The UK government's resilience campaign, urging households to prepare for unknown threats with a three-day supply of food and water, doesn't feel like an overreaction. But nor does it feel realistic. There is no national food stockpile and there hasn't been since it was wound up in the 1990s, which feels like a metaphor for the delusions of that era: nothing bad can possibly happen again.
From Ridicule to Mainstream
Preppers used to be ridiculed, but now the idea of having a stash of essentials has become mainstream. The government's advice to have three litres of drinking water a day for each person, along with non-perishable food, is a far cry from the days when stockpiling was seen as a hobby for those who also kept a crossbow. The shift in perception has been gradual, marked by events like the Y2K scare, 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, and more recent disruptions to food supplies.
For people who remember the second world war, or feel as if they do, there is always enough muscle memory to do topical household stockpiling. One person's mother kept a trunk of food mainly filled with condensed milk in case of a nuclear war through the 80s. After the Berlin Wall came down, the trunk was not ceremoniously emptied; in 1990, she was stockpiling again to mark the Gulf war. The Y2K spectre saw bottled water enter the house, and after 9/11, the water had gone off but was still fine for washing, so all she needed was a load of new water.
The Reality of Food Insecurity
A record number of households – one in eight, or one in six with children – already experience food insecurity, meaning they can't be sure they have enough even without external events. The range of possible disasters is so wide that it's hard to consider them practically without freaking out. Are we planning for crop failures in the UK or for the collapse of the global food supply? Are we anticipating a hostile foreign act such as a cyber-attack, or something more meat-world?
Power outages, extreme weather, floods – they all seem possible, but none of them seem as if they'd be over in three days. Having a torch would be better than no torch, but a stash of tinned pineapple wouldn't meet the moment. There is no household solution that doesn't hinge on the emergency being very short-lived and a collective response being ready to go within only a few hours. The more you think about emergencies, though, the less likely they seem to be short-lived. The chance of inoculating yourself household by household seems vanishingly small.
The Need for a Bigger Plan
The essence of old-school prepping – the reason people who did it were mocked and viewed with suspicion – was that it was implicitly off-grid, or rather planning for a world without a grid and without meaningful order. The modern preppers' problem is that stockpiling for your own household – even having a workable first aid kit and some non-perishables – feels ridiculous unless you believe there's a bigger plan under way. The government has the unenviable task of asking us to trust the future less while trusting its authority more. It's enough to make you want to do something helpful – more helpful, even, than buying a gigantic bag of rice.
