4mo ago

EU calls for households to stockpile 72 hours of food amid war risks

www.ft.com

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.

145 comments

I'm from EU and this is way less than my country suggests, which is 2 weeks.
I actually have 2 weeks supplies, but I'm gonna eat baked beans and vegan chocolate and drink coke zero the last few days 😅
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Some special military operations are planned like that 🙄
  
  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.
  
  A proper war lasts at least six days.
  
  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.
- I think there's an AI generated chocolate beans meme hidden somewhere.
- Here we only have very short wars, because we've got other things to do.
- Yeah, I live halfway up a small mountain (in Europe) and usually have everything needed to survive a month, including if the water and power are cut.
  We're currently putting together a pair of bug-out bags as well though, so we can be mobile in an emergency too
- Wait, what do.you think "vegan" means?
Just a question for people here who do not have 72 hours of food stored in their homes? Do you go to the supermarket every day? Or do you cook at all? What are you doing on the weekend? What happens when you're sick and can't go shopping?
- Do you go to the supermarket every day?
  There's 5 food stores <7 minutes away from my apartment,. Why stockpile when you can just walk and pick up fresh food every other day.
  What happens when you're sick and can't go shopping?
  Is that a common occurrence? Just get a friend or family member to shop for you if you're that ill, or order food delivery.
  
  But don't you still have some staple stuff like noodles, rice, frozen or canned foods and so on in your house? Combined with the fact that you might buy food in larger quantities (e.g. not just 1 apple, but 6 or maybe 1kg), i'd also imagine that most people have enough food for 3 days in their house.
  The imo more interesting thing would be fresh water.
- Might happen at the end of month for me. We go grocery shopping with a car at the beginning of the month, but 31 days are longer than my freezer is big and a backpack can only hold so much. So I respectfully ask Putin not to attack on the 29th.
- I have 2 days worth of food in my home. 4 days worth of lunch. When the 2 days of food runs out, I buy more on my way home. Same goes for when the lunch runs out. Meaning if I'm caught at a bad time, I'll have 0 food
  
  I grocery shop every 2 weeks and at any given time I have a month of food in stock. because I live in a hemisphere with hurricanes.
- Do you have 72 hours of food supplies that you can use in case of an emergency? When there is no water and no electricity, and you can't cook mac&cheese in the oven.
  
  I assumed most everyone had at least two weeks of emergency supplies. Like I have a stock of a couple weeks supply of food and water in the basement in case of emergencies, that's what my parents taught me was the bare minimum in case of emergencies.
- Yep, I have four supermarkets and two discounters in walkable distance and it makes me walk and leave the house daily. Plus my back's not the healthiest and I can't carry that much anymore.
- 72 hours of essential supplies. Do you have 72 hours of:
  food (cooked, or cookable? see points 2 and 3)
  stored water (taps out?)
  stored power generation (powers out?)
  medicines and first aid (emergency services outages? communications outages?)
  heat in the coldest months? (see point 3) etc.
- You'd be amazed the lack of foresight most have.
  When CoViD hit, I was able to avoid shopping trips for nearly six months, due to having a well prepared pantry. At best, I would go every other week to the store for mostly fruit, which is something I find hard to preserve without requiring huge amounts of sugars, of which I shy away, for personal reasons.
- Yes, I live right next to a store.
- Supermarket daily, mostly microwave stuff.
  I eat what I buy. If I buy a days food I'll eat it in a day, if I buy 2 days food I'll probably also eat that in 1 day. If I'm sick I wear a mask, if I'm super sick I ask someone to deliver me some shopping but then it is more than a days worth because I don't want to ask someone to do my shopping every day.
Meanwhile, here in the Uk our government is making sure we won't have enough money to buy more than two days of food at a time.
- I mean, 14 consecutive years of Conservative leadership will do that to the best of nations.
  No doubt the UK has a MASSIVE uphill struggle ahead to bring back a sense of prosperity for its people, but it’s a bit disingenuous to make it sound as though it’s the fault of a Government that’s been in power for less than a year so far.
  It can take mere seconds to destroy something, and multiple times longer than that to fix it.
  In Australia, we are a couple years ahead of the UK (in terms of our first Labor Gov’t following a decade+ of Conservative leadership); things don’t magically get better overnight, but we are at least on the correct path now — here’s hoping we don’t fuck things up by voting the Cons back in later this year 😫
  
