Government emergency website

[Ascobis]

The media get clicks from turning fairly innocent and sensible comments into a big story, which isn't actually there.

Have a week or so of food/water stashed just in case (for ANY kind of emergency, could be as mundane as bad weather) and you can't go wrong. Beyond that, nothing to panic about.

Chlorine. Ammonia. My local fire department has the locations and specs for all such nasties. Many years ago, chlorine leaked and the local police set up roadblocks. In another case, some nitwit launched a flare that landed on a meat packing plant. They had an ammonia refrigerator. One squad of fire-folk was dispatched to guard that fridge.
Shelter in place can happen in urban areas.
I agree with Chris that a few days' worth of food and water are mostly all you need. I recommend that in urban areas one add a bunch of plastic sheeting and rolls of duct tape to shelter in place.

 

[Ascobis]

I use 15L - 20L a week for cooking and drinking, and have around 8 - 10 weeks' supply.

In my last house, like Broch, the water supply came from a deep aquifer. We never even filtered it. When the CH engineer came to do the annual service / maintenance he would take a few bottles of it back with him.

When I finish with a bleach bottle, I fill it with water, label the date with a grease pencil, stash it in the back of the basement, and forget about it.

 

[Ascobis]

I do wonder if it maybe if not genetics based upon childhood experiences and how they were resolved or not. Lot of hard wiring comes from Childhoods I think.

I grew up during the Cold War. Downwind from an Air Force base. Scarred for life. Still prepping, even though the front brain knows I'll be vaporized in the initial blast.

 

[Toddy]

Clyde Nuclear Subs....and the prevailing winds mean that one strike there will carry poisoned air right across the central belt, and effectively take out ooooh, maybe 70% of the population......and folks wonder why we complained about Faslane

Aye, couldn't make it up; it's reality.

 

[TeeDee]

If the Government wants more people to pick up the prepping bug maybe they need to schedule some regular reruns of 'Threads'.

Forget your Lord Humongous and Immortan Joe's... , its a civil servant with a rifle and face wound that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

 

[cbrdave]

How much water do you guys keep in store?

Edited to add:
…….. in bottles etc!

I currently have approx 40litres in bottles.

 

[Woody girl]

Well, I checked my water stash, and it needed renewing, so I've spent the afternoon topping up my garden water butt with the old water, scrubbing out and bleaching the containers, rinsing, letting dry, and refilling them.
40 litres of drinking, and 40 of washing etc.
That's a lot of water!
I need a lie down, and a large bar of chocolate .

 

[Toddy]

I have nowhere to store all that water. How do you find room ?
and I'd need to multiply that by three too.

 

[Decacraft]

I have nowhere to store all that water. How do you find room ?
and I'd need to multiply that by three too.

I'm lucky that I have a big enough space under the stairs that I could probably store 8 bottles in if I were to stack them 4 on 4, or if side on then maybe 10. I currently have 3 of the 20l bottles and a few supermarket 5l bottles in there (the 20l ones are the office water fountain bottles).

There's 5,10 and 20l containers available in a square with a tap (I do have a few of the ridgemonkey fishing type ones) that should fit in a kitchen cupboard or a smaller space.

 

[Omega]

If you're living hand to mouth can you actually prep anything? Seriously, there's people going to food banks just to survive. If there is ever a disaster the government will have to help plenty of people and they're not just people who don't help themselves but people who can't. Not a choice to be unprepared.

Sometimes I wonder if prepping is a middle class / comfortably off activity. Can you prep when you're using foodbank?

You can - I lived 12 months 1997-1998 on about £3k. Now I feel lucky if I spend less than this in a month.
People need to learn again to better fend for themselves because dark times come when too many people become a burden to society

 

[Omega]

Our water was beautiful, occasionally whisky coloured as the peat got through the filters when the moor flooded, but a few years back it suddenly started to taste horribly of chlorine....and it smells of chlorine too.

I bought a drinking water filter kit that pumps the water through a charcoal cartridge. The subsequent water is rather tasteless, but it's not stinking of chlorine.

It wasn't expensive, it was an easy fix and the replacement cylinder/cartridges are cheap. It's easy to change them out. It all fits snuggly under the sink.

The company I bought from is on eBay, and I'll find the links.

Under £20 for the entire kit, including the tap.

Pardon our interruption...

I buy replacement filters from the same company. A tenner pack of two seems to last us (a family of three adults, two of whom are at home all the time) nine or ten months.

