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?

No idea if the 3 day emergency advice is serious or something likely to happen soon

The only thing I am sure of is if there is an emergency it will take way more than 3 days for the government to get things back to a normalish state. They are completely useless.

It wouldn’t be a big deaL to go without food for 3 days though, provided you could access some liquid.

Seen the emergency planning have you? 🙄

We have a few torches and batteries for powercuts and breakfast bars and some tins of soup we can warm up on a fire if needed if the weather is bad and we are cut off or something. Also a small amount of water, in case of pipes bursting. I think mild preparation, if you can afford it, is sensible but there's no need to go too far with it.

Good job it's not the government doing it then isn't it?

There's loads of government agencies that provide the response. Most can set up in minutes or hours, this is routinely rehearsed.

Ministers just poke their nose in and argue about funding them properly.

Seen the current state of the country?

I have no faith that in an emergency the planning or infrastructure the government believe they have will be ok

It’s very sensible to have things to tide you over in an emergency. We have enough food that we could survive several weeks to a month if we needed to. We have a generator. We have a water purification system and tablets. We have multiple gas cookers that we could cook on if a power outage. We have a solar charging unit (we use it for camping, but would also be useful in an emergency). Not because we’re preppers. We’re not. Because we live rurally and we’re sensibly stocked up. We have all these things for reasons totally unrelated to thinking the global order is about to collapse.

I used to live in an earthquake prone region and had to take an earthquake preparedness class for work. It’s not even stockpiling. It’s things like everyone in the house knowing where to turn off the water and the gas, knowing where the torches are kept. Having cash was a big one. I don’t use cash, but we were told to always have a stash of cash in coins and small bills so that if the power goes out, you aren’t relying on card payments or a cash machine, neither of which will work.

If you take essential medicines, order enough to keep a small extra stock. I have several health conditions that require me to be on medication daily for life. I could survive, miserably, without some of it, but one is absolutely essential to keep me alive. Like insulin. We are told to always have a 3 month supply. I also have several sets of emergency rescue medication. This is really helpful because a few years ago during COVID one of my meds experienced a global shortage (they reduced manufacturing due to making something COVID related instead). It became very hard to source. Because I had several months supply, I was okay, but lots of people really suffered.

I think 3 days personally is quite short though. If shit hits the fan, you’ll need more than 3 days. 2-3 weeks is probably more sensible in terms of food and the most basic stuff you need to live. Like I said, I’m not at all some nutjob conspiracy theorist! But I have lived in areas that experience a lot of natural disasters and in areas with high risk of terror attacks where we’ve had to shelter in place. It’s just sensible.

What does the economy have to do with disaster planning?

I have some bits in the hall cupboard but i always do as i tend to buy when on offer.
Housing association moaned about hoarding. So you cant fucking win!

Yes true I do have plenty of fat stores though I would probably feel quite unwelI. Also have some bottled water and quite a lot of oat milk.

Yes it is serious, yes you should do it.

There are various posters who delight in saying it’s all unnecessary. I recommend you don’t listen to them.

The government is telling you what needs to be done, and if you don’t take basic precautions to look after yourself, you’ll be told not to come crying when faced with a problem. This country is crap at basic resilience - that’s got to change.

I use government in this case to mean those in control on behalf of the country/ government.

Coving was a shining example of them not being up to the job.

I was pregnant bored scrolling in the December before lockdown and even mumsnet posts I saw on the prepper threads had clocked the virus in China and were starting to get organised to deal with it. The government on the other hand acted too later and too strongly in some areas of their planning. They made a bad situation worse. Therefore I have little faith in what planning is currently being done but would welcome being pleasantly surprised.

Was raised on an island... quite large, but population 350, 1 combined shop/pub/Post office/hardware store/radio schoolroom. Always had enough food in to last 4 weeks, let alone 3 days. Plus available fish, seafood, root veg, cabbage, berries and rhubarb (all that grew!). And a water tank fed from a well that could be hand pumped if needed.

Nowadays have got comfortable, and suburban, but we still have 4x5l bottles of water and 4 large 2 gallon collapsible plastic containers in the garage, and waterbutts (lack of water to flush the loo is one of my biggest fears after having to share a "community" hired portaloo during 2007 floods.)
We have room to store stuff, so it is easy to keep extra stuff by for what seem to be more frequent emergencies anyhow. (Floods, heatwaves, power lines down, local phone mast blown down in storms etc) who knows what El Niña will bring.

The emergency responders will still be duty bound to help all the people who could have prepared them but didn't.

But it will take longer because they'll be helping the won'ts as well as the can'ts.

They’re not really telling you though are they? I don’t recall an information leaflet through the door, or Andy taking over the 6pm news. It’s buried in gov.uk if you go looking for it

It isn't just the economy though is it. It is most areas the politicians and government employees are supposed to be managing.

So why has everyone not been told this ?
Only people on facebook groups seem to know all this.

This was in the Metro on Thursday. Other newspapers have been running their own versions of this story with various lists of things you should buy.

Thing is Covid is a perfect example of why no one needed to prep in advance.

I stockpiled 2 weeks food in the weeks before lockdown. No hurry. No one else had an issue, unless I missed all the people who starved to death.

I have a pantry that was half food storage, half general household stuff. I've cleared out the household stuff and filled the shelves with pasta, bread flour, yeast, rice, weetabix, porridge oats, tinned tomatoes, dried herbs, tuna etc over the last few shops. This is more from what I've seen about El nino affecting harvests elsewhere and the drought through this years harvest meaning wheat might be impacted soon.

Going to add bottled water and batteries, already have torches and power banks and a log burner that we could use for cooking if we really had to.

thats not government advice. That’s a news article.

Take 5 mins to look into it and you’ll see the civil service organise disaster planning and these plans pass from government to government with minimal interference

I'vd never read or heard anything about 3 days' supplies for anything.

But it could be 3 days of anything. Its not necessarily 3 days of total collapse that you should prepare for.

They are balancing the messaging. Too much and people don’t listen or think the end of the world is nigh. Too little and they do nothing and so believe the govt will step in to save them in an emergency.

By publicising the message how they have, they can tell people they were told (and point to examples) so excuse themselves from an obligation to provide too much assistance. they also don’t get massive flak now for the abject failure to tell the uk population to be more self reliant up to thisi point.