Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.26-113538/https://www.ft.com/content/eeb1ee80-00b8-4f9f-b560-a6717a80d58d
EU households should stockpile essential supplies to survive at least 72 hours of crisis, Brussels has proposed, as Russia’s war in Ukraine and a darkening geopolitical landscape prompt the bloc to take new steps to increase its security.
The continuing conflict in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic that brutally exposed a lack of crisis response capabilities and the Trump administration’s adversarial stance towards Europe have forced the continent to rethink its vulnerabilities and increase spending on defence and security.
The new initiative comes as European intelligence agencies warn that Russia could attack an EU member state within three to five years, adding to natural threats including floods and wildfires worsened by climate change and societal risks such as financial crises.
Europe faced increased threats “including the possibility of armed aggression against member states”, the European Commission warned on Wednesday as it published a 30-step plan for its 27 capitals to increase their preparedness for crisis and mitigation measures.
72 hours of food is just grocery shopping
I’m definitely not prepared.
Without water, gas or electricity, there’s not really much left in essentials I can use from my grocery shopping.
I don’t know about you, but I usually buy fresh food that needs to be cooked, and drink water from tap.
worst case ill just eat my poop
72 hours, the average length of a special military operation.
My grandma lived through WWII and rationing. After she died, we were cleaning out her house to find she had hidden cans of food stockpiled everywhere: behind the washing machine, in the pit in her garage, in the corners of her loft, everywhere.
If rationing ever came back in, she was more than ready for it.
That has been the recommendation for civil protection for a while already. Not so much because of the risks of war, but e. g. floodings, power outages, storms etc. And most importantly you should stockpile water, because at a power outage, there will be no tap water anymore. That’s the most important bit people here seem to forget. So nothing new here, actually.
Given how quickly supermarket shelves emptied at the start of COVID, this is good advice generally for a crisis.
True. We had a pretty big storm here a couple of years ago and the next day the supermarket shelves were almost empty. We really don’t usually think about how fragile the supply chain is when it comes to a crisis.
72 hours means you go to the store on Monday and then again on Friday. I thought this was kind of the norm for everyone? I mean, not for me, I go once every 10 days but surely 3 days is not that big of a deal?
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I’m from EU and this is way less than my country suggests, which is 2 weeks.
I actually have 2 weeks supplies, but I’m gonna eat baked beans and vegan chocolate and drink coke zero the last few days 😅
Yeah, 3 days is a joke. Do they expect a war to be over in 3 days?
It’s an estimate on how long you need to survive on your own, before the government is able to help.
I think that’s very optimistic. Looking at how COVID went, I have no faith at all in people’s ability to stay calm. The government isn’t going to be able to help those in need 3 days in with the masses of idiots around. No way.
Well, during COVID the idea was still that things should run as normally, with a market economy and stuff. During an actual war, any sensible government would immediately take control of the distribution of food, water, energy and other essentials. Scalpers would be immediately detained, rather than to allow them to run rampant.
One would hope so, but I bet you enough people would be influenced by a Russian disinformation campaign to trigger riots on the streets because “Russia is a friend, we are the aggressors” or whatever other bullshit they come up with. Then troops would have to be pulled away from the border to deal with the riots.
I have acquaintances who are invested in the Russian propaganda, and this is very possible.
It’s insane, talking about it does nothing as the root issues are others.
I can’t help them.
Any sensible government would.
But for any government consisting of a bunch of greedy opportunists who are only in it in order to enrich themselves, there is endless opportunity to become very rich by fucking over the public even more than in peacetime.
If it’s an actual war they can throw their weight around just fine, idiots will just have to deal with it. Actually, that happened during covid too. I don’t remember starving, just an every-increasing whinging in the background as the problem was dealt with efficiently.
More likely they expect to be able to get support/reinforcement/aid in, within a couple of days.
It’s big enough to be a useful stopgap, but small enough not to accidentally cause a run on the supermarkets. It also makes people think about it more. If they update it to 2 weeks later, people are more likely to have a feel for what they need, and what will keep.
