Anyone planning on buying a wind up FM radio?

[Kepler22B]

As part of the Be Ready campaign https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwd094x57p32o

households are advised to have basic supplies in, in case of any disruption. Which brings us inline to quite a few other countries. Most is pretty normal and easy to get or we have in already.

Except for a wind up FM radio. I don’t have one of those. But I do love a gadget. Anyone have a wind up radio or planning on buying one?

I have got 100s of tea candles. I bought a massive box from a charity shop for a fiver. I wonder how may would be needed to boil enough water for a cup of tea.

We thought about the wind up radio but decided to stick with the battery powered DAB/FM/AM radios we already have. We buy bulk packs of batteries on Amazon.
On LBC last night, I think it was Simon Marks who had a couple of guests mention power banks. They sound pretty useful so I’ll have a look for one.

We have cars and there are radios in those.

I don't understand the need for sleeping bags on the list too.
We have sleeping bags but they're the bulky sort you use when you drive to a campsite, they aren't hiking ones.
They haven't explained the need for sleeping bags that they are forseeing, so I'm perplexed.

We have one the younger kids are fascinated by it

Or if in a flat - straight in the bag and out the window. Don't turn your house into a biohazard.
This is like a Scene from Blackadder II.
Throwing crap out the window, why not just stick your bum outside the window and save on plastic.

Unless its a Renault like mine the radio stopped working not long after I bought it 🙃 I never bothered getting it fixed because I can plug my phone into it to play music a wind up radio is a small cheap item takes up very little space ours doubles as a torch

Can I ask if there’s an obvious benefit that I haven’t seen in getting a wind up rather than battery radio. Of course I’d get a good supply of batteries in . ?

And also buy lots of bottled water - at least 9 for a family of 5 - (5l bottles), which you must monitor and replace regularly.

Disclaimer, I don't know what the use by date is on a properly stored bottle of water.

I understand that. It’s just more stuff in the house and all adds up. It’s getting everyone to spend on various items.

And agree with pp on water, how frequently to use it. We bought some ages ago and it’s just been there that time.

I'm not doing any prepping at all. If WW3 breaks out I'm standing under the nearest bomb because I have no intention of living in a post apocalyptic world thank you. The only things I have stocked up is cat biscuits because the whinging if I had no food for the cats would be epic.
I went to Morrisons for a sandwich at lunchtime and the crowds were epic, people were running about with massive trollies full of food and loo roll - it's not even raining here in Somerset where I am.

Sigh. No one's asking you to prep for an apocalypse, simply to keep a few things in so you can look after yourself for a few days while national resources focus on getting the infrastructure back up and looking after the most vulnerable.

They're planning for power outages and cyber attacks, not bombs.

@FedUpCelery Re: sleeping bags I am guessing a couple of things - if your heating is off they can help you keep warm or if you need to be evacuated to a rest centre than bringing a sleeping bag is useful.

We got evacuated once (a half built block of flat next door to us caught fire and we were evacuated in the middle of the night for safety reasons). We were put up in the local bus garage - sitting on a hard plastic chair in the draughty tea room of the bus garage for hours in our PJs was not a whole lot of fun!.

Don't worry. Just make a few small preparations.

There was a big burst water main near us recently. The water was off for a few hours then off and on over the next few days while it all got fixed.
I was not in any way prepared before because I think a dramatic breakdown in society is highly unlikely. But a water leak is pretty common so after that I bought 12 bottles of water. And I might think about a few other things. Battery charger packs probably would be sensible.

I remember Dad making us a crystal radio in the 60s. Showing off the skills he acquired doing National Service. Luckily, for him, the Korean War ended when it did and his Jungle radio building skills were never put to the test. The crystal radio worked.

I made a crystal radio as a child, it's something every young boy did (and I had a Dad who didn't realise I sas a girl). The loss of these kinds of skills is why this advice is necessary.

This. Wind up anything is pretty pointless.

This.

What’s a grammar phone? Is it like a
gramophone? Or is it some new device to keep you occupied during ww3 with sentence structure?

Plenty of winding up going on for sure.

depends where you live. All of my adult life I have lived in places that had powercuts on a regular if not frequent basis (Hants, Surrey, Somerset, New Jersey US) Apart from a few years recently, cooking has always been by electricity so I have always kept a means of lighting and a means of heating a kettle or simple food. All the radios I have ever had have been battery operated. None of my adult homes have been in cities but none of them in the wilds of nowhere.

Okay that surprises me.
Trust me though for many of us power cuts are not normal. Last time they were normal for me was the seventies. So this is a real change,

Yes, I'm wondering how long the internet would have to be down before someone would think I know! I'll go and find that wind up radio and crank it up.

Last time the internet was down, it lasted a full day and we whinged a bit, my husband contemplated driving into work so that he could continue and I got a book out. Didn't think anything of it because everything else seemed pretty none apocalyptic.

Now if the electricity was off and the internet was down, we'd be driven mad by people's alarms and might go out and chat to our neighbours, eventually, or get in the car to see if we can get to a spot with internet.

If not, then we might put on the car radio but we'd have to be suspecting something was seriously up - the sort of thing that would be worthy of a radio announcement. I don't think mine is even tuned in.

We don't live in a city where an outage might cause panic, we don't live in a flooding area and so on.

In the last couple of years I bought a radio alarm clock for DC bedroom, they use it to keep the time for getting ready for school in the morning. I didn't want an Alexa. It takes 4 AAA batteries. I keep meaning to stock up on them in the supermarket. That's my back up.

I've got a collection of candles. Several string LED lights that take AA batteries. A torch or two. And dp cycles to work so we have a collection of bike lights around the house. Most are rechargeable but some are battery. We are lucky that we often have plenty of food/snacks in.

The bottled water companies will get a big boost to sales every two years, or more people will just switch to using bottled over tap on a regular basis

When I was in the girl guides, I went to camp once and never again.
We all had to help with digging a great big pit and some sort of tent was erected over it for privacy.

I've pretty much blotted out all other details other than how ill I felt from not pooing for a week.