On the 22nd of October 2026 the UK government advised UK residents to stockpile at least 3 days or 72 hours worth of supplies. Ministers—including Defence Secretary Wes Streeting and Prime Minister Andy Burnham—emphasised that the guidance is a routine resilience measure rather than a response to any specific or imminent attack. It’s the first line of messaging within a 3-year awareness campaign.
The readiness campaign is preparing us for scenario of multiple variants: cyber attacks and threats to the UK supply chain, severe weather, hostile state actors and generally to ease the burden on the emergency services in any of the listed scenarios.
I spoke to a number of people this week about whether they’d been stockpiling - and the responses ranged from ‘what on earth are you talking about’ to ‘of course, I’m prepped and ready.’ General sentiment seems to be that people aren’t taking the government advice overly seriously, with an estimated 3 in 10 people heeding the Government’s advice so far. Even my boyfriend mocked me when I suggested we pop to the shops and get a few essentials.
Did that stop me from going to the shops? Nope. If we’re going to be sheltering for 3 days, I’m making sure we’ve got some emergency chocolate biscuits. He’ll thank me when he needs a little blackout pick-me-up.
I’d like to think that the Government is being overly cautious and warning us loosely of an abstract and unlikely scenario. But then, on Friday 13th November Microsