Alert But Not Alarmed: UK Be Ready

If we look at the document itself, it's a two-page document, sort of breaks down things you should prepare for. It's got putting down three days of water. It's got you know, having candles and a power ready, it's got spare food. For your household, it talks about individuals. So if you have a household of four people, you need to think of that type of math times four for each person. And it's all pretty common sense stuff.

There's nothing I think particularly groundbreaking in it. But what is interesting is this hasn't happened in the UK for quite some time. Certainly not. What's happening now and what we can learn? Okay, welcome to the first Homefront today. This is a quick take on events that happened very recently.

And this is our first sort of look at what's recently happened in the in the UK, but I think draws out parallels across many countries. And we can bring you news. it's not going to be a deep dive, it's just a quick first take between myself and Giuliano of what's recently happened. So Yesterday, on the twenty second of October, the UK government published a be ready checklist asking households to be ready to manage for three days if power, water, phones, or the internet goes down. I think the defense secretary made a statement. He was the main minister who made a statement around this.

Now basically it's the government saying you need to look at this, start being ready, events where all these type of things might get impacted. So If we look at the document itself, it's a two-page document. It sort of breaks down things you should prepare for. It's got putting down three days of water. It's got you know, having candles and a power ready, it's got spare food. For your household, it talks about individuals.

So if you have a household of four people, you need to think of that type of math times four for each person. And it's all Pretty common sense stuff. There's nothing, I think, particularly groundbreaking in it. But what is interesting is this hasn't happened in the UK for quite some time. Certainly not in in my memory. And it's got a very feel to it of something you'd experienced in the Cold War or or conflicts to the past, like World War II.

It is certainly different. It is not something we're used to in the UK, and hence why I think it's had a lot of airtime in the media and all of discussion. Juliana, I don't if you wanna just share your if you've had time to look at the document, what you take out of it. Well one thing first to say I'm I'm welcoming it because I've seen it that this is not just Britain. France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have also published something similar as guidances since 2024. Ireland launched its own campaign in August and this ties to the kind of the EU narrative of being ready for the first 72 hours.

And so I'm I'm really happy that this is out in the UK as well. Yeah, and and of course, between the two of us, mixed experience of interesting parts of the world, I can think certainly, looking back my time in Iraq, many due to power cuts, and then later in in Ukraine due to unforeseen events because of the conflict like power cuts and things being shut on and off very, very dramatically. This this actually does have relevance. You know, it is very helpful if you do have spare water in your house. Clearly water's the first thing you need to to survive any long period of time. Extra food, food that keeps so you can put it in a cupboard for a long period of time.

and then going into sort of communications, the internet, power, if you have the capacity to generate your own electricity or batteries and stuff, or the inverters that's, you know, can save electrical equipment in case of a rapid power cut. All very useful things. So let's take a quick look at the checklist that has been published. You can find it on the website gov.uk slash be ready. So that's the be ready checklist. Once again, gov.uk be ready.

That's where you can find it. The first item is water, where it talks about bottled water for three days, three liters per person per day for drinking. More water would be needed for other tasks such as cooking and washing. Now it doesn't talk about one thing and this is something that I think we learned the hard way and it's a term that I learned in Ukraine and that is technical water. So let's not forget about the fact that typically you will need water for your toilets as well. And that's where you wanna be using buckets, filling up, for example, your bathtub, should you be having any using that water that you still have in in case of an actual attack.

But yeah, of course have bottled water. It's it's Always good in general. Yeah, definitely. That's definitely overlooked. Just the usefulness of buckets. Get get lots of buckets.

I'll probably add that to the list. Certainly for as you described, you can manually flush toilets with pouring water down it via a bucket. So water and what our addition to it? Water plus buckets. So moving on to next item Nine in total is is food, non perishable food for three days, food that can has a long shelf life, that doesn't need refrigeration or cooking, stuff like tin meat, you know, y your classic cans of baked beans and tuna fish, vegetables, dried dried fruit, nuts and stuff, great for energy. that's what it goes into.