I think big part is that people would go out and empty the shelfs imediately if they all started stockpiling for two weeks starting tommorow.
I started getting a bit more everytime it was on sale about three years ago, and have a decent stockpile that probably lasts me for more than 4 weeks… It’s an art to not get too much so that you can eat it when it gets close to expiration date though, so it’s better to not buy everything at once but to spread it out.
But in the end, canned food will likely last many more years than the expiration date suggests.
I’ve maintained a basic stock for a while now. I suspected people would panic buy with COVID. I stocked up well before, and so dodged most of it. I’ve kept an extra buffer since.
Just chipping in to say I ate a can of food that was made during WW2 in 1990, so yeah cans do keep for a long time … when they get very old the trick is to shake the can before opening and if it sounds like there’s air inside it’s gone bad
Some special military operations are planned like that 🙄
It is not just for war, but disasters in general, imagine a colapse or jamming of internet network or credit card buying or isolation from a flood or erathquake, help and minimum delivery infrastructures may take easily 3 days in effectively reach the people in need, is a reasonable amount to recover from the shock having around in average the minimum to survive in the mean time. Worse problems will be waiting for solution but this could save lives and improve significantly circumstances.
Not war, but special military operation.
A proper war lasts at least six days.
They cant say the real number or it would cause panic. 3 is a sensible number people can get behind without causing a run on grocery.
Yeah, everyone should stock up on a year’s supply of food, at the very least.
That’s how long a war will likely last, anyway.
the problem is that you would need to eat canned food every other day to make sure it’s not going bad
I think there’s an AI generated chocolate beans meme hidden somewhere.
Here we only have very short wars, because we’ve got other things to do.
Yeah, I live halfway up a small mountain (in Europe) and usually have everything needed to survive a month, including if the water and power are cut.
We’re currently putting together a pair of bug-out bags as well though, so we can be mobile in an emergency too
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Wait, what do.you think “vegan” means?
Slightly less percentage of raw red meat in the final product, with cute packaging featuring the color green
Not sure if trolling.
Joking, but not trying to troll
So jokes aside, do you really think veganism is just eating a little less meat of a certain type?
No. Why do you assume I don’t know what veganism is, after I already said I was joking? It’s not eating animal food products, including not eating foods that contain some animal food products. Let’s please finish this conversation…
In case it’s not clear by now, chocolate sometimes has milk and I guess OP doesn’t like dark chocolate.
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That’s “vegetarian”. Veganism avoids all animal products (there’s more to it than that, but that’s the simple version), so the dairy in most chocolate is out
Vegetarian is not just “without meat”, it means “no animal has to die for me”. That also technically excludes some cheeses as they contain rennet (although this is often overlooked due to nescience). Plus we’re only talking food right now, not clothing and other lifestyle products.
It bothers me that vegetarians don’t care beyond this very un-though-through concept of ‘animals dying’.
Dairy is a product of the mass rape and imprisonment of cows in horrific factory farms, and chickens are also kept in massively over crowded and unsanitary conditions.
And this is not to mention the constant cullings of male animals, which aren’t considered food as testosterone tastes so bad, and male animals can’t produce eggs or milk.
Or the constant culling of animals that no longer produce eggs or milk to quota.
Or the mass culling of the diseased or at risk of disease from being forced to live in such disgusting environments.
Vegetarianism is not a moral stance, it’s delusional and harms and kills animals at the same rate as eating both meat and dairy.
I get what you want to say and principally, I agree. However, I would highly advise against making better the enemy of perfect. Vegetarians usually are on the right track, they’re often just not educated enough, thinking that some animal products can be sourced ethically (as demonstrated by the other comment).
In my experience, vegetarianism often is just a waypoint towards veganism.In ireland, free range eggs are the norm, and most cows graze on actual fields. but, we have barely any wild areas anymore,.
I mean, plant agriculture isn’t exactly great for wildlife either. Hell, being wildlife isn’t great for wildlife. We theoretically could keep animals in a way that’s fine for them, we just usually don’t.
