Crisis What Crisis? Is my friend over doing the stockpiling and am I too? Continuation thread (2)

[RedToothBrush]

Continuation of the AIBU to think my friend is overdoing emergency stockpiling thread for discussion about the government advice to stockpile for an imminent emergency and what the heck that emergency might actually be.

I'm moving it over to chat from AIBU as it makes a bit more sense to be there at this point.

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5576816-aibu-to-think-my-friend-is-overdoing-emergency-stockpiling?page=1

Spoiler: it's more of a perfect storm of lots of factors coming together to potentially form one great clusterfuck from economic woes, global energy shortages (mainly diesel), potential food shortages, war and madmen to crazy weather patterns rather than a clear identifiable singular thread.

This is a practical thread and a bit of a handhold thread to make sense of events and how they may affect you. This is not an end of the world thread.

We are however going through a period where various governments throughout Europe think there is an elevated risk of some kind of problem due to global instability and we should start to get our heads around the possibility of needing to be ready for anything.

Remember an emergency can range from a temporary unexpected event to a much longer crisis but the underlying principles generally stay the same.

So this is for everything from tips and considerations about what might be a good idea to do /save minimise potential risks to just straight old political bollocks talk about how things are developing.

This is the official government information and advice, if you want further details on what the actual recommendations are:
https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/

This does actually explicitly say to write a personalised plan for your household which everyone knows and understands and to talk about the issues you may face to help you be able mobilise for any situation which might arise. Which is exactly what this thread is ultimately for.

@OhYouBadBadKitten I have zero clue about computer things so zero idea of the impact it could have!
If anyone has a moment, could they briefly explain like I'm a 5 year old please?

I had a look at the pictures from Italy, it has made me think I need more for my store. The shelves are completely empty there.

Will get more rice and pasta later and beans and pulses and canned tomatoes

Thank you for all of the updates above.

Im getting twitchy that im away and cant do any prepping, i dont have a huge amount, need some more food supplies really

Seen they are evacuating holiday parks in Cornwall over the storm

Essentially they are vulnerabilities that give hackers a backdoor to run any code they like on a server or website.
It could be a simple as taking over the site and changing it so its full of crap like selling pharmaceuticals for example.
It could allow them to steal passwords and email addresses. Also banking details.
They could quietly add in malicious code to run bots off it, or to target visitors who click on links.

So Id hope large companies would be on top of it. But it's an issue that also affects hobby website owners as well as corporate and volunteer websites. If you run WordPress for example, you need to check that you are running a patched version.

The problem really comes I guess with institutes that run old servers that people have forgotten about. It could be a back door into their whole system.

I actually dont know very much about it. I only learn about website stuff when its critical I do so. Others here will be far more knowledgeable.

It's more than just truck driver protests though. Or students. There's a particular flag that's seen all over the place in these protests. The Antifa people are busy. The anarchists are busy. They're seeing an opportunity to take governments down and bring destruction, so they're going all out. I'm glad Italy are cracking down hard on it. France needs to do the same.

@OhYouBadBadKitten thank you for the explanation!

Absolutely not bots.

There are statements by major supermarket chains stating there may be shortages.

We know that there is a pile of stuff not being reported.

The trouble in Albania resulted in a UK statement condemning the violence (again can be referenced) that didn't so much as touch the headlines here.

I have never seen the editorial decisions by the British Media be THIS bad. That in itself is troubling, because they are making active decisions NOT to report these things for some reason.

If I can find out this information and check out its reliability and sources, then the paid media certainly can. It means they don't want to or there is literally no one left who does old fashioned proper reporting anymore. That's bloody scary in itself and shows the move to cheap columnists, rent a quote soundbites, paid for ads and just infoentertainment substituted for actual news because actual news no longer drives interaction nor revenue.

And even more worrying is the government wants to have YT put the BBC and other 'trustworthy news sources' at the top of users' feeds so that we see that first. BBC 24 hr livestreaming has just started a week ago on YT - in preparation for this?

https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/bbc-news-live-youtube-launch/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c60merk2je80o

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jun/22/uk-youtube-tiktok-established-media-prominence-misinformation-risk

Oh and remember they'll make you pay a TV licence fee for watching YT as a result, even if you never watch the BBC!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-licence-fee-charter-youtube-tax-netflix-disney-b3067500.html

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/chat/5591677-crisis-what-crisis-the-one-you-start-to-wish-youd-stockpiled-like-your-crazy-friend-continuation-thread-3
New Thread.
I will definitely be off line for a large part of the weekend. My timing is not my ideal choice to say the least... I will check in, if and when I can.

It may kick off bigtime though. Or it may not.

Thanks for the new thread RTB, we've motored through this one!

@RedToothBrush link seems not to work?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5591677-crisis-what-crisis-the-one-you-start-to-wish-youd-stockpiled-like-your-crazy-friend-continuation-thread-3?reply=155485561

Try again

That one works

Hopefully it doesn't all kick off over the weekend, I'm going to a gluten free living expo and would like to enjoy it!

Maybe I have missed it but is some internet down?

I can't report missed bin collection to local council and I can't access a job site 😕

Yes. A large amount of the internet is down because they found a big vulnerability in php code. Php code runs about 70% of the internet. Including a lot of structure which is now dated but underpins current structure but because it's undocumented and not maintained regularly in a lot of cases, they have to find it before they can even do anything about it.

They have to do a patch - but they have to detect everything first before they can do that which will take time - the advice whilst doing that is to take your website and everything you have offline immediately because it's that much of a risk.

A huge amount on government infrastructure is php based.

It's basically a nightmare and a total disaster in its own right to fix.

In the meantime, the weakness is being exploited by any one nefarious who possibly can.

It's BAD.

We had a power cut this morning that lasted a couple of hours
All good, but we couldn't make calls send messages/whatsapps throughout.
I think that is the thing that I would find the most difficult to be honest, not being able to contact anyone.

I was talking to DM later, lives 10 mins away, she really has no idea of the implications of no power and can't really get her head around the fact that she has no 'landline' anymore.
I've told her that in anything lasting longer than 24h we would go and get her.

Just has an interesting trip to our large tesco extra.

No water apart from a few small bottles of the very expensive stuff.
No plain flour whatsoever.
No bread flour apart from about 5 packs of a fancy seeded on

a large display of tinned meat and fish and way more people around it than you would generally see.

I am annoyed since I had both water and flour on my shopping list.

I think it must be area dependent. I did a big shop this morning at our huge Tesco extra in Hertfordshire and it was fully stocked. I bought a large pack of water from fully stocked shelves and a few extra tins. No one else around in those aisles where I was at all and all shelves fully stocked.

The reality is that stocking up now shouldn't cause any cause any issues other than of a very short term nature. It shows people are listening though.

I also did a big shop today, I only bought one bottle of water but did see a few people basically just buying trolleys of water. The shelves in general were full apart from one section so I guess thst might have been a broken freezer. It was busier than usual.

Quite alarmed by all the empty shelves in Tesco today.. clearly lots of peppers here

Interestingly we also had a power cut this morning.. at some point I overbought candles so I’ll never be short of light! Did make me think about charging stuff ..

Anyone trying to fill their store cupboard all at once in response to the release of this government campaign is not a prepper.

Messaging from the government was poor; there was never any expectation that everyone should try and buy the stuff all at once.
There is a new thread by the way.