It doesn't go into p very deep detail. I I completely agree with all these things. Actually you can make quite nice meals of a lot of tin food. I mean that in the army. Fill fill your cupboards with tin food. Couldn't Couldn't could not disagree with that.

And again, one thing that we saw in Ukraine and other places where a crisis was hitting and we've seen is these kind of non-perishable foods are the ones that get bought up the fastest. So you don't want to be having that kind of situation that we've seen through COVID as well, where there is a fight for toilet paper. And that brings us to hygiene. So the usual hand sanitizer, wet wipes. Again, you wanna be having these products. Because think about not having water and you still wanna be able to have your bathroom product and your every every day needs with them.

So it's again, it's just buying an extra toothpaste or an extra set of hand sanitizer the next time you go down to the shops. It's something that it's it's quite easy to stock up. Again, you don't need to buy so many, it's just really to get through the the first seventy-two hours. It's not a survival task. Just don't be one of those terrible people that bought out all the toilet paper in the shops over COVID. But by all means do do have that stocked up.

Next items light and warmth. Very sensible torch with spare batteries. Hot tip for that, just check your torch works and maybe keep the batteries separated from the torch. They don't degrade, doesn't, you know, degrade within the torch itself. You pick out the torch after it's been in the cupboard for a few years, it doesn't work. So keep them separate and just leave them alone to your usual stock of batteries.

sleeping bags, warm clothing. Clearly, if heating goes, I I could not actually agree with this more on the experience of Ukraine in the winter. The heating will go or did go, and you rapidly find out the the temperature ofin the house gets a lot colder. Actually, I found interestingly, candles and things, just that little bit of heat. watch out for the fire risk actually can heat a room to just raise the degrees a little bit. It's not gonna like make it scorchio, but can just make it maybe a little bit more bearable.

Did you have a similar experience as well? No, yes, that's absolutely I had the same thing in in Ukraine. I was traveling with a sleeping bag because sometimes it got to twelve degrees inside the apartment. Outside it was well in the minuses. So an extra couple of sleeping bags can really give that ease to sleep. The next part what I see is communication and information.

Obviously you want to be having your phone, but be mindful about the fact that the internet might be down. It's considered critical infrastructure. It can be also targeted by cyber attack or by an actual physical attack. So your internet might be down. So you're not going to be able to watch Netflix and be on TikTok. You shouldn't be on TikTok, but that's another story.

But it says an important part: a charged power bank. These charged power banks, power banks, power stations are super important. We've been using them all the time, carrying around these massive bricks. They're getting better and better every year. We're more than happy to put up a couple on our website what we've been using and we've we we tested. I do remember at one point attempting once we had the electric hob and I was trying to make scrambled eggs in the morning when the electricity went out.

And I I will say quite idiotically tried to finish my half-made scrambled eggs through my power bank using a hairdryer. In fact, it doesn't work, so don't don't attempt. But it is vital because you want to have your baseline electronics charged. Also sometimes for entertainment that you have your laptop and you're able to watch in this case a downloaded movie because Netflix might not be not be working. But we'd really highly advise to have power banks and a a power station. It can come incredibly handy.

And once again, in the case of crises, these are the ones that are bought up immediately. So get your hands on them earlier than later. So really, Giannani, you had you had no power and no eggs at the end of that morning. It also mentions an FM radio, be it battery or a wind up. I I think that's obviously so you can hear broadcasts and something stuff that's going on. And that's a good way at least to stay connected.

Although you can't put anything out, you can hear what's what's what's coming in and what what's going on. Then it goes on to sort of money and documents, keep a mix of cash. You know, we're such a card based, cashless society. Yeah, going back to good old cash mixture of coins and notes and and your cards as well. Copies of your documents and IDs and then a physical list of your phone numbers and information. I guess that's in case you can't charge your phone.

