AIBU to wonder whether the three day emergency advice is serious?

[Mich1986]

I know I might sound crazy, but is anyone else worrying about all the posts about stockpiling and prepping for 3 days that the government is telling us to do? Is anyone actually taking their advice and buying torches, extra water and wind up radios? I just don’t know whether to take it seriously?

I hope I live in your street! I can contribute firewood and a firepit that really knows its stuff.... Trying to think what else......I have about 4 dozen paper cups in the attic to save on the washing up. If everyone can bring a bottle that would be grand.

A SARS-like illness (COVID-19) was first officially reported on December 31, 2019, when Chinese health authorities alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) to a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China.
There had been a few mentions in SE Asian news sources prior to this.

I may have confused you @MrsPernicious

I am referring to threads like the one from earlier this year where a poster said she saw a report on it the BBC or similar in December

Read if you dare

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/impacts-of-el-nino-on-the-uk/impacts-of-el-nino-on-the-uk

Yes j remember the sounds of that train coming in Nov /Dec without a doubt.

Oh joy, according to this we are likely to have shortages of coffee and cocoa (aka chocolate) but fear not, there will be an excess of soya beans.....I'm thrilled 🙄

hmm i’m not so sure about this. Went to my local costco on saturday and the queues were wrapped all the way round the outside. I haven’t seen it like that since covid times. People are bulk buying

I knew about covid around Christmas 2019 if not before and it was being talked about on here months before lockdown. Absolutely no insider info. Just a real interest in new disease outbreaks because of my background/ degree. Like any interest, anything unusual catches your eye and sparks interest. Besides I rember the weeks before lockdown people on mainstream TV saying it would never come here. I guess that's a valid opinion if you know nothing about virology. Like knowing about it months before lockdown is valid if you do. I dont remember being really scared. A bit scared but not terrified. Its just fear of the unknown. We like to know where we stand.

I just advance searched the word virus on here for 1st November to 31st December and there are quite a few posts of people talking about a horrible virus they've got that is making them feel more ill than they've ever felt before.

There was a horrible virus going round then but I'm not 100% sure it was all covid - possibly a tiny bit of it was.

Are you talking about the below. I think newspapers and conspiracy theorists are blowing it out of proportion. It is just a campaign to raise awareness for emergencies. It is not unusual with escalating conflicts, energy crises and random weather tbh. In my view it is something generally everyone should be prepared for to some extend. In this day and age, keeping some cash is also must. A global power outrage or a random hack to online payments and we are all effed with no access to cash!

https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/

I just searched using AI when mumsnet posters started to talk about a Chinese virus ( because I was starting to doubt my own memory of the prepper threads I saw). Anyway this is what it said:

People on the UK parenting forum Mumsnet first began actively discussing a new virus in China in January 2020.

While a tiny handful of users tracking international news noted a "mysterious pneumonia" cluster at the very end of December 2019, discussion did not pick up traction on the boards until mid-to-late January 2020.

(So my memory is correct some people on here were talking about the virus in December 2019)

It's exactly that but apparently people can't be expected to look on the actual website that the government uses for communication of official advice with the public and there needs to be broadcasts on news programmes that most of the population never watches and delivery of leaflets to every household, where experience shows us that many people don't still have it a year later.

As well as making it harder to update the information and would have people complaining about the wasteful use of money, paper and energy to print and distribute said leaflets.

Plus of course planning for potential disruption like any sensible developed nation is not mere common sense and following advice and policy from the likes of the OECD, WHO, UN etc and only intended to provide basic resilience for minor disruption or until official provisions can be stood up but a sign that 'they' know that some specific bad thing will happen on Tuesday 3rd November at 10.45 am but are telling the nation 'don't worry it will be fine you will survive the nuclear attack because you've got a couple of extra cans of soup in' when of course the people on the internet who haven't left their bedrooms in decades know better than emergency planning professionals who've been working on disaster planning for the same amount of time.

And breathe.....

Well at least they've now got a reason for buying all those trolleys full of bottled water you see people leaving there with.

I would have said that we were well stocked for food, toilet paper and cat food because we've always maintained a store cupboard instead of buying everything week to week, which makes no sense to me but one thing we don't have is a supply of water so getting some of that is on the to do list but I'm not rushing to do it while the whole country is in panic mode because I expect if you try to buy it now only the £2.50 litres of sparkling fancy water will be left when what we want to buy is the 5 litres for 99 p basic water.

Yes, this. Flooding could make mains water undrinkable (especially with our appalling post-privatisation deterioration of the water/waste infrastructure). We know that this will be a stormy winter. Water for drinking is the first thing we should be thinking of storing, especially in cities. It’s just sensible.

Don’t be daft. Imagine if the government had run Covid comms by quietly updating gov.uk every day 🙄

I’m not buying water full of microplastics. When it’s not needed I won’t drink it so it’s a total waste.

You keep detailed information on the website then you put short updates out everywhere, but with the caveat to check the website for more details.

So you keep control of information, don't have to update multiple sources and don't have people making up their own version of the information.

Like in COVID where people were adamant you were only allowed to exercise for an hour a day and only allowed to shop once a week and only allowed to buy essentials not anything you could do without.

So lets hope your water supply is never cut off. Because if it is, it's likely your water company will bring you bottled water in the first instance while they're sorting the problem.

I think we could all plan ahead in case power/water/transport went down eg:
Have some bottled water in the house (can be out the tap)
Have a torch with batteries
Have a power bank to charge phones
Have something like wet wipes or hand sanitizer
Have something you could eat without having power eg canned fish, fruit and veg, nuts, biscuits, bread (in freezer) and also don’t run essential supplies like canned food, petrol, medicine down to zero - top up as needed.

i have a torch, high capacity power bank, camping lantern, wind up radio, 17l of water, baby wipes, canned and bottled food, and extra loo paper. I always have nuts, seeds and chocolate in stock.

Is chocolate essential 😂😂😂😂

You must know that some people struggle to find enough for one day, surely ?

I forgot about the people that during covid made up extra imaginary rules

Hours of debates on mumsnet of people defending rules that didn't actually exist or trying to lecture others into following said rules. That was a fun time ...............

That would have been better than MPs like Gove making random extra rules up.