To stockpile 72 hours of supplies

[seriouslessness]

..in case of disaster or attack. A new preparedness strategy inspired by Nordic countries and Germany, who already do this.

Is this something you already do, or will do?

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/26/stockpile-supplies-72-hours-disasters-attack-eu-tells-citizens

Yes, I deliberately keep a whole lettuce in at all times, should keep my family of 4 going.

My sister is very much screwed if anything happens as usually doesn't have one meal in the house. I'm gluten free and when there are offers often stock up. Also I really like sweet treats and buy them and then freeze/leave in cupboard. I could probably do a few months, although not with veg. By the end it would be down to the really weird stuff that's lurking 🤣

My husband’s food shopping obsession would finally be justified. I reckon we’d have enough for a month at least.

A huge swathe of Ireland was without water for days during the January storms - no electric - no pumping

If there is a huge disaster I'd rather die quickly tbh. A few days worth of loo roll and tinned fish isn't going to improve things much.

I don’t have much in my house. The 4 of us would be pretty much starving after about 5 days. Oh well. I’m not sure I’d actually want to survive some sort of apocalyptic situation.

In the run-up/down to Brexit I stocked up on things like pasta, tinned tomatoes, tinned potatoes & veg, yeast, flour, long life milk etc as I was concerned that supplies would be disrupted. Boy were my (elderly) mother & me glad that I had when lock-down happened a few months later as the shelves in supermarkets were suddenly completely devoid of these things.

My DH teases me that I keep enough loo roll & general supplies to keep us going for at least 3 months. 😂

Looting and theft, while I don't condone it is understandable for food, supplies etc. I'd happily raid a pharmacy for my family if need be. But killing someone is a whole different level !!!

72 hours without teabags could turn me quite nasty to be fair

They may view you the same though...

3 days! I have enough tinned food to feed the whole street for weeks. I can’t guarantee that is all in date, but if the s**t hits the fan and the zombie apocalypse materialises, you are all more than welcome to pop over to my place for dinner. Please bring wine.

Most countries (including UK) have always recommended you keep 3 days of supplies including bottled water. It's not just for war, but it's in case something happens your water supply or some storm happens and we can't get to shops etc..

HRTFT but George Monbiot wrote about this recently.

It seems a civic thing to do - we’ll all flatten the spike of any crisis if households have built up a buffer against a sudden disruption in food supplies. I think it’s a good idea tbh.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/16/britain-food-supply-donald-trump-stockpile

Good idea about the water but I don't have space for storing loads of stuff and the last time I bought plenty of water I forgot about it and it was past its Use By date before I realised. I would assume we won't have electricity so freezer stuff would be no good. I could use the gas cooker in my caravan as mains gas would likely be gone too so could heat stuff up for a while - maybe I ought to get a spare gas bottle just in case!

Fair enough, I'd not thought about that 😂

I’ve got at least a couple of weeks worth of food at any given time though would get boring quickly however I don’t have bottled water stored, I do have a large hot water tank so that could be used for a few days if we didn’t shower

Wait... water goes off??

If Vlad decides to attack us, you won’t need three days of supplies, as he’ll pop a few nukes over to us and we’ll be dead.

Thats a pleasant thought for a Thursday afternoon.

I'm in Devon so plenty of fresh water, mushrooms to forage, and apparently wild boar on dartmoor so we're all set. Dd is obsessed with bugs so we have lots of woodlice, beetles, millipedes and the like so plenty to snack on if necessary.

We also live in a rather unsavoury part of Devon so there will likely be a crackhead or two roaming around hawking steaks, washing powder and Gillette razors.

Water has bb date. I ghink eventually plastic degrades and you may get microplastics in the water or it won’t taste as good. It’d probably be fine for ages though.

Oh ok, that makes sense. I'd still drink it in an emergency though. Or even just if I'm a bit thirsty.

Easily have 3 days worth of food in but if the power goes off that would be a problem.
Trying to cook everything from the freezer before it goes off on a camping stove would be a challenge

72 hours without teabags could turn me quite nasty to be fair

Don't worry ladies I have at least a year's supply & am willing to share. I'm incapable of speech in the mornings until I've had at least 3 mugs of tea & need regular top-ups in order to keep functioning. 😂

If a big enough national/international disaster happened that required everyone to hole up, I don't think 3 days is going to be enough!

I have often thought about getting a little camping stove as we're all electric for our cooking, so it could be helpful in a power cut anyway.