2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Melissa Todd)
If the worst was to happen and you had to survive on your own for three days - what would you need? Melissa Todd reveals her emergency must-haves...
Have you set about making your survival kit? The government tells us we should prepare and arrange so we can survive for 72 hours without outside help. In the US the “prepper” community have been advising this for years, selling kits of oatmeal, bandages, and rifles, so you can supplement your diet with deer. I won’t be doing that.
But I have started packing, with great gusto. The idea of chaos rather appeals, at least from this secure, comfy, interconnected distance. All the safe sensible arrangements we believe our governments have made for our best interests to keep us happy, healthy, fed and washed, all going to cock in a split second of bad weather or Russian grump.
You can’t access medical care or Tesco or pass the time on Instagram. There’s no water, food, power, wifi, hospitals. You’re on your own, pal.
What do you do? Reach for your emergency kit, of course! You could buy these online ready-made, but surely the fun lies in making your own, while thinking, really thinking, about what you’d need to make it through a handful of days. Pen and paper, I’d say, to start, and a good book. Not one you feel you ought to have read already - this probably isn’t the time to start tackling the Russian classics - but one you know well, and love, so that slipping back into its embrace feels soothing and nourishing.
I’ve gone for Dickens’ Hard Times, but then I’m a notorious weirdo. How well I remember the great Broadstairs water crisis of December 2022 . Three days without the precious: rationing tea and hygiene.
Queuing up at Dane Court for bottles of the stuff, going to my son’s home, in blessed, well-hydrated Ramsgate, to shower. With a car and family I was better off than many, but still, being unable to flush the loo after three days, accompanied by the cat repeatedly being sick on the sofa, didn’t half take the joy out of life. Particularly when people blatantly ignore your brazen hints you wish to be left in stinky peace and pop by for coffee and a chat anyway to "see how you’re getting on.
” Gah. Go to the loo before you come, and bring takeaway coffee, and actually, please don’t bother. People are so attracted by misery, like flies to excrement.
At least if the whole UK is in a predicament, I shouldn’t be especially bothered by rubber-necking pals wallowing in schadenfreude. Anyway, back to packing. A good book, pen and paper to record your brave thoughts.
Paracetamol, bandages, torch, a foil blanket, a woolly hat. What next? Brandy, obviously, or your own preferred tipple; gin feels more British, but doesn’t have that pleasantly medicinal air of a good calvados, solid and fruity enough to see you through any operation, throat-based ailment, or amount of personal trauma. Perhaps both to be safe: gin for patriotism, brandy for medical matters.
After all, we’ve no idea what this emergency might be, and the government website is being delightfully coy about it. “Emergencies happen every day..
.here are a few simple and effective steps that you should consider taking to prepare!” No mention of the Russians getting ever twitchier. But we can all guess what they mean.
Whether batteries will actually help much when the bomb drops is a different concern; it’s all we can do, so let’s stockpile them. I have bought a battery-operated radio, and flipping love it. If we are all going together I plan to go to the soothing chortle of Elaine Paige.
Out, out, brief candle! Pack 20 of those, and plenty of matches. Next, food. Three days’ worth.
What will happen after three days? Will Greggs’ charming staff kindly crank up their ovens once more, whistling We’ll Meet Again? Let’s hope so. Meanwhile, what would you choose to eat without water or electricity to turn your foodstuff into something palatable? Baked beans, nuts and raisins, maybe some protein bars, although they seem a bit too modern and processed for this new self-sufficient world; I think I’d prefer lumps of tofu, sliced and coated in marmite; a fistful of peanuts, followed by tinned peaches and custard, every food group covered; but you, as my son says, do you. See you on the other side.
Maybe..