I eat a mix of free-range eggs and backyard eggs, and avoid milk where possible. Unfortunately the challenge scales pretty rapidly after that. Directly eating meat that can only be gotten in an unethical way feels a lot worse.
It’s delusional and harms and kills animals at the same rate as eating both meat and dairy.
How does the math on that work? Less animals harmed is less animals harmed.
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Just a question for people here who do not have 72 hours of food stored in their homes? Do you go to the supermarket every day? Or do you cook at all? What are you doing on the weekend? What happens when you’re sick and can’t go shopping?
Supermarket daily, mostly microwave stuff.
I eat what I buy. If I buy a days food I’ll eat it in a day, if I buy 2 days food I’ll probably also eat that in 1 day. If I’m sick I wear a mask, if I’m super sick I ask someone to deliver me some shopping but then it is more than a days worth because I don’t want to ask someone to do my shopping every day.
Do you go to the supermarket every day?
There’s 5 food stores <7 minutes away from my apartment,. Why stockpile when you can just walk and pick up fresh food every other day.
What happens when you’re sick and can’t go shopping?
Is that a common occurrence? Just get a friend or family member to shop for you if you’re that ill, or order food delivery.
But don’t you still have some staple stuff like noodles, rice, frozen or canned foods and so on in your house? Combined with the fact that you might buy food in larger quantities (e.g. not just 1 apple, but 6 or maybe 1kg), i’d also imagine that most people have enough food for 3 days in their house.
The imo more interesting thing would be fresh water.
Rice and onions are just about the only thing I have that last more than a few days. I don’t buy frozen food as I’ll just buy what I need at the store, 90% of my diet is just bread, eggs, chicken and rice, and 1.4kg of chicken is gone within 2-3 days.
You could always just lower your caloric intake if food became scarce.
The imo more interesting thing would be fresh water.
Tap water quality is great in Norway so water is something I never buy unless I forgot to fill up a bottle on a road trip. I don’t really know anyone other soda addicts that keep liquid stored at notable quantities.
Belgium is moving more and more to a much better place just because of regulations anyeay
Solar panels and batteries in a shit ton of homes because of energy prices and older government incentives
10000L rain water tanks because government regulations now require rainwater hookups for future toilers and washing machines plus water is expensive here
Induction stoves to not have to put extraction fans in the kitchen to the outside to boost energy EPC ratings (resale value)
We always have a bunch of potatoes and cans of tomatoes and pasta for fries, mashed potatoes, or different pastas (but maybe that is just my family)
A ton of people would be quite OK for a while here I think.
Solar panels and batteries in a shit ton of homes because of energy prices and older government incentives
Yeah, the rise of balcony and roof solar modules here in Germany probably helps us in a similar way.
10000L rain water tanks because government regulations now require rainwater hookups for future toilers and washing machines plus water is expensive here
That on the other hand i don’t think is common and especially in cities i don’t think that’s a thing anywhere. So imo drinking water probably remains the most serious bottleneck, if it were ever compromised.
Might happen at the end of month for me. We go grocery shopping with a car at the beginning of the month, but 31 days are longer than my freezer is big and a backpack can only hold so much. So I respectfully ask Putin not to attack on the 29th.
I have 2 days worth of food in my home. 4 days worth of lunch. When the 2 days of food runs out, I buy more on my way home. Same goes for when the lunch runs out. Meaning if I’m caught at a bad time, I’ll have 0 food
I grocery shop every 2 weeks and at any given time I have a month of food in stock. because I live in a hemisphere with hurricanes.
Do you have 72 hours of food supplies that you can use in case of an emergency? When there is no water and no electricity, and you can’t cook mac&cheese in the oven.
I assumed most everyone had at least two weeks of emergency supplies. Like I have a stock of a couple weeks supply of food and water in the basement in case of emergencies, that’s what my parents taught me was the bare minimum in case of emergencies.
Yep, I have four supermarkets and two discounters in walkable distance and it makes me walk and leave the house daily. Plus my back’s not the healthiest and I can’t carry that much anymore.
