Your ‘emergency supplies/stockpile’.

[ohyouagainclarence]

Has anyone else started stashing a few things away in the event of some kind of ‘national emergency’ and if so, what sort of things are you storing?

I’m certainly not going to turn into a prepper but as I have plenty of storage space, I’ve got two big plastic boxes filled with dried goods (rice/pasta etc) and then some tinned stuff. I’ve also stocked up on batteries, candles and matches and I bought a solar charger. And oh, got two 5 litre bottles of water.

The temptation to go a bit nuts and plan for Armageddon is high! 😂😂 But I’m being sensible and just having enough for the basics to keep us going for about a week. I’m also cycling through the food so it doesn’t get wasted - use a tin of beans and then replace it etc.

If anything people doing this are the public spirited ones. If there is an emergency the unprepared will be shrieking and clearing the shelves in super markets we won’t add to that as will already have our stocks in.

Exactly - we had 2 days without water a few summers ago, ordered Ashbeck
water from Tesco when it was about £1 for 5 litre, now it is £1.60 and sadly
no longer Ashbeck. It is 19p a litre for 6x2litre bottles but only fit for cooking
imho and read reviews - we still put it through the filter for drinking and steaming
which uses little water.

Anyway, we were astonished to realise how much water is needed for eg.
a large pan of pasta. We cooked a large amount of penne so we could have
pasta salad the next day, trying to be economical, 2litre bottle of water used
Rice is the same of course especially if you rinse it after cooking
Also washing; a kettlefull goes nowhere as you will find tipping it into a
wash basin or bowl
those who brush their teeth under running water will soon realise how profligate
they are when half a tumbler of water is metered out.

I don't have any space and live in a city, so no. But I would if I had the space.

It's to prevent hoarding during times of crisis and is only sensible.

I find wind up stuff are usually unreliable/don't work well. Maybe solar is better?

Do you have water butts in the garden? I do, I figure those could be used for flushing toilets if needed instead of irrigation. I'm with you though on how quickly you can get through water. My 200l worth of water butt water would only really irrigate my garden for a week in a period of no rain, and that is only watering quite sparingly. People who leave the tap on whilst brushing are insane!

You are wrong though. What you are describing is panic buying which happens AFTER the shit hits the fan. Yes, this is problematic behaviour and what we all want to avoid.

PPs (and the government) are advising stocking up sensibly BEFORE chaos reigns. That's the best way to prevent the behaviour you describe.

Quite the opposite. If everyone who can did this over the coming months it would prevent the craziness we saw at the beginning of covid (or in our local Spa every time it snows heavily).

@ohyouagainclarence I have a spare cupboard of tins/candles/camping stove /25 gallons of water plus calour gas heater that I set up following heavy snow in 2012 when our electric was cut off for the best part of a week and the pipes froze.

Agree with this re dried goods - it's good to have some but they need a lot of water and also a lot of fuel/energy to boil the water.

We live near a river so loads of water available. I'm looking for a proper filtration solution to make it safe to drink/cook with but the good ones are pricey!

I’m bumping this, save asking the same questions myself

We have a camping gas ring which needs gas cylinders, the instructions
emphatic it is to be used outdoors, then says for use in a caravan?!
We need a carbon monoxide alarm for sure.

It’s so time consuming ploughing through Amazon and other sources,
help someone please.

my stockpile is nothing.

We have one of these: https://amzn.eu/d/09P4TZQ6

We were going to see if we can boil water on our gas BBQ. Saves getting a separate gadget

It would do the opposite. If a proportion of the stock was already in people's homes then it would take the pressure off the supply chain & avoid the need for panic buying in an emergency.

People could create a small stock pile eg a few large bottles of water & some tins & pasta etc over time so that if a storm, power cut, water outage, cyber attack taking out electronic payments happened there would be less pressure on the supply chain.

It would all defrost & go off in a pronged power cut

I keep a stockpile of things that are essential to us that often run out at our local store, like gluten free breadflour. We always have about a week's worth of food in the cupboards but just as part of keeping things running, not emergency planning. I don't see that it's necessary for us, we are in walking distance to shops and pharmacies.

Anything disasterous that would upend our life beyond annoying inconvenience would probably require far more resources and planning than tinned and dehydrated food could mitigate.

We had a water outage during the extreme heat wave in 2022 & have intermittent pressure issues (backwards rural area)
The shops were all sold out & the collection points kept running out.

Having no water is far, far worse than a power cut (we have our fair share of those too)

I now have a big supply of bottled water!!

I have a life straw which was about £20 on Amazon, but more useful for hiking then creating litres of drinking water as you have to suck it up. Water purification tablets are very cheap online or in chemists. I bought a 50 pack just in case...we're near a waterfall

I think the most likely emergencies (other than power cuts , water outage from storms, floods, extreme droughts etc) are going to be cyber attacks on the supply chain

If you saw the shelves in m&s when they were hit & then imagine if that was higher up in the supply chain, or more widespread across retail you can see how we would get a early-covid situation more quickly & more severely.

Easy to overthink all this I think. I loosely maintain a household stash that can see us through a few days of each type of situation. If the water goes off we have 20l of water and plenty of other soft drinks, we have loads of clothes so laundry won’t be an emergency need, and always have a few packs of baby wipes in. Dog food I buy a month at a time, a month ahead so I have loads if there was a supply issue. If the power was off (which happened once here for 5 days in the depths of winter!) we have a log burner which keeps the house a steady temp if we reduce the rooms we are using and keep those doors closed, plus a gas BBQ for cooking, a solar charger for phones, and loads of candles plus a wind up torch. Supply issues with food are hard to predict, so I figure keeping a back up of every food group means I can muddle together meals of some description. In a truly emergency situation you’d eat dry cereal or cold baked beans or whatever.

Dont use a camping stove indoors. It would flood you with carbon monoxide so quickly the alarm would be no use.

The set up in a caravan is different.

If you want something for an emergency you need a portable cooker

Just buy a few extra items each week, things that keep e.g. rice, tinned food, wine, crisps, tea, pasta, wine, crisps, soup, baked beans and perhaps some wine and some crisps

I’ve probably got a bit more than most as I’d read about it in about early Jan this year for other countries so thought I’d do the same as wondered why we were not given same advice sooner, I would manage well for a few weeks with all types of supplies

I do love an emergency planning discussion.

I'm in a rural backward village & have horses & a few sheep in a badly accessible field with no electric.

We have a lot of power cuts in storms & always the last to come back on as our transformer just supplies 2 properties (as opposed to thousands in a town)

I've got a solar generator, a generator type thing that takes 12v fence batteries, enough head torches, torches & spotlights to get through lambing & an emergency brick phone that can switch between different networks to get the best signal.

Deliberately bought a gas hob when I bought a new cooker.

All stuff that I regularly need & use.

I reckon us rural, farming folk would be the last ones standing.

Nonsense. It's much more sensible to prepare now if you can.

Storing mine in sterilised empty milk containers, wherever they fit

Spot on.