a2pm: People told to stock up on batteries and bottled water. 5pm: A general election called. Who drew up this timeline? What a contrast: 14 years of Conservative government and a country filling its food shelves with emergency baked beans.
But listen to Oliver Dowden’s “resilience” speech at the London Defence Conference on Wednesday, which spoke of “biosecurity dangers… catastrophic risks… geopolitical tensions… malicious online actors… cyber attacks.” And listen to Rishi Sunak’s speech three hours later, which spoke of “our darkest days… “The Cold War… Putin’s Russia… Islamic extremism… the weaponization of immigrants by enemy countries.” I notice a theme there.
Dowden’s Boy Scout-like advice (stock up on batteries, a radio, three days’ worth of food and 10 litres of water) is part of a wider message befitting the party’s election campaign: Dark days are coming, fear the worst. What if Britain suddenly transforms into a nation of American-style stockpilers: anxious, distrustful, individualistic and decidedly right-wing? Is deep in the party’s subconscious still hoping for a miraculous shift in mass psychology?
The politics, the situation and the timing are unfortunate, because this kind of policy is something disaster experts like Professor Lucy Easthope have been calling for for a long time. She told me that Finland lags behind many other countries in this respect, so she welcomes any efforts to make it more resilient. Finland has “a lot of potential,” she said.72 hoursShe launched a campaign to “promote self-sufficiency in the early stages of a crisis.” Few people know how to administer first aid or where to donate during a disaster, and she says the new campaign is spreading useful information. But there’s still a big piece missing.
First, money. Not everyone can afford a three-day supply of food. Survivalists talk about necessities and essentials, but they’re just indulging in luxury hobbies. In the United States, preppers are a solid middle class and support a billion-dollar industry. (At the high end, “bug out” packs are Bought for $5,000 (£3,900)Given the fact that much of the UK is in a severe food security crisis, Dowden seems particularly clumsy when he talks about future disasters that might necessitate food stockpiling. What about the disasters we’re already in? The Food Standards Agency recently estimated that around 25% of UK consumers are “Food insecurityMention canned goods in 2024 and we immediately think of food banks that thousands of families rely on. Where is the funding for this “resilience” policy?
And second, national preparedness. A detailed list of what citizens should do (three days’ worth of food, 10 litres of water) suddenly becomes murky when it comes to what governments will do. Bottled water can only do so much in the face of the various “geopolitical tensions” mentioned in Dowden’s speech. The focus on individual responsibility distracts from the fact that what really matters is government-level preparedness – both coordinating disasters and preventing them in the first place.
For example, it is odd to talk about water security when a major supplier, Thames Water, is in disarray. Is Thames Water crisis prepared? If so, why can’t it deal with the current crisis it created? It is also odd to talk about food supplies without mentioning the vulnerabilities of supply chains. Brexit-induced border delays are now causing regular bottlenecks on routes from Europe. How resilient are we exactly when it comes to food and water?
Disaster response must start at the top, but we are unprepared for most disasters. We heard in the news this week, for example, that firefighters lack basic equipment to deal with wildfires and terrorist incidents. Firefighter unions say the “specialized equipment” first introduced in the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks is now more than 20 years old and in need of updating. Emergency replacement.
In January, the UK was found to be less prepared for a pandemic than it was before the coronavirus crisis. Dr Clive Dix, chair of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, told the select committee that the country had treated vaccine manufacturers so badly at the end of the taskforce that they had withdrawn and had also failed to invest in a wider range of vaccine technologies. Coronavirus vaccines were developed based on years of research, but research into other pathogens has lagged far behind.
Meanwhile, in December the National Audit Office warned that the government is not prepared for the increased extreme weather events that come with climate change. Perhaps this is unsurprising: every year around November there is a “national emergency” when parts of the country are subject to flooding. We could invest in proper river and coastal defences but don’t. Forget future weather events, we are unprepared for our current climate.
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A focus on “individual resilience” is the wrong way to think about a crisis: after all, a stockpiler’s instinct is to race to survive: to gather supplies, defend them with their lives, and emerge from the apocalypse as one of the chosen few.
But surviving a real emergency, whether at the government level or among neighbors, requires the exact opposite approach: cooperation. Remember the fights over toilet paper in supermarket aisles during the pandemic, the last time the idea of stockpiling captured public consciousness? It represented a rare breakdown in community spirit, the spirit that, after all, keeps us all alive: our neighbors feeding the vulnerable, and us staying home to avoid spreading infection.
“To emphasise individual responsibility is to miss the point of collective responsibility entirely,” says Timothy Lang, professor of food policy at City, University of London. Busy stocking shelves, survivalist Britain may overlook its own failings. But will it survive?