Pardon our interruption...

It's very obvious when the filter needs replaced....the water smells of chlorine again.

You do need to drill a hole in the sink beside the other taps though.....turns out stainless steel sinks are really thin and easily cut. The company is very helpful too.

M

Thank you for the tip - I currently use EWT water softener and filter, but they started charging ridiculous prices and I now want to get rid of their filter with something cheaper. Guess will buy it and hire someone to install it, but ask the teach me replacing the filters, suspect it is 2-minutes job

 

[Woody girl]

I have nowhere to store all that water. How do you find room ?
and I'd need to multiply that by three too.

Under beds, bottom of wardrobe, in a corner of the kitchen. I live in chaos at the moment! But I know where everything is...I think!
I can only find two of my three water filters, but I think I know where the last one is, just can't be bothered to tackle the obstacle course to check. I realy should sort that. Well, tomorrow isn't far away, and I'm shattered after carting all that water up the garden to the water butt, and scrubbing and refilling and resiting everything. Those cans are dam heavy! My poor old wonky spine is complaining now, so I'm done for today. One job at a time. I did get some more seeds in the garden, and made a huge bowl of coleslaw, (I'm living on the stuff at present) so it's been a busy day.

 

[Omega]

How much water do you guys keep in store?

Edited to add:
…….. in bottles etc!

Hard to say. I brew my own ales, make wine. So, I have at least 50 bottles of wine. Then I just finished making 23 litres of IPA and 15 litres of kvas. And I have at least 50 litres of ale that I am aging to see the difference. Then I have 100+ litres of water in bottles, but bought several UN canisters so that I could buy soft with very low turbidity water to make lagers like Czech pilsner - it will cost around £3-5 for 100+ litres if you buy it from Spotless Water (let me know if you want a discount code - we will both get it)
I keep it all in my garage on shelves.
Brewing ale is quite an interesting and useful hobby, I find it somehow relates to bushcraft too as I can make my own alcohol similar in strength to beer even from bread and sugar or wasted fruits and vegetables - then it will be “drunk kvas” and “Braga”. And it makes you store things to disinfect water and bottles, ingredients (you can have grains if you want to brew from the grain, or malts if you simply want to ferment your drinks)

 

[Toddy]

Under our stairs is where we hang coats, bags, shoes, there is no spare room.
Kitchen cupboards are full and there's no spare room. Pantry likewise. Outside....we freeze and unfreeze in a constant up and down for several months of the year, so storing in a shed isn't on.

A few bottles worth, fine, but major storage ? I honestly cannot see many households doing that.

Thank you for the tip - I currently use EWT water softener and filter, but they started charging ridiculous prices and I now want to get rid of their filter with something cheaper. Guess will buy it and hire someone to install it, but ask the teach me replacing the filters, suspect it is 2-minutes job

It's a simple fit and changing the filters is also straightforward......if I make one recommendation though, use a marker pen and make a clear arrow showing direction of flow on the cartridge
There is one on it, but trying to footer around with it under the sink, make life easy, make it big and clear

 

[TeeDee]

Under our stairs is where we hang coats, bags, shoes, there is no spare room.
Kitchen cupboards are full and there's no spare room. Pantry likewise. Outside....we freeze and unfreeze in a constant up and down for several months of the year, so storing in a shed isn't on.

A few bottles worth, fine, but major storage ? I honestly cannot see many households doing that.


It's a simple fit and changing the filters is also straightforward......if I make one recommendation though, use a marker pen and make a clear arrow showing direction of flow on the cartridge
There is one on it, but trying to footer around with it under the sink, make life easy, make it big and clear

Which echo's my comments about where people in housing modern and older are supposed to stock these items of resilience - the normal hidey holes of understairs cupboards , loft space , under kitchen unit kick plinths are not sizeable to provide much impact.

 

[Toddy]

I think if one is of a Prepper (note uppercase ) mindset, then things like hatches in floors to allow access to the crawl space for storage, etc., become the norm. I watched one video a friend sent where the homeowner had strippd off the gyproc of his walls, and panels, with narrow shelves built in behind where he had literally hundreds and hundreds of cans stored.

I don't live like that.
I keep a decent store of food and household consumables, but water ? well for most of us that's like sewerage and power and is a communal endeavour.

A few 2L bottles of clean drinking water, fine, that most of us can do, but hundreds of litres is just not feasible for the vast majority.