  Oh I'm well aware that the Con govmnt has been an appalling dismantling of our country, but Labour are so far appearing to largely be following suit. Remember the Tory repetition about the need for austerity? It just feels like a repeat of that, to put it very breifly. I know 14 years can't be fixed overnight, but shitting on the poor and needy, who have been suffering the most already is just grotesque. There's plenty of condemnation by journalists and MPs alike for this as well as some calls to tax the rich instead.
  I've never voted for either so I'm looking at what they do through neutral(ish!) eyes and I don't see politics so much an ever increasing pandering to the corporate economy (over decades).
  I can't say I'm too knowledgable about Aus politics, but got glimpses of how bad your last govmnt was through the Guardian. Hope you have a better time than us with a new set of faces!
- Do what you can to get your people onto here either through Lemmy itself or Voyager for Lemmy along with:
  Bluesky @bsky (All these on Bluesky), Flashes @flashes, Spark @sprk.so, Element @thematrixfoundation, Revolt @revolt.chat, Resonite (For fun) @resonite, & PeerTube @joinpeertube
  Gotta say the UK needs its own version of Run For Something @runforsomething organization. With multiple other accounts and organizations unifying to get stuff done as well
  Best of luck to ya mate, grow the movement in your country everyday!!
  
  Run for Something sounds good. We have a fairly healthy number of independent politicians in the UK I think but something like that can only help improve peoples involvement in local snd national government.
  Assuming you're from the US by sharing that, I hope you have more than luck to help over there!
Thank goodness that wars only last for 3 days exactly.
Hello ~~darkness~~ canned bread, my old friend
- Can you get that?
  My plan has just been flour (or grain and a grinder if it's more like 72 days) and more time spent baking.
  
  Hope you're also planning to keep that oven going if there is a power outage...
  It's something a lot of people (myself included) keep forgetting that without electricity, both your fridge and your stove / oven stop working.
  
  https://newengland.com/yankee/history/bm-brown-bread-in-a-can/
  
  If I'd want to prepare for real I'd get some military rations and the German ones have canned bread
72 hours? No problem. Always have a big bag of rice on hand and you're done.
- Only if you have lots of water too. And preferably some way to heat it (though you can totally swell rice in cold water)
  
  This brings up an important point. You should have something like a camping stove running on propane or similar stored fuel.
  If the water supply fails you need to be able to cook water for drinking purposes.
  
  Canned food is a good alternative
- and water to cook it and drink, and power to heat it?
I'm happy I'm growing my own food.
Though I don't think much will happen to Ireland.
- Yam tits! That is genuinely a new one for me. Excellent.
  I'll never, as long as I may live, get over the utter embarrassment of being born and raised in a country who could support that maniac. I suppose the worst thing I could do is leave. The only way to alleviate my shame is to stay and keep voting for the least insane option.
  
  I've almost fully figured out how to live off just cans at this point. I also have a basement greenhouse in the works, although I've been pleasantly surprised by the local commercial options.
  
  I guess it helps that Ireland is an island, though our defence is a joke. Our current plan is to rely on other countries for help.
  
  Canada being highly dependant on imports, some items could completely disappear from stores in the even of a global conflict
I don't enjoy archived links that much, so here is the plan, straight from the EU.
I read that as 72 days at first and thought something serious was expected soon. Oh, 72 HOURS. Who doesn't have that?
Also unless you are on the border, how useful is that likely to be? What would the expectation be, only short term supply chain disruption so shops may run out of something in the first few days but after that food supply will adjust to it?
- I don't think the preparation is meant for full blown war. It's for disruptions.
  Russia won't be able drive tanks all over Europe any time soon, but they are capable of cutting cables to attack energy distribution, hacking payment methods and other infrastructure dependent on networks.
  Remember the start of Covid? There was plenty of toiletpapir, hand sanitizer and test kits for everyone, but nobody could get it in stores for a long time because everyone wanted it at the same time. It's better if everyone stock up over a longer period of time, so it doesn't crash the supply chain when it is needed.
  
  That makes quite a bit of sense as to how it would be useful.
- Germany's advice for normal times is to be stocked up for 11 days. 3 Days compared to that is laughable even so it is better than 0.
  
