Wind up radio?

[NigellasNeck]

Should I buy one? Dh thinks I'm being daft.

If I should which one ? There's loads at different prices.

They are a pretty basic prepping recommendation. Your DH presumably has a different attitude to the need to prep?

Yes. He didn't think we needed to buy bottles of water.

Or a battery one is fine

Yes true

Yes it's an area where different people have different approaches.

But unless you are short of money, or take it to an extreme, you should just do as you wish as owning some water and a radio doesn't harm him.

A radio is advised. If you get a battery one, you might want a solar battery charger too.

Thanks @concertinacornflake . I'm going to order one. And buy more water 😅

I was talking to a friend at work yesterday about the water. She said eww won't it go off. Who'd drink that. I said I'd rather drink old water than bacteria laden. She saw my point then.

Maybe I should go on the preppers board? Or will it make me go OTT?

I think the peppers board is interesting.

I think you have to pick your level, and then stop thinking. There are different levels on there.

Ours has a crank handle, solar panels, can take batteries, use a mains cable and be charged using a USB cable! Oh and has a torch and emergency alarm! Got it on amazon for about £20. We always have water and batteries in the house but have added a couple of small, light solid fuel stoves (like the army use) and have plenty of charcoal for the bbq should the electricity go off. We are working more on there being supply issues rather than the end of the world scenario.

I genuinely don’t understand the radio. This advice to have a few days of food in, is due to the expected gaps in food delivery network to supermarkets due to oil prices.

There’s also the possibility of brief power cuts over winter (as there always is the potential for, every winter, no more this winter than any other), but said power cuts are never for more than a few hours (unless you live rurally, in which case I can see a wind up radio being your only source of entertainment after a while once batteries on devices are dead etc). Why are people pretending that we’re anticipating some kind of nuclear attack/WW3?!?

Unless, like I said you live somewhere rurally that’s prone to long term power cuts, why on earth would you need a wind up radio!?

Gaps in the food supply network are not going to result in the entire family cooped up in some underground shelter, trying desperately to communicate with the outside world!? Even if there was a nuclear attack (heaven forbid), I doubt you’ll want to be surviving it…………..

Honestly, I think it’s like a hobby for some of them. They know it’s (mostly) irrational but they do really seem to enjoy it. I also think there’s an element of food insecurity to some of it and only finding that feeling of safety, once they know they have enough food for X amount of time.

There’s a battery powered radio in our bathroom
always has and we always charge our batteries and have loads of them on hand and lots of power banks

have a camping cupboard in the house with all the torches and that in it

we go to the shops regularly anyway every other day as we live in a flat and I she shop is on the way home from work anyway

il pick up some water

other than that im not doing anything else

we live in London On a busy street with 9 flats in the building so we aren’t going to be starved of information or anything

if it’s an actual war or like a nuclear explosion - 3 days worth of food not gonna help us survive long term is it

It's not about gaps in food delivery. Well, that might be part of it. And it's not about nuclear, or even 'conventional' war. It's more cyberattacks on critical infrastructure upon which we now routinely rely, including Internet and banking. If communications are cut, for whatever reason, then public service announcements could still be accessible on radios. Or, if El Nino results in much stronger storms and flooding this year, then having the means of sustaining yourself and your family for a few days would seem sensible.

Thank you everyone.

We have loads of batteries so just use a battery one.

Too late 🙈

But why would a cyber attack mean everything would be cut off to the point whereby we need a radio?! Mobile phone masts as well as every broadband provider? At the same time? Find that hard to believe. I also fail to understand why people are bragging about how many gas canisters they have stored?! So these cyber attacks are going to blast all our heating systems AND the national grid as well, is it?!?!

It arrived today and it's fab. Dab radio so I can get absolute 80s. I had it in the window getting the solar energy. Dh likes it too. It's small and has a torch. Plus you can charge your phone on it. It'll be handy for camping too.

You don't have to believe anything you don't want to believe.

You might want to read about why engineers consider these possibilities to be believable.

I have a battery powered radio in my car

windup radio and torch as well as charger - that's what i have

What brand is this, please?

If the electricity is out then so are many things like mobile and broadband. They usually need electricity to broadcast a signal. I promise you that if power, mobile and broadband are down then you’ll be very grateful for a battery powered radio. I assume that there’s a government radio station in the UK, like BBC or something? In Australia we have ABC. It’s the primary source of information and announcements in weather disasters. When we lost power for almost 4 days during a major flood we didn’t have a battery powered radio. To find out anything I’d call my mum on a landline phone that didn’t require any electricity (these are now obsolete). She’d turn on her tv and I’d listen to the news over the phone. If I’d had a battery powered radio I would have used that.

I now have a USB rechargeable, solar rechargeable, wind up rechargeable radio with a torch and power bank built in. Very handy and versatile bit of equipment.

I completely agree. But Brexit and Covid proved that a lot of people don’t like to listen to experts.

The whole of Europe is preparing for WW3, we’ve been told to expect it within months. And while it’s not expected to be a nuclear war, and the chance of being invaded by troops is very low, we are still an island and remain vulnerable to food shortages. The gas pipes and internet cables that run under the channel are at risk of being cut. Russia are expected to sabotage our water and electricity supplies, and cause problems for the NHS and our supply chains (these attacks are already happening - Our local hospital was victim of a Russian cyber attack at the end of 2024 and were offline for a few weeks. It caused mayhem with cancelled appointments and treatment).

If people want to bury their heads in the sand, that’s up to them. But they can’t come complaining and blaming others when they’ve got no water/food/etc.

Your car radio? Do you really want to be going out to your car in shitty weather to hear the latest news and warnings? What about draining the car battery or fuel to operate the radio?

Has the UK never been through shit weather? This sort of preparation is standard in Australia. Floods, storms, cyclones, bushfires, etc.

It’s in my garage which I can access from the house. It’s an EV so it’s got enough juice to power the radio for the best part of a year probably.

I do have rechargeable radios in the shower so if I wanted to listen in the house I could use those. I can recharge them from the car if needs be.