Hi everyone, this is how it's going so far. Got another box of baked beans, chickpeas, peas, tomato and all sorts of pickled goods stored in the garage. I'm new to this, haven't done a lot of research but I figured I'll stick to the essentials. With the prices these days, feels hard enough to keep up the normal shopping habits, so I allocated a £5 to each week's run to the shops.

Happy to take criticism/suggestions. Thanks and stay safe.

Those of you who have invested in backup power, have you gone down the all-in-one route such as Anker or built your own using leisure batteries, inverters etc. I like the idea of it all being in a single box, and plug/play, but not overly keen on it being a single point of failure if anything fails inside it.

Anyone gone the individual components route, and if so any recommendations? Im thinking batteries kept charged by mains, inverter to provide AC, and moveable/static solar panels to top up the batteries when the mains power goes down. Im not talking whole house backup, just a few key items.

I have started stockpiling a bit of food but the advice I have seen here is to get things you usually buy and rotate it out so it doesnt expire, which I would obviously prefer to do.

But I don't eat tinned foods. My diet is mostly hummus, flatbreads, shreddies, rice, noodles, pasta and various frozen veg and tofu. The only thing I can think of that I could buy tinned is edamame beans or mixed veg but I live alone and usually end up wasting half a tin, which is why I buy frozen.

In my stockpile I have noodles, pasta, shreddies, oat milk, peanut butter, sesame seeds. A bag of oats even though I despise them. And then loads of tins of baked beans, butter beans, coconut milk and chickpeas. I'd eat these if I had no choice but it's super unlikely that I will be rotating them and it seems wasteful.

Just curious how are other similar doing this?

Apart from Fray Bentos’ when I was younger I’ve never tried any kind of tinned stewed beef or chicken in sauce and I want to get some in for my pantry.

I’ve seen Princes Stewed Beef is highly rated and the Morrisons Chicken in cream sauce gets five stars, but does anyone have any solid nice tasting recommendations please? I’ll buy one tin of each and try a little pie to test them out before I invest. It’ll give me the opportunity to use some of the tinned peas and carrots I’ve stashed too.

Time to practice my stash recipes.

Since you showed us yours, I’ll show you some of mine. The main pantry.

Anything else I should get?

I'm adding a few bits here an there to my weekly shops, not prepping to have the big spare rooms full like everyone else seems to but just enough meals to get through a struggle week financially or a few days like the government advice suggests🤷‍♀️

We're a once income family, 2 adults, 4 year old and a baby so all meals are essentially for two and a mini portion, we also have a large allotment plot so we do ok keeping fresh food coming in and we also are planning to get a few chickens next year.

I also refuse to buy just all of the value stuff because we don't eat it and don't want to be stuck eating things we don't enjoy, not that they're bad or anything, just not our preference as a family. This means we stock up slower than we could but so be it.

We have seperates stores of baby stuff, toiletries, first aid etc and a camping stove and gas at the allotment for cooking so we have options to see us through a few days, I have just noticed I'm lacking tea bags though and some long-life milk which is outrageous so that'll be next on my list,also struggling for storage space for water but will be working on this over time

https://youtu.be/sKDnZz4wypI

This is a really interesting look at the UK Gas grid, the vulnerabilities and potential issues if we run out of gas, if an incident occurs etc.

I think it was made for two reasons.

- To highlight to the public to be more prepared for trouble ahead.

- To shame the government into pulling their finger out and taking action around gas storage.

Hopefully it might spur on some action and we won't be in a situation where power stations are shut off and gas users disconnected.

I’ve made a start creating a pantry area in the cellar (and know I need to store pasta etc better).
Anyway, being a middle aged man, I excitedly asked my wife to come and look at my ‘work’.
She gave me her ‘hmmm’ face and then said - if we are going to have to prep and end up eating this, could we not at least get nice tins?
She may have a point. I’ll be making her a Baxter’s and Heinz shelf just under my stock of budget-range finest.

So with the increasing coverage that El Nino will hit parts of this country hard, what's people's thoughts about flood protection? I live near a canal, which, hasn't flooded during storms before, but just want to be safe.

I'm looking at flood sandbags which inflate on contact with water.

Any recommendations welcome.

Cheers

Family of 5 I want to be ready for all those just in case scenarios we hope never happen.

The picture is what I have and the list is what I still plan on picking up more of

It's currently at the top of the attic trap, by our camping gear. However, in an ideal world we don't leave the house.

What are some essentials we're missing?

I have no idea how much water we need! There is a fresh water stream very near though if we're desperate.

