What happened
On October 22, 2026, the UK Cabinet Office launched the first stage of a three-year public campaign called Be Ready. It asks every household to prepare for three days without power, water, phones or the internet. The guidance includes 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, food that needs no cooking or refrigeration, medication, baby supplies, pet food, cash, a radio, a power bank, a torch, blankets and first aid, with supplies reviewed every six months.
Why it matters
Governments rarely ask citizens to prepare unless planners believe disruption is plausible. The UK campaign arrived in the same week as reporting on the Pentagon's 90-day planning for U.S. bases. Different countries, different scales, the same direction: preparation is moving from the fringe to official policy.
Three days is the beginning
Three days of supplies will see a household through a storm or a short outage, which is valuable. It will not carry a family through a long grid failure, a supply-chain break or a winter. Most of the serious scenarios in our threat library are measured in weeks or months.
The distance between three days and 180 days is not a bigger pantry. It is a different kind of property: one with its own water, power, heat, food production and protection.
What you can do now
Start where the UK starts, with three days, then measure how far your home is from 180. The Self-Sufficiency Calculator shows what each step takes.
Briefings summarize public reporting and official sources linked above. Where reporting is preliminary, we say so.