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

Then perhaps the government should tell us where all these places are, or won't they do it unless there's an actual emergency taking place, at which point people could be panicking. Far better we know now where our nearest shelter(s) are. I'm going to take a look online and see what's available in my local area.

I know I keep mentioning Whaley Bridge but that's how they were able to give people shelter so quickly. I used to work in the NHS and they regularly had local civil contingency planning meetings and exercise. I wasn't involved directly in the exercises but operated some community services so would be phoned out of the blue and told that they were doing an exercise and if I was asked to do xxx with my team right now could I do it and if not what would need to be different for me/us to be able to do it.

I assume they will do it when its needed as they have so far. I could imagine the idiots among us turning up at the designated centres at time that they were not needed. I am guessing that what they open will depend on the size and nature of the emergency and they'd want people to go to the right place.

I get having some food & water for a few days due to weather etc but won’t there just be proper anarchy if there is a massive cyber attack etc. People naturally go crazy if they can’t access medication & money.

The more people who know about it and are taking simple precautions where they can, the less craziness. But yes if its the end of days, it would be different. I think two things sbout this which is neither Russia not China want to trigger armageddon snd that the more that they try small attacks and fail snd they do are are right now, the less likely they are to think a big sttack would succeed decisively snd the more likely they are to believe that the retaliation would be immense and not just by the uk

They do, when they need to. There are plans that are worked through on a regular basis to ensure viability and logistics. Mass panic is exactly what people are trying to avoid by sensibly storing some extra food, water, medication. Of course there will always be people who panic, but keep calm and carry on still stands as the best way to deal with crises.

This.

Well so far my investigations aren't that reassuring. I can find documents for my local area for planning for emergencies and they have a lot of word salad about management, cataloguing, establishing safe locations, resiliency and so on but no actual written plans. They don't tell me much other than they are supposed to be able to know what to do if an emergency strikes.

More interesting is this government document on civil preparedness for war, published in March this year, so ostensibly up to date.

https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-civil-preparedness-for-war-government-strategy/

I've snipped a few salient points from the document but it's worth reading (SDR = strategic defence review 2025

The SDR made several recommendations on strengthening home defence and resilience in the context of the whole-of-society approach, including:

Ensuring the government can achieve a “sustainable and effective transition to war if necessary”. The SDR suggested a new defence readiness bill to provide the government with powers to mobilise reserves and industry in the event a crisis escalates into conflict. The review said the bill should mandate annual reporting on UK warfighting readiness.

(RAP = Resilience Action Plan)

The RAP set out operational steps for strengthening civil preparedness, including:
Asking and supporting the public to take action: The government said it wanted to encourage the public to prepare for emergencies as set out on the government’s ‘Prepare’ website. It committed to increasing transparency with the public about the risks the UK faces through the websites ‘Prepare’, ‘Ready Scotland’ and ‘Foreign travel advice’, and through the deployment of emergency alerts.

In November 2025, the Defence Committee published a report on the ‘UK contribution to European security’, which further considered the government’s approach to UK homeland defence and societal resilience.[38] The committee raised concerns about the UK’s ability to defend its homeland and to meet its NATO article 3 obligations on national resilience.

Key findings include
The UK “lacks a plan” on homeland defence with “little progress on the home defence programme”.[39] The committee also criticised the lack of transparency over the work of the programme. The MoD told the committee that it was working with the Cabinet Office to “ensure that the defence part and the civilian part of the plan are aligned”.[40] However, the committee said it was difficult to assess progress because information on the programme was not published. The committee said this suggested the government did not treat industry or civil society as “partners in delivering outcomes”.

The prime minister’s national conversation on defence and security had “yet to start”, with little public engagement and no clear central direction on the “national conversation”.

Cross-government working on homeland defence and resilience was “nowhere it needs to be.

The report agreed on the need for the whole of society to play its part in strengthening national resilience, but it found that large parts of the population did not “see why this is so important”.

@godmum56 I don’t think it would have to be end of days to create panic. Do you really not think even a week of delays to medication, hospitals, accounts would cause chaos?

And of course there are loads of people who will take advantage eg looting & waste resources.

@soddingspiderseason it’s very hard to store additional prescriptions….

I think that hopefully it wouldn't be a week, especially after covid. I say "hopefully" because I have no "secret knowledge"

People doing even simple preparation themselves will be less likely to panic, putting less pressure on the systems which have failed.
Hopefully in simple ways the people who have prepared can help friends and neighbours, again which would reassure and help to calm panic at a local level
I don't think a week of delays would cause a panic if people could see "a" system up and running. I feel fairly sure that supermarkets and logistics companies also have plans in place to enable their businesses to continue to function in some way. Getting something into place isn't likely to take a week IMO. All that is needed is a couple of days of breathing space to get Operation Shit Creek (no I don't know if that's the proper name) up and running.

In my experience, (retired nhs) most people are in the habit of getting their repeat before the existing one runs out.... all we are talking about here is one week. The logistics issues are likely to be already planned for, its like everything else its a breathing space issue.

now you are back to the end of days scenario.

@godmum56 interesting ime elderly neighbours & family all have their prescriptions delivered to their homes as opposed to organising themselves. My aunt had another stroke after missing 1/2 day of her thinner so I would have thought for some delays would be deadly.

Really? You think looting would only occur during an ends of day scenario?

Im a Londoner and during the London riots there were people who just looted the high street because the police were distracted/overwhelmed. It was actually quite scary to see the lack of control.

I have a couple of friends who do this and they get their prescrptions about 7 to 10 days before they run out. Does your aunt let her thinner run out before she gets a new prescription? Its a while since I worked in the NHS but I am not sure that thinner is that time critical unless you know different? Causation and correlation and all that.

but did they go to people's houses and take their food?

7-10 days in normal times but there could possibly be a mad panic which would leave pharmacies overwhelmed leaving to issue delays/lack of meds, not to mention ours is all done electronically so if the system is down then what?

What?

@godmum56 that’s what the hospital doctors put the stroke down to, some thinners have a shorter half live.

My family don’t get them delivered that far in advance, maybe it’s location specific.

No but it means (at least to me) that the people on "the system" who get caught up in any system failure will be those whose repeat is due so they should have 5 to 7 days left...anyone else whose repeat was not due should have more. All that what is being suggested will do is provide a breathing space for Op Shit Creek to be put into practice. It also occurs to me that not having a prescribed med is not going to be made any better by not having food, torches and so on in the house. Not doing anything because you can't do everything seems batshit to me....and if there is going to be looting, where would you rather be? Out trying to get hold of what you need or at home?

@Dontcallmescarfaceyes, I forgot it’s all electronic

This is scary 😭

Actually the actual prescription bit would be dead easy just to revert to written scripts. You could even print them by plugging a printer straight into a computer. That's the kind of thing though that would take a couple of days to set up.