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.
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.
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.
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 🙄
A proper war lasts at least six days.
Not war, but special military operation.
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