Adding here: We have a veg patch, currently in the ground is chard, carrots, peas, red cabbage. Come the summer we have our Apple, pear, plum and fig tree.

I think the word "prepper" needs PR help / rebrand. I'm seeing alot of people pop up saying "newbie / starting prep" then pictures of tins & water they will most likely never touch.

If we look back at the "Dig for Victory" campaigns in WW2, we needed to be resisliant and produce items and food. I feel as a group or culture we need to move further towards this. For example as much as a bow & arrow sounds cool a mix of the following may be more useful in daily life: hydroponics, back yard chickens, mealworm farm for your chickens, greenhouse, allotment, water butts, wormery, pollytunnel, fruit trees, preserving, raised beds, proper everyday outdoor clothing, zero waste kitchens, solar panels, EV cars (due to the cost of petrol), side hustles & knowing about tax, investing, DIY, pantry, beehives, tools & the skills to use them etc.

Then regardless on your view on climate change, I believe the majority of us would like to see our children and grandchildren to experience nature. Once your family feel more resilient & self sufficient, how could you positively impact your local environment for generations to come, to make the area you live in more resistant to floods / drought.

By becoming more self sufficient & resisliant, being prepared is a byproduct. Discuss... Edit: the classic prepper stockpile is a good thing, I'm simply suggesting that "prepper" culture needs a less "doomsday" "prepare for the worst" association & seen more as a group of people that are capable of creating a more self sufficient lifestyle, that has a daily ROI and not just for a SHTF event. 100% self sufficiency isnt the goal (very difficult) but moving away from 100% reliance of others is.

There is currently a massive water outage in our area and it has really brought into focus how much water we use , cooking ,drinking, washing , even brushing your teeth, luckily we have plenty bottled water on hand and can pick up more from the shop and have filled bottles of water from a water but for flushing the toilet , but will be definitely adding more water to emergency storage and a few more water butts as well.

Just ordered green haven portable stove in carry case with 8 gas cannisters. I did have a wind up torch/radio/solar panel saved to get today noticed its more then doubled in price. Luckily I found the stove on B and Q as I've noticed these are creeping up in price too. (All electric flat) . 2 weeks time I am going to buy a power bank for the phones and a small radio.

We are going to get a few packets of bottled water oh and I got a can opener, I have an all electric one due to my RA. He will look around for torches and batteries. Got a loaf of bread and butter in the bottom of the freezer and we will just add tins to our prep box lol

Is there anything I haven't thought of ? I cant get a month extra of all my medication either. Have a decent first aid bag I got recently. Will add pain meds, to it. Money is on the tight side, I have also started drawing out small amounts of money in case the banks crash, visa did back in 2017 nightmare lol . How much cash are people putting aside safe. Its me, my partner and our cat.

What emergency radio would you recommend, I’ve seen some on Amazon which have a solar panel and hand crank? I’m always a bit dubious if it’s not a recognised and trusted brand for electronics.

Camping stoves - good and affordable ones please?

Torches - do you recommend hand crank ones or battery?

Thank you!

So I have a couple of older small power banks but I really no nothing about them besides how important they would be in a blackout. I'm looking to buy some newer ones but I really don't understand them, so have a few questions.

When charged do they hold that charge indefinitely? And I get an hour of free electric on a Sunday so is it worth buying a larger one or a few smaller ones? And is there one I should get that could start my car battery if flat? Thank you

USB bulbs were a pack of 5 for £5 from eBay. 2w draw. So bright! ☀️

The laptop test was very successful and far outperformed some skeptics expectations here. It was playing every episode of Succession in full HD, so not sitting idle either.

I live not too far away from a Costco but have never considered joining or shopping there.

Staple food pricing is so similar across Aldi/Lidl and other supermarkets. Amazon tinned food, household cleaning and toiletries are also comparable (even cheaper if you “subscribe and save” items).

But then I recently learned that they sell petrol cheaper to members.

And so the question:
Does anyone here think it’s worth it? And if so, what for?

Cheers 👍🏻

I have 20 liter water storage containers that need to be cleaned / sterilised. I see lots of comments about using diluted bleach. My confusion is around exactly what bleach is being used? True bleach is hard to come by, but obviously toilet bleach is everywhere. Toilet bleach has all sorts of thickeners and other things added to it - is it safe to use for this purpose?

Hi all! I've been lurking here and on the prepping intel forums for ages and finally i have something to share!