72 hours of essential supplies. Do you have 72 hours of:
- food (cooked, or cookable? see points 2 and 3)
- stored water (taps out?)
- stored power generation (powers out?)
- medicines and first aid (emergency services outages? communications outages?)
- heat in the coldest months? (see point 3) etc.
You’d be amazed the lack of foresight most have.
When CoViD hit, I was able to avoid shopping trips for nearly six months, due to having a well prepared pantry. At best, I would go every other week to the store for mostly fruit, which is something I find hard to preserve without requiring huge amounts of sugars, of which I shy away, for personal reasons.
Yes, I live right next to a store.
Meanwhile, here in the Uk our government is making sure we won’t have enough money to buy more than two days of food at a time.
I mean, 14 consecutive years of Conservative leadership will do that to the best of nations.
No doubt the UK has a MASSIVE uphill struggle ahead to bring back a sense of prosperity for its people, but it’s a bit disingenuous to make it sound as though it’s the fault of a Government that’s been in power for less than a year so far.
It can take mere seconds to destroy something, and multiple times longer than that to fix it.
In Australia, we are a couple years ahead of the UK (in terms of our first Labor Gov’t following a decade+ of Conservative leadership); things don’t magically get better overnight, but we are at least on the correct path now — here’s hoping we don’t fuck things up by voting the Cons back in later this year 😫
Oh I’m well aware that the Con govmnt has been an appalling dismantling of our country, but Labour are so far appearing to largely be following suit. Remember the Tory repetition about the need for austerity? It just feels like a repeat of that, to put it very breifly. I know 14 years can’t be fixed overnight, but shitting on the poor and needy, who have been suffering the most already is just grotesque. There’s plenty of condemnation by journalists and MPs alike for this as well as some calls to tax the rich instead.
I’ve never voted for either so I’m looking at what they do through neutral(ish!) eyes and I don’t see politics so much an ever increasing pandering to the corporate economy (over decades).
I can’t say I’m too knowledgable about Aus politics, but got glimpses of how bad your last govmnt was through the Guardian. Hope you have a better time than us with a new set of faces!
Do what you can to get your people onto here either through Lemmy itself or Voyager for Lemmy along with:
Bluesky @bsky (All these on Bluesky), Flashes @flashes, Spark @sprk.so, Element @thematrixfoundation, Revolt @revolt.chat, Resonite (For fun) @resonite, & PeerTube @joinpeertube
Gotta say the UK needs its own version of Run For Something @runforsomething organization. With multiple other accounts and organizations unifying to get stuff done as well
Best of luck to ya mate, grow the movement in your country everyday!!
Run for Something sounds good. We have a fairly healthy number of independent politicians in the UK I think but something like that can only help improve peoples involvement in local snd national government.
Assuming you’re from the US by sharing that, I hope you have more than luck to help over there!
Thank goodness that wars only last for 3 days exactly.
Hello
darknesscanned bread, my old friendCan you get that?
My plan has just been flour (or grain and a grinder if it’s more like 72 days) and more time spent baking.
Hope you’re also planning to keep that oven going if there is a power outage…
It’s something a lot of people (myself included) keep forgetting that without electricity, both your fridge and your stove / oven stop working.
I’ve cooked over open fires before and could do it again. I can even start one without a match.
The grinder would need a generator or solar panel, though. Thankfully both are fairly plentiful in my area, and depending on the situation oil production could continue to some degree. If it’s comes to mortar and pestle I should maybe just die.
God, that looks delicious. I’m going to have to order some just to try it.
I’ve had it before, the raisin version and it’s perfectly decent when toasted.
It scares people because bread in a can is unusual but there is nothing wrong with it. No weird ingredients, just…bread in a can :)
If I’d want to prepare for real I’d get some military rations and the German ones have canned bread
If limited space or weight is and issue that’s how I’d go too. However, they cost significantly more than basic grocery items.
72 hours? No problem. Always have a big bag of rice on hand and you’re done.
Only if you have lots of water too. And preferably some way to heat it (though you can totally swell rice in cold water)
This brings up an important point. You should have something like a camping stove running on propane or similar stored fuel.
