Cut off for a week
A week when nothing is delivered
The scenario people imagine when they hear the word preparedness. In practice it is a very boring week indoors.
Snow, floods and fuel disruption do this to individual towns most winters. A national version is unlikely, and would be announced with days of warning, not hours.
What actually runs out first
Not food. Fresh milk, bread, diapers, pet food, prescriptions and cigarettes, in roughly that order, and they run out of the shops long before they run out of your house.
This is why building slowly beats panic buying. Panic buying is what causes the shortage. One extra item on the normal shop, every week, empties no shelf and never shows up on a headline.
A week of food that is not miserable
- Things you already eat. Preparedness food that nobody likes is money set on fire.
- Something that does not need cooking for the first two days, in case the power is off as well.
- Long life milk, which is the single item most missed and least stocked.
- One treat per person. Ask anyone who has been through it.
The neighbors question
The households that come through a bad week best are not the ones with the biggest cupboard. They are the ones who know the names of three people on their street.
That is not sentiment, it is the finding of every serious study of every disaster in every country we cover. Someone nearby has a camping stove, someone has a car, someone is a nurse, and someone is on their own and would like to be asked.
What we are not asking you to do
We are not asking you to fill a garage. A week of what you already eat, built one item at a time, is the whole recommendation, and every government in Britain, Europe and the United States says a version of the same thing.
If life is at risk, call 911 first. Everything on this page comes second.