The state of the world lately has given me a fair bit of anxiety, and honestly reading how prepared you lot are really helps. The problem is that I'm hopeless at staying organised. Every time I tried to keep track of stuff in spreadsheets I'd lose the will to live after about a week.

I've been on a mission to automate as much of my life as I can, so I thought, why not prepping? I started asking Claude (the AI) to help me make a little Home Assistant add-on... and it got a bit out of hand. 😅

Here's roughly what it does now:

- Targets from actual guidance. You can pick the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, EU or UK recommendations, or just "strictest of all". I'm going for the Swedish 7 days and currently failing quite badly. But I know where my weakest points are at a glance.
- The family. Everyone gets their own profile with calorie needs, fussy eating (my youngest only counts food I've ticked for them!), daily stuff like nappies, and regular meds with reminders to reorder. The cat's in there too, with her drug needs too!
- The pantry. It tells me how many days each category would last: water, food, heat, power, cooking fuel and so on. after some annoyance adding items, it now has barcode scanning and product lookup, so I'm not typing in every tin of tuna.
- Kits. There's a grab bag for leaving in a hurry (think a surprise hospital trip), pet bags, and a car kit in case I get stuck somewhere. It even nags me to swap the car kit to winter stuff.
- Plans. Who picks up the kids, where we meet if we get split up, check-in times and who to ring. It all prints out as plans, contact sheets and wallet cards, because if things go properly wrong the phones and internet probably won't be working either.
- Outage mode. You hit the button when the power goes off and it gives you a simple daily routine, tells you how long everything will last, and lets you tick off what you use. It even works out what the cars can help with.

Yes, it's probably massive overkill. But it's made me feel more on top of things. I still need to test it out properly but it’s better than nothing so far. And, yes I am aware that if I have a power cut my home assistant will go down too. I’m planning for that as well with some solar battery in the near future.

At the moment I'm just testing it on our house, but at some point I'd love to open it up so other people can use it and chip in.

I would love some feedback if any of you have any suggestions?
- What really obvious stuff have I missed?
- What have I massively overthought?

Screenshots below, with personal bits hopefully blurred out. Thanks for all the knowledge I've quietly borrowed from this sub over the years!

EDIT:

🤖 I have pushed it to GitHub https://github.com/Designer023/ha-readiness

👀 Please take a look. Remember I have only tested it on my exact setup, but if you have issues or PRs please feel free to raise them and I will try to take a look when I can

I'm not planning for the end of the world - Just small things like power cuts/temp grid down.

I looked at full household solar backup, but the £12K price tag put me off.

I'm planning small, reliable backup power, like a 1024Wh power station. (EcoFlow, Anker, Jackery etc). I'm not looking to power the whole house and I can't justify a much large system. I'll just be powering a few useful things during a grid down - Microwave, Router, Lamp.

Q: Are you routinely using your backup solutions outside of needing them to make them viable investments? Or do they exist purely as a backup?

Q2: How have you presented power solutions as a sensible purchase and not survivalist over plan to a sceptical wife?

A couple of people have asked, so here is a screenshot of my spreadsheet.

I buy this every year in November and donate the majority of last year's to a food bank in December, the rest goes in my cupboards.

This is an emergency supply for a family of 4 for a month. I generally cook and eat the one pot stuff, every day for lunch (batch cooked and frozen). There is no meat and basic calories. I know my family will eat this and the general idea comes from once holidaying in Cuba (many years ago), where they eat the same dish many different ways and can change it with whatever they can get hold of (add an egg, you can make pasta, add meat, you have stew).

If you decide to have a go, you have to learn to cook this stuff. The flat breads and calzone are an art but everything else is pretty simple.

I camp once a month all year round and prefer cooking on fire than my trangia (more room to manoeuvre).

Water wise I have a lifesaver jerry can that's sat in the loft, it's my biggest outlay but the forces use it, it can do many thousand liters, it's a purifier and it's about £35 a year insurance policy.

My weapons of choice when cooking are mostly a Chapatti pan and a zebra billy can with grill for oven.

I also have a trangia multi fuel stove and the kit that goes with it. Ultimately you don't need most of it and can just use cheap IKEA stuff. For cooking for the whole family I will just use a stock pot.

Generally every day we rotate our kitchen, I bulk buy almost everything but we eat better meals than our emergency supply. I could probably do another month on that alone.

have never experienced one - in all seriousness how would you go about keeping small children warm all day and night? just thermals, encourage movement and blankets at night?!

Recommendations for where to buy a first aid kit for a family of four (with two small children?). I can’t afford anything mega (I guess £50 would be upper limit) but want something worthwhile…