If the water supply fails you need to be able to cook water for drinking purposes.
A coal bbq could work too and most people have one already, you can use it with wood as well.
Even better, you can use a barbecue chimney starter as a kind of rocket stove.
Canned food is a good alternative
I just have a stack of canned stuff I rotate through. I put new ones at the bottom, and make sure the stack in always 4 cans tall. Costs nothing, things are always in stock on the shelves, and in case of emergency, there’s food.
Of course, I also live about 5 meters below sea level, so if we have real, world war level problems and the pumps shut down and/someone blows up the dikes, I’m not going to shelter in place for months anyway.
and water to cook it and drink, and power to heat it?
I don’t enjoy archived links that much, so here is the plan, straight from the EU.
I’m happy I’m growing my own food.
Though I don’t think much will happen to Ireland.
Canada here. Same for us in the food department. though I am less enthused about what may happen to us with yam tits raging downstairs.
Yam tits! That is genuinely a new one for me. Excellent.
I’ll never, as long as I may live, get over the utter embarrassment of being born and raised in a country who could support that maniac. I suppose the worst thing I could do is leave. The only way to alleviate my shame is to stay and keep voting for the least insane option.
I freely admit I stole Yam TIts from another Lemmy user and I can’t remember who or I would certainly give them credit. I feel it gets right to the point one is trying to convey.
I’ve almost fully figured out how to live off just cans at this point. I also have a basement greenhouse in the works, although I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the local commercial options.
We live rurally and don’t have much money as I have been disabled for almost a decade now. What we do have is seeds and gardens. Loads of them. A large greenhouse as well. We started a small farm before I got sick with the idea that if it didn’t make money at least we would be able to eat. Then I got sick and we just continued to plant. We are fortunate to have planned early to have space to do so. At first we helped others set up homesteads and growing in our area as well and still do to some extent but guess what…we do eat and are not so beholden to the grocery oligarchs and economic system. Any little bit you can do helps.
Yeah, not too far off from my situation. A full-blown greenhouse sounds awesome, I can only dream of that. How much time do you spend tending it?
Mine is basically just to grow enough leafy greens to prevent scurvy and supply enough to go in sandwiches and maybe salads. Interestingly, parsley has the most vitamin C of non-tropical crops.
We start planting stuff inside and in the greenhouse in Feb/March and go through to November usually. I spend a few hours every day and my wife does as well mid season. She works a real job as well in summer so I’m on my own then. The growing is the easy part really. It’s all the storage and preservation that takes a while.
Hmm. Is there not enough sunlight Dec/Jan? If you could keep some things ready to harvest all year you wouldn’t have to worry so much about that.
We do keep greens and such here. We have about mid November to end of February where we don’t have enough light. If we have cold weather crops already grown they will almost always hold. We usually keep greens, hearty herbs and such all year round. If we get carrots and beets and stuff under planted they will also hold in the ground. It becomes a humidity and temperature fluctuation problem with them in the hightunnel. Not to mention bugs and rodents. It’s 20’x50’ and unheated so it gets quite cold at night in the winter.
We even grow figs now. Shouldn’t be able to do that here but climate change is real.
Rice pudding comes in cans, so I should be fine.
It’s not very good in my experience, though. Super watery. On the other hand, the canned custard is great.
What brand? Idk if its in canada, but I buy the Ambrosia brand and its very thick.
Hmm, maybe I just got a bad can or something. The custard is definitely Ambrosia. Maybe I bought a cheap generic…
I’m not sure, it was a long time ago, and I only did it once. Maybe I’ll try again.
I guess it helps that Ireland is an island, though our defence is a joke. Our current plan is to rely on other countries for help.
Canada being highly dependant on imports, some items could completely disappear from stores in the even of a global conflict
Absolutely. Our family can grow enough for ourselves and a couple of other families. We have friends we basically coop with. We grow some things. They grow some things. We share. We also hunt fish and trap which helps and raise meat chickens and laying hens.
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