But yeah, that's not not a bad thing to do. I'd probably say that's you know, you're good you'll probably get your phone on, especially if you have a power bank available. So you can always find phone numbers like that. On the cash, it's very important because just think about the networks behind the payments. We've seen Revolute just three days ago that they had a couple of problems and Obviously they were very good at patching it up, but just imagine if one of the major banks' paying systems is shut down, maybe preventatively. But that's again why you wanna be having some cash so that you are able to get your essentials.

Again, think about the first 72 hours. On the medical and health, think about all the kind of medications that you might be needing other than your usual. So I'm talking about over-the-counter. painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen that you can pick up at any store quite cheaply. And you wanna be also having some some band-aids and the well, the typical things that you should be finding in your car as well. But also think about what you'd be needing, especially if you have some chronic illness, you wanna be having a stock for the couple of days ahead that you might be needing, especially when it comes to diabetes or an epipen.

think about these because you might not be able to get around if there's a curfew or there's just not going to be stock available. Yeah, I think just keep it to that three day rule, which is that that's just the main argument of d of this document, what it's trying to communicate. Every household should have a first aid kit, a decent first aid kit. Even you can I think by law, even a lot of European countries you even need a first aid kit in your own vehicle. And just to close off, we've got baby products and pet products. I quite like that they put pet products in Definitely a lot of UK households have pets, love pets.

So yeah, like us, they need food and water. So just make sure that's considered. And baby products, I can speak for experience. You know, the amount of nappies and wet wipes us as a family are going through at this time is is massive. And you if you can't get to the shops to buy those items, you know, you're really gonna feel that. So make sure you have enough of those baby related products, particularly baby formula, if it's not being breastfed, that it's also stocked up.

So those are the the that's the document. Juliana, what what's your thoughts on why this has come out now? No, no, no. Before we go into that, a very quick question. How are you doing with this? Do you do you have this in your household?

So that's a great question. I've generally hit a lot of this, but I have not organized it around a seventy-two hour framework, nor as a household are we like mentally gone, right? That it that's where that is. That was that is it. There's a blackout, for instance. be scrambling around to find candles.

I think I roughly know where they are. But like it it it's not we're not organized the way this is sort of trying to steer households to be. But it wouldn't take much effort w take an afternoon and I could get all this set as it sort of describes. And I think it's more the mental idea of where things are. And you are a UK citizen, so this is obviously from the UK government. So I w I will ask perhaps you who obviously have been following this more on on your end.

in the UK, what do you think the the message is behind this checklist? I I think the checklist is practical and and and and sensibly put together, keeping it simple. What is interesting, as I said at the start, is we're not used to seeing this in the UK, sort of like government directed communications or be a bit more prepared within your household, within regionalized parts of the UK, parts that might experience more flooding. Communities might be more used to this sort of behavior. I guess we're all a bit more zoned in a little after the experience of COVID. But why now and what this is about, I I think this is a communications piece.

This is a start of, I hope really hope this doesn't go much further. But if with looking at what we've all discussed over this series and this sort of escalation of attacks and hybrid war and all this type of stuff, you know, the communities need to be increasingly prepared. And this this is a communications piece directly related to that. This is to begin to get yourself ready. Once again, as we always say, it's about getting informed, stay calm, get informed, and carry on. Perhaps you have some of these items, check your cardboards.

If not, maybe it's worth to start calmly take a look at organizing it. Luke and I will definitely be starting to do this. A test from experience, it's very useful to do all these things. Certainly not bad advice at all. So thanks that closes out our Homefront today, our quick digest of something that's happened very recently, in this case, the Be Ready document that's been released by the UK government. Hope you found that helpful.

As always, great. Thank you so much for listening to us. This is Lee Kerving, and this has been Homefront Today. And I am Giuliano Stochino-Weiss Vais. Before I let you off, we have a website, www.homefront.com. And on The website, there's a tab called your country where you can see what various governments are doing about countering the hybrid threats.

But you can also look at EU and NATO as well as a couple of questions on who decides. So we invite you to check it out. We also would welcome your questions or your comments on hello at homefrontpod.com. So once again, thank you again and see you soon.