I'm not stashing it in bedrooms or wardrobes; it acts like a huge cold thing and attracts condensation, moisture and thus damp.
67% humidity is the level at which mould grows, I admit that concerns me more than a lack of excess water.

 

[Woody girl]

I think if one is of a Prepper (note uppercase ) mindset, then things like hatches in floors to allow access to the crawl space for storage, etc., become the norm. I watched one video a friend sent where the homeowner had strippd off the gyproc of his walls, and panels, with narrow shelves built in behind where he had literally hundreds and hundreds of cans stored.

I don't live like that.
I keep a decent store of food and household consumables, but water ? well for most of us that's like sewerage and power and is a communal endeavour.

A few 2L bottles of clean drinking water, fine, that most of us can do, but hundreds of litres is just not feasible for the vast majority.

I'm not stashing it in bedrooms or wardrobes; it acts like a huge cold thing and attracts condensation, moisture and thus damp.
67% humidity is the level at which mould grows, I admit that concerns me more than a lack of excess water.

If you don't have storage facilities, but have water available in streams or rivers nearby, the obvious solution is a milbank bag, and a decent water filter. That way you can collect local water in a large container, and filter it yourself.
I have a water to go bottle, steripen traveller, a katedyn be free 3 litre filter, milbank bag, and sawyer mini, plus a straw filter. I don't have much use for the straw filter, but it was a present, so I'll keep it.
I think the most useful items are the millbank to pre filter and extend the life of the sawyer mini which can be adapted to an inline filter if needed, to process larger amounts.
A steripen is useful for clear water without any turbidity, such as the recent situation in torbay, but relys on batteries, and only does a litre at a time.

 

[Toddy]

It's that prepping mindset again

I have filters, camping use kind of thing, and I can purify water if necessary.

I think there are two things to this topic though.
Firstly is the Govt., and reasonably practical folks couple of litres 'just in case'.
Secondly, is the all out stash and prep in case of disastrous events.

It's a question of scale.

My inline drinking water filter will take out most harmful things from tap water, so long as the pipes run.
The recent issues with drinking water needing boiled, well there are filters that can deal with most things and then a quick boil up ought to deal with the rest.

To be honest in most of the UK the biggest hazard folks face is occasional floods, rather than too little water.

 

[Decacraft]

It's that prepping mindset again

I have filters, camping use kind of thing, and I can purify water if necessary.

I think there are two things to this topic though.
Firstly is the Govt., and reasonably practical folks couple of litres 'just in case'.
Secondly, is the all out stash and prep in case of disastrous events.

It's a question of scale.

My inline drinking water filter will take out most harmful things from tap water, so long as the pipes run.
The recent issues with drinking water needing boiled, well there are filters that can deal with most things and then a quick boil up ought to deal with the rest.

To be honest in most of the UK the biggest hazard folks face is occasional floods, rather than too little water.

Local to me there's been an incident where groundworkers have damaged the main water supply- the schools had to close due to no water, and the residents living within a 2 mile radius had to collect bottled water from the leisure centre where they set up a 'hub'.
This did take a few hours to get up and running and the water was out for a few days.

Not everyone has the ability or knowledge to purify water for consumption.
If it gets to the point where we can't filter water due to some other reason then unfortunately it will be a grave situation which a lot of us are unable to prepare for short of owning a bunker

 

[Woody girl]

I think our water system, like the NHS and buses among other things are on a knife edge. One massive solar flare or emp will out all the control systems and there will be such a massive problem that local authorities won't be able to cope, or it may take some time to set up clean water, which may also be rationed.
I'd rather have some put by for immediate use, than have to rely on a panicking system.
I'd also rather have and not need, than not have,and need. I don't waste my stored water, when it needs renewing, it tops up the water butts and is used on the veg beds.
I've been doing it for many years, so it's just a part of my normal routine.
I don't call myself a prepper, but I am prepared, as I'm on my own with no personal transport, so I can't just pop down the road to get stuff I might need.
Our town is slowly shutting down, soon I won't be able to buy anything! Doesn't hurt to stock up a bit.
Today I found toothpaste for a pound, and tinned tuna on a good special offer, so I've put those aside for hard times.
Also the charity shop netted me loads of (21) britta water jug filters for a fiver. Happy with that.!
Oh I nearly forgot, two brand new pairs of merino blend heat holder socks still in packaging for £2.00
Warm toesies and clean water for less than a tenner.