So, do we think something is coming?

[Preppyprepper]

I'm not a commited prepper. I was one of the first in my circle to get that Covid was coming, as I read the news (several papers + BBC + social media) obsessively, and did a bit then. With the news at the moment, I'm getting a bit of deja vu.
Do you think something (not sure what, WW3, a cyber attack, whatever) is coming in the next few months? I've made a plan of what to buy in the coming months each payday (camp stove, battery powered radio) but can't decide if I'm being ridiculous, or just reacting to the increasingly unnerving news.

I'm in a job (healthcare, medic) where I was 'on the ground' in Covid, on stand by to go work in the temporary hospitals etc, so wouldn't be able to just wait it out at home, probably. Am I just a bit paranoid?

I bloody hope you are being paranoid 👀

Very happy to be told I need to stay away from the news and do some hobbies 😂

Something’s always coming. And inevitably, it will arrive. It’s sort of inevitable logically speaking. And when it does, we’ll all do our best to handle it.

I get that. But do you think it's here?
In the NHS we planned for years for bloody bird/swine flu, then covid took everyone off guard. I worked with lots of colleagues who were scoffing about it right up to lockdown, saying it was all a storm in a teacup

I suppose I’m quibbling about your assessment of what something big is. I didn’t do a lot for Covid, I didn’t feel the need to, but I did get water purification stuff. As I didn’t need it, I could argue that Covid wasn’t ’the big thing’. Everything kept running, power, fuel, water. No one starved. Society didn’t break down.

So what counts?

I guess I mean a big disruptive event. Like a cyber attack that cuts off electricity for a few days, or Britain getting involved in a war

With covid, we were short of some things for months. (Bog roll, dried fruits, eggs, pasta) Other things were fine. I had to rely on my stash of dried fruit and pasta for two or three months. Plus all dried goods as a church member was shopping for us and only ordered milk and fresh food. (DD needs a lot of veg/fruit due to disability)

We couldn't predict beforehand what was going to be short in the shops. We won't necessarily be right next time despite educated guesses. (There will be a next time)

Cyber attacks are likely, we've had several. (Co-op M and S, blood service, NHS, Jaguar )

We've had close calls with the National Grid. A while back a big chunk went out in the East of England due to several things going wrong at the same time. Big chunks of it go out during storms.

Weather extremes are likely.

Food issues are likely, (fertiliser not getting through the Straits of Hormuz during planting season) climate instability, wet winter.

Flu pandemics are always a possibility.

Food prices going up again and COL ongoing.

Illnesses/disability long or short term

Having back up plans are not paranoid.
Torches, power banks for phones, ability to cook (BBQ, camping stove) easy to prep food, spare cash.

Covid was big, although some people did ok.
Arwen was big for some areas
Heatwaves were big for other areas. (Wild fires burnt down several houses and threatened others)
Flooding is big if it's your area flooded.
It doesn't have to be countrywide nor effecting everyone to be "big"

Hmm. It’s interesting. We have water and power cut off for days at a time for natural reasons- Floods, storms. We cope. We’ve been at war several times in recent decades. It didn’t impact most of the population, though of course service people died. Riots. Strikes. It all gets managed.
I think something truly disruptive is extremely unlikely- we generally adapt. Tragedies happen, impact us all emotionally and sadly some people directly but the country goes on.

Rather than thinking about major world events consider events closer to home and hope they do not happen. Power cuts, redundancy, illness or injury meaning that you need to take a few months off work, loss of gas etc etc. If you have water, food, the means to cook, light and power and heat during winter to last a few days, cash in case card readers no longer work and bank machines go down, then you will be better off than most.

I always try to have a bit of stuff in - I did this even before Covid like afew extra tins, rice, pasta etc etc but not like 20 packets of stuff. Some extra toiletries and cleaning stuff but not enough to start a village shop!! To start with I would have absolutely nowhere to store all of this stuff but I think if everyone started panick buying like they did in Covid it’ll just push prices up further and become a difficult situation for everyone.

There will always be something tho

Money is a good one, actually. Losing access to banking systems and records so property and wealth is lost. That would be a massive disaster and society would struggle to function.

