Britons will be urged to stockpile tinned food, batteries and bottled water under a new campaign launched by the UK government to encourage the public to prepare for emergencies.
Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister, will on Wednesday unveil a new website designed to help households mitigate potential harm from an array of risks, ranging from flooding and power outages to biosecurity crises such as another pandemic.
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The “Prepare” website launched on Wednesday calls on households to stock up on bottled water. It suggests a minimum supply of about three litres of drinking water per person per day, but recommends 10 litres per person per day — to aid basic cooking and hygiene needs — as a more comfortable level of supplies.It also urges people to buy and store non-perishable food that “doesn’t need cooking, such as ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables”, as well as a tin opener, plus baby supplies and pet food where relevant.
Battery or wind-up torches and radios, a first aid kit, and wet wipes are among other emergency supplies detailed on the government checklist.
Speaking at the London Defence Conference, Dowden will say “resilience begins at home” and cite polling by the conference showing that only 15 per cent of people have an emergency supply kit in their homes, while more than 40 per cent of people do not have three days’ supplies of non-perishable food and water.
Government officials said the advice would bring Britain in line with nations such as Finland and Japan, which are regarded as leaders in citizen resilience.
40 per cent of people do not have three days’ supplies of non-perishable food and water.
How are they suppose to pay for it? Food bank usage is only going up, how is having three days of emergency food on stand by a realistic prospect for some households?
Generally you don’t buy this all in one go. The idea is to buy one or two extra things per week and build the stockpile slowly.
Millions of people are already having to skip meals because they don’t make enough to feed themselves everyday, where is this money for one or two extra items suppose to come from?
And also to rotate through it.
Use the emergency food in regular cooking, and replace it. This avoids things going off.
Perhaps you’re just supposed to wait until this apparently impending disaster, and then raid your local food bank. Perhaps we should consider them off-site storage.
Wow what a cheap and pointless policy.
Notice how it doesn’t actually involve the government doing anything other than setting up the website and then tells you that it’s your responsibility.
They’re supposed to run the administration of the country, they’re the ones that are supposed to supply the emergency supplies when needed, what’s the pointing government if they don’t do that.
I think that ‘resilience in depth’ is a reasonable idea. The NHS exists, but I still have a first aid kit at home.
In practice, I think it will be difficult fir a household to store 3 days drinking water.
I can store 3 days worth of water but that rather assumes I have only to do it for myself. It for a large firmly would take up more space than most people have access to. You also can’t keep bottled water for very long because the plastic eventually contaminates the water. So your best bet would be to buy a water filter and keep that full and regularly refreshed, but you’re still not going to have enough water for 3 days for four people.
120 litres (4 people, 10 litres per person per day, 3 days) of water is also 120kg. Pretty unwieldy.
Bathtubs are 160 litres. So, it’s essentially storing an extra bathtub.Indeed. To be honest, I’d probably fall back on the old idea of filling the bath right up if the shit looked like it was about to hit the fan.
I don’t really see how it’s pointless? The average person probably underestimated the risk of the UK being dragged into a conflict in this decade or the next and thus also the risk they’d need to prepare for that, so it’s probably helpful to bring how much people think they need to prep in line with how much they should prep, could save some lives.
If the UK gets dragged into a conflict it’s going to last more than 3 days though isn’t it.
I believe the thinking is that three days is (hopefully) enough time for whatever issues to be resolved, or for you to look for other sources of supplies. You’re not expected to stockpile enough to live on for months!
Well I don’t think that’s a given and I also don’t think that if that was the case it’d then follow that this policy is silly but I see and agree with the general points you’re making
The German government has told people to stockpile sausages and cheese
…to be prepared for a Wurst-Käse scenario
I honestly don’t hate this policy. Keeping at least 3 days supplies with rotation is just common sense, right?
If something knocked the power/water out for a couple of days, every person with something in store is one less person the authorities have to worry about, until things either stabilise or get worse.
americas been doing that since 9/11 and every time there is something else like katrina they push the advertising a bit but its usually in the corner of some dusty website and hard to say if anyone does it. I don’t but we buy enough stuff that we could get buy for months I think if we get less picky about what we eat. we usually have a certain amount of rice and lentils and canned goods laying around. water is tough as ugh. those plastic bottles.