UK urges households to stockpile emergency supplies

The UK government is launching a major national resilience campaign later this year, urging households to stockpile emergency supplies of food, water, and medicines to prepare for potential crises including cyber attacks and severe weather. The initiative, announced by Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones, encourages the public to take small but important steps to ensure they can cope if access to essential services like power, water, and communications is disrupted.

Officials said the public awareness campaign will provide guidance on building a stockpile of basic survival equipment and will also include advice for schools and colleges. The move comes alongside an updated National Risk Register, which for the first time includes the risk of foreign interference in British democracy and specific threats from cyber attacks targeting data, water infrastructure, and police systems. A new digital resilience failure scenario, referencing the widespread 2024 CrowdStrike outage, has also been added.

The government's warnings are framed by growing concerns over hostile state activity and the changing nature of modern threats. Jones pointed to record-breaking temperatures...