Skills like growing greens from kitchen scraps and pulses would be useful to look at. We lived off store cupboards for lent once. No shopping was done at all. UHT milk, the freezer, the cupboard goods… and all the salad and veg scraps were grown again on the window ledge. Celery goes on forever! Lots of pulses will sprout.

I do have a little bit of cash stashed but not loads like about £50 but that’s more emergency Chinese takeaway delivery money as it’s cash only 🤣

all joking aside we have bank accounts (and cards) with the post office and 2 high street banks so If one went down hopefully they all wouldn’t!

I'd use kind of risk×impact assessment.
How probable is that something will happen and how easy or hard is to get ready for that eventuality - when get ready means do something now which would make a meaningful difference in that situation.

One hand side, you have full scale ww3 with nukes around the globe. Probability is relatively small and getting ready for that is practically impossible.

On the other hand let's consider risk oof temporary nfrastructure breakdown.
Chances are much larger - it doesn't have to be caused by attack or sabotage, disrepair or unlucky malfunction is enough. (My country got the first big blackout ever last year. It was caused by unlucky coincidence of two moderate-impact issues and solved the same day, but we learned something).
It is relatively possible to get ready a bit - able people should aim to be self sufficient for a few days, just to give the state time to fix the problem.
So yes, having some bottled water, some food, hand torch and spare batteries, extra bin bags, basic medication, powerbank and a small radio sounds totally reasonable. Not because it would help in WW3, but because it would make your life easier in case of two fallen wires.

I like to be prepared enough to handle local short term disruption. We had no water for 5 days and were fine. We have a log burner, so a few days without power would still be warm. If it snows, we all have winter gear and there is enough food in the house to easily feed us for a week etc. I don't think many, bar a few in the USA with a bunker and years of food, could be prepped enough for long scale disruption.

I do believe that prices will rise this winter to possibly uncomfortable levels, at the same time as ai will cause companies to lay off expensive employees. Belt tightening for lots of us, but hopefully not worse than that.

Stay away from the news and get a hobby. Seriously, it’s bleak in lots of countries. Sudan more than most. We will be fine. Poorer, maybe.

I think the biggest worry we have is that world order seems to be shifting.

I mean since WW2 the USA has been the dominant superpower keeping everyone else to a degree in check.

However China has sort of crept up on us all with their growing economy and huge amount of natural resources. I always remember when Donald Trump tried to back China into a corner with his tariffs and the chinese kept their cool and did not back down. I think that was the first time I looked and thought 'jeez is the USA still the most dominant superpower or has China silently crept up and are now equal to them or stronger'.

We have this whole thing going on with Iran and lets be honest Iran and China are helping each other which is why the Chinese ships were getting through (prior to Trump's blockade). Trump has time and time again threatened Iran and then sort of had to back down (I mean was it not just last week he said he was going to wipe the whole society off the earth and then it got delayed again). Honestly the man is losing the USA so much credibility.

So what happens when order shifts and the USA is no longer in charge.

What will life look like for all of us when China/Iran/Russia is in charge.

On UK shores, many economists are now speaking up about the viability of the UK's finances. It costs us more to borrow now than Greece (remember when they got bailed out). Yip that is right the bond markets consider UK a bigger credit risk than Greece. We borrowed a huge amount last month (as usual) and the vast majority of it went on paying interest on our existing debt. So we are borrowing and not investing with it, not growing the economy, not using it to fix anything that will show a return, not even reducing the debt capital. Now that just screams we are in big trouble. We have been in decline for ages (about 50 years) but masked it by selling off our industries, council houses, our gold and for years now most of our 'growth' has been house prices. I reckon every govt will keep kicking the can down the road until the IMF steps in. In the meantime I see NHS getting worse, law and order getting worse, education getting poorer, benefits continue to soar, unemployment going up (we have the worst inflation and worst growth in the G7 now).

Last but not least we are definately at risk for attacks from Russia via our gas pipelines and our underwater cables. It would be really easy to cause a panic.

Sorry didn't mean to worry anyone. I keep a stock of food in and torches and batteries. I might buy a solar radio. I did have one but it was rubbish so might buy a better one. Apart from that I just try not to think about it.

