yes sorry typo, meant 'over 40' 😁

lol

Loser? Wow harsh! I've found him very useful. No I don't buy any of his courses, not my thing, but I enjoy his analysis of what's going on. Most YT presenters now include some kind of promotion, I just skip over them.

Anyhoo, what do you think is going to happen?

Sorry but loser is the only word that comes to mind when I listen to influencers like him 😂 I'm really fed up with them as people really believe the utter nonsense they say

I'll just copy over what I wrote earlier in this thread. 100% do not worry, do not look into moving to another country.

Here it is:

I already did this three years ago. I have toilet paper and sixpacks of water in my loft, lots of tinned food in my cupboards. I've been following the Ukraine war and I know the KGB mindset and MO of Putin. I knew where this was going.

There will be no WW3 on British soil. Putin won't nuke us. There is nothing to be afraid of in regard to this.

Putin is engaging in a hybrid war with the UK. It's been ongoing and if you google "UK Russia hybrid war" there is a lot of press coverage of all that has been going on already. It's worth reading it to understand what's happening as it affects us all.

One of the likely scenarios in the hybrid war is Russian hackers attacking a power plant resulting in a large area losing electricity for days or weeks. It has actually already happened in the UK recently, although the hackers were Iranian not Russian, and the consequences were not severe.
Without electricity there will be no water in taps as pumps run on electricity. Same with fuel at petrol stations.

We need to prepared to survive if we have to stay home for a few days. It makes us extremely vulnerable if we only have enough food at home for a day or two and no bottled water.

No, the government doesn't want to cause a covid-like madness in supermarkets. If anything, they're actually trying to prevent it if something does happen, because then all people with empty kitchen cupboards will rush to supermarkets.

Nobody has to go and buy 100 tins of food now. It's about getting a few extra cans and some water with every weekly shop and build up some rainy day stock at home.
It's also worth having candles, torches, battery-operated radio, batteries and charged power banks. Better safe than sorry

Well, I never thought Putin was going to nuke the UK, that just wouldn't make any sense. Plus, I'm disabled so very much can't move to another country so will have to hunker down where I am for better or worse. I am already a prepper, since Brexit, so have modest supplies. I do think cyber hacking is the most likely action against us, loss of electricity for a long period in winter would be very damaging for a lot of folk, sadly, so supplies to keep one warm are a must.

Why did you bin pasta? It's long life food.
If you don't like pasta it was a bit daft to buy it

OP was not concerned one bit, just wanted to start a thread on bashing people panic buying toilet paper. Instead it became an interesting discussion with sensible advice. Too boring for OP.

Ha! Dropped £100 on it this week. That's my little bit done for now. We are rural so should have had all this stuff in years ago. We have a lovely gas fire which apparently can be transformed into a log burner as have chimney etc but would need to be lined etc. I really don't want a log burner at all but wonder if it's sensible to get quotes? Our house is freezing in the winter and would hate to be without gas. I must admit that I do like a bit of preparedness. It just makes sense to me.

Just spent an hour or so ferreting through the cupboards and freezer. We have enough food to withstand a siege, but only if the electric stays on. I do have a gas camping stove somewhere that I need to learn how to use. Have water purification tablets (must have bought those when the government last sent out a similar reminder). No proper candles, but I did find boxes and boxes of birthday candles, which would be of limited use, though rather festive, in a survival situation. My biggest concern is about keeping warm if everything goes off. Would love a log burner but DH has vetoed it on health grounds. We'll see how healthy he feels when it's -15 degrees and the power is off!

This story illuminates one of the big prepping mistakes made by new preppers: buying things they hear are good to stock up yet in reality they don't like those things much nor eat them. I certainly did that in the runup to Brexit. Ended up donating a bunch of things to my local food bank. Now I only buy things I actually like!

I did hear another good tip yesterday - if your water supply is limited you don't want to be using all of it up cooking rice and pasta. Whilst it's good to have those in stock, it might be better to up your tinned meat/fish/veg/fruit supplies.

At the moment I'm going to assume NO power which means no heating, no electric. We've an electric cooker althoug we've several neighbours with log burners so could probably rustle up the odd hot tin of beans that way, but in the main we are going to have to eat cold food out of tins, or packets. So I'm re-thinking exactly what I do have in the light of that. I don't have a gas camping stove and don't plan on getting one.

@PigglyWigglyOhYeah another novice mistake is apparently buying gear and not knowing how to use it, then you need to and are fumbling round in the dark trying to figure it out! Best learn whilst you can and everything is OK, then if you need to you will know how and not get stressed!

I'm going to check through my box of miscellaneous medical and other supplies and make an inventory and leave it in the box so I know exactly what I do have. Also check the expiry dates on any first aid supplies.

@PigglyWigglyOhYeah My biggest concern is about keeping warm if everything goes off. Honestly it's hugely problematic. After experiencing 5 days without our boiler working in the depths of winter a couple of years ago (and fortunately we were able to heat the bedroom with an electric oil heater) I can tell you the rest of the house just kept getting colder and colder till it felt like walking downstairs into cold water, it was so awful. Had the bedroom had no heating either, it would be so demoralising and also really bad for health. Can't imagine how many blankets one would need! Definitely check for body warmer underwear and extra thermals, the type mountaineers use!

You can cook pasta in pasta sauce if you have to, no need for water.

Yes good call! I don't eat pasta btw as I am gluten free (and GF pasta tends to disintegrate easily) and the whole GF challenge just makes prepping even harder!

GF must make it more difficult..rice, potato flakes and quinoa I guess? Not sure what else you could cook rice in if not in water, maybe broth but you’d need quite a lot.

But interesting as we have sacks of rice, but never really thought about how much water you’d actually waste cooking it!

We bought a freestanding bioethanol fireplace/stove years ago.

I know it’s not the cheapest, but they are really nice and we were surprised how much heat it actually generated. As it is freestanding it would be easy to move to a smaller room. Like you say though, a whole house would become freezing very quickly so thermals are always good to have (I live in a cold country so have it’s a must anyway, but generally I find houses in England absolutely freezing compared to ours even though it’s much much colder outside here..)

You do need room to store the bioethanol bottles though..

I've never heard of those! They do look very nice.

Are the houses where you live made of timber, or brick like the UK ones?

Yeah, they are nice if you like us can’t have a real fire place.

Both are common actually, but I’d say timber is much more common.

I just wonder whether timber deals better with extremes of heat and cold, compared to brick.

We did have a real fireplace (with a gas fire in it when we bought the house, and the fire was 'condemned' by the gas people when they came round to inspect it!) we ended up removing the gas fire and bricking in the fireplace, didn't go for a log burner like quite a few folk round here do. We have gas central heating. For many years before the move we had a coal fire, which is great when it's going but gosh, there's always cleaning and mess, plus coal has to be ordered and wood. Too much work for me now in my later years, which is probably what put us off having a log burner!

Thanks for all the advice. The bioethanol stove looks great!

Round here people are being asked not to get log burners unless they get the high end kinds with smoke filters. I believe they require seasoned natural wood for fuel which is an expensive option. My next doors, previous owners, has a chimney put in...basically a lining with brick built around it and it has never ever worked properly despite sevearl cowls and gadgets being tried. The people who bought it off them had the gas fire replaced.