  Its not really something I think of because I am going to have easily days worth of food without even having to think about it. Stuff like pasta, rice and flour.
  11 days not so sure on, if I had just been shopping at the start of the 11 days then easily, but if it was from just before I go shopping then its harder to say. I would most likely be able to ration out what is left to cover 11 days but its going to be pretty basic by the end of it. Like fried rice with salt and pepper kind of thing.
- I don't have 72hrs of food at home, because I have almost no self control. 2 days of food can very easily also be one day of food haha
I could survive 72 hours on the food I have at home at any time, it won't be grand tho and I'll still need electricity to make most of it.
Once I move I'm planning on having a small stockpile (cause I'll finally have space for it) to last about 2 weeks or so, worst case I just need to eat it and restock it later and best case it saves me a lot of hassle in a crisis.
- Yeah, if you have the space to store stuff and make a fire for cooking it's just a matter of recipes and FIFOing your stockpile to keep everything nutritious and (in some cases) not stale. If I was in a confined space it would be much more of a challenge, I might end up going with surplus military rations. That's basically what they're designed for, after all.
My grandma lived through WWII and rationing. After she died, we were cleaning out her house to find she had hidden cans of food stockpiled everywhere: behind the washing machine, in the pit in her garage, in the corners of her loft, everywhere.
If rationing ever came back in, she was more than ready for it.
- It's not impossible they're saying this because they figure that's how fast the EU could beat Russia if Russia tried something. Or else you'd be dead from a nuke anyway.
- 3 day...cades
72 hours of food is just grocery shopping
- I'm definitely not prepared.
  Without water, gas or electricity, there's not really much left in essentials I can use from my grocery shopping.
  I don't know about you, but I usually buy fresh food that needs to be cooked, and drink water from tap.
  
  worst case ill just eat my poop
72 hours, the average length of a special military operation.
72 hours of food is crazy to me. I would be making a trip to the store when down to maybe a week or two.
Guess Europe really does shop different.
- I have half a dozen supermarkets in 10min radius by foot. multiple more if I use a bike/scooter.
  There's really not much use in stocking huge amounts of food at home, especially when you want to cook fresh stuff.
  Non-perishable things like canned and frozen meals is mainly used as a fallback in case of lazyness (ignoring canned stuff for ingredients)
  I go to the supermarket at least once a week. normally 2-3 times
- Completely depends on how you live.
  Someone who lives in a house with plenty of storage and a 30 minute drive to the nearest store will have a lot of food at home. Whereas someone who lives in a tiny apartment with a five minute walk to the store will not.
  In general, places like American suburbs, with huge single-family homes, no stores and complete reliance on cars, are rare in Europe.
  
  I don't live in the states, but the reliance on driving here is real. Small towns are lucky to have one grocery store and are usually very expensive.
- I prefer eating fresh food, which means that I usually have to go to the store roughly every other day. If I buy more than a couple days of food, it just means more crap in the fridge and more spoilage.
  And if my food did last longer than a few days without spoiling, then I'd really start to question what it was made of....
  Editing to add that this is easily possible because I have several stores within a short walk or ride on the transit, as it was also pointed out in a sibling comment.
  
  I guess where I am there is limited fresh food available anyway. Other then breadstuffs and the odd tomato/lettuce the stuff I get at the store has to last at least 2 weeks. Also might be why I appreciate my garden so much.
That has been the recommendation for civil protection for a while already. Not so much because of the risks of war, but e. g. floodings, power outages, storms etc. And most importantly you should stockpile water, because at a power outage, there will be no tap water anymore. That's the most important bit people here seem to forget. So nothing new here, actually.
Given how quickly supermarket shelves emptied at the start of COVID, this is good advice generally for a crisis.
- True. We had a pretty big storm here a couple of years ago and the next day the supermarket shelves were almost empty. We really don't usually think about how fragile the supply chain is when it comes to a crisis.
- It's not about having something to eat for 72h, it's about resilience.
I have about a month stocked up. I want a years worth.
- I eat a lot of lentils. I've got a month of meal prep curry/chilli, and a few months of dry lentils in the cupboard.
72 hours means you go to the store on Monday and then again on Friday. I thought this was kind of the norm for everyone? I mean, not for me, I go once every 10 days but surely 3 days is not that big of a deal?
Develop minimum preparedness criteria for essential services such as hospitals, schools, transport, and telecommunications.
I hope they are taking this point seriously so that privatized welfare no longer gets special treatment.
may be is start of ww-3; winter is coming
- Hopefully
Including bottled water?
- Yes. Don't forget batteries for torches and a couple of solar charger power banks for your phone.
EU is trying to stimulate spending. Get their GDP numbers back up.

145 comments