We have had disruption before within the UK (strikes in the seventies, winter of discontent, powercuts etc) and we only really got out of all that thanks to Maggie Thatcher who was strong and decisive. The trouble is I don't see anybody capable within the UK political spectrum of turning the UK's troubles around.

My mum is widowed, one fridge freezer wasn’t enough for her so she bought another freezer 🤦‍♀️. We’ll just pop round to hers and see what she’s got, I’m sure she’ll share 🤣

Unless the power is affected

Exactly 😂
I was getting a plan in place in case all power + water + internet goes off, making sure we could cope for 5-7 days without having to go out to the shops (which would be chaos + possibly cards not working/unable to fake payment)
Anything longer than that i think is impossible to plan for

I like to have some cash in the house so that if there is a cyber attack and cashpoints are out of order, we can still get some essentials.
A battery powered radio (with a pack of unused batteries) sounds sensible as all my news sources are via WiFi, and I reckon when electicity is affected, I definitely want to listen to the news!

We have a (small) walk in larder and have quite a few tins of beans, tuna, tomatoes etc. I also have several packs of Merchant Gourmet mixed grains which you can eat without cooking. I don't use milk so don't have any UHT but might think of getting some skimmed milk powder as DH drinks a lot of tea. Although without electricity he will have to ration those! We do have a Kelly Kettle.

We could manage for probably 14 days as it's just DH and I. I was wondering about buying some extra cat and dog food, we get ours in tins and it could just go in the garage.

The one thing I did buy a few weeks ago is a portable, wind up radio. You can charge it up via the mains but, in an emergency, you can also charge it by winding it and it's got solar panels as well. Plus it doubles as a torch. It was about £20 and I thought it was worth the investment

Power and food distribution. We. import electricity and gas. Grid stability issues could result in drop in frequency which if not enough generation can be brought online quickly can result in blackouts.

Food distribution can be disrupted in various ways, such as some drivers choosing to drive slowly as they did in some parts of the UK yesterday. Bottle necks like the channel crossing can cause Just In Time deliveries to be arrive late. Crop yields may be down due to fertiliser issues, and other disruption to farming in UK & Europe. Air freight may become too expensive, so some fruit does not get delivered.

All sorts of things could happen. It may be a gradual decline, you may see some gaps on shelves. Prepare for supply interruption and hope that does not happen.

I have a pretty full pantry and so I'm focussing on growing things to supplement what remains available. My greenhouse and my kitchen and guest room window ledges currently contain tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, squashes (2 x types), aubergines, beans, various salad leaves and peas. I've planted buckets up with seed potatoes and outside I already have onions, garlic, perpetual spinach, carrots and broccoli in beds. I have six blackcurrant six redcurrant four gooseberry two blueberry and both summer and autumn fruiting raspberries. I also have five large rhubarb plants a whole bed of strawberries and a wide variety of herbs. I have five apple trees (various cooking and eating), two plum and an edible cherry. I also have a lemon tree and a lime tree which do provide fruit.

Plus four chickens who will give us four eggs a day.

I would never be able to feed four of us entirely from what I grow in the garden but I can certainly supplement significantly at certain times of the year.

I'd say think about what you'd ideally use in whatever circumstances, but at the same time maybe don't buy anything you wouldn't use in other circumstances (unless that really makes you feel more comfortable).

Here we've always got batteries, torches, candles, matches, cooking stove and a few gas cannisters, but then we're campers and I like candles in the winter, so all can be used here - also electricity tends to go down here 3/4x a year. Always keep a reasonable stock of painkillers/cold relief items as shopping is the last thing I want to do if I'm ill (but never more than I'd expect to use within the sell-by date). I guess I'm a prepper of sorts, as we've always got an extra pack of toilet rolls, bags of pasta, rice, cans pulses and tomatoes, longlife milk, tea, coffee, biscuits, extra bottle of cooking oil, spices, oh and cat food. I learnt the hard way with cat food, I struggled to get my boys required brand during lock down. Also, we use a lot of canned tomatoes and they were in short supply.

For the above reason, it means I don't need to panic buy, although I'm very much on top of keeping my canned tomatoes and cat food topped up.