UK government tells every Briton to stockpile water and food in 'Be Ready' 72-hour campaign

Every person in Britain is being urged to stock up on bottled water and three days' worth of food in new government guidance designed to ensure households can survive a weather, cyber or other serious emergency.

The Be Ready campaign asks people to store supplies to last 72 hours, amid growing official concern about the impact of the climate crisis, technological dependency and hostile state threats.

Under the guidance, three litres of water per person per day should be stored for drinking — nine litres of bottled water in total. More water is needed for cooking and washing, the guidance adds.

Alongside water and food, people are advised to keep blankets and cash at home, plus a first aid kit, a torch with batteries and a wind-up FM radio.

Security minister Dan Jarvis said those who can follow this advice should follow it. It amounted, he said, to simple steps to be ready for everyday emergencies, as part of a wider, community-oriented effort to improve the nation's resilience.

Defence secretary Wes Streeting said Britain also needed to prepare for the threat of state-sponsored terrorism by Russia or other hostile powers targeting everyday infrastructure. Terms like hybrid warfare and grey zone threats, he said, do not accurately capture or convey to the general public what he prefers to describe as state-sponsored terrorism.

Streeting said these threats are not hypothetical but real, and not somewhere else but increasingly here. It is really important, he argued, to ask households and businesses whether they are prepared, whether they are ready, and whether they know how they would respond to everyday challenges that might arise.

The Cabinet Office's Be Ready campaign is more specific than the indication the government gave in August, when UK citizens were expected to be told to stock up on tinned food. The campaign will be followed up with advertising on social media and radio.

Stocking up for three days is considered a realistic and practical proposal for households, and it brings the UK into line with France, Ireland and the Netherlands in advising people how to be prepared for serious disruption.

Ministers timed the launch to come before the winter storm season, after a series of intense storms in recent years. Tens of thousands of homes were left without power in the Midlands, the south-west and Wales after Storm Goretti hit in January, with winds reaching nearly 100mph.

There is also concern about the potential impact of a super El Niño, a global phenomenon that could lead to 2027 being the hottest year ever recorded and to uncertain weather patterns, affecting global food supplies and energy systems.

The guidance emerged as 32 UK government websites were taken offline as a precaution after the discovery of a security vulnerability in the PHP programming language used by millions of websites worldwide. Britain's National Cyber Security Centre sent out 50,000 alerts to affected organisations, in a reminder of modern societies' deep dependency on the internet and other critical technologies.

Spain and Portugal were suddenly left without power for several hours in April 2025, in a cascading failure triggered by voltage instability in the network that affected about 55 million people — the worst blackout in Europe in recent memory. Britain has only rarely run public information campaigns of this kind, with governments reluctant to be accused of scaremongering; a 1980 campaign, Protect and Survive, advised people on building a bomb shelter at home and keeping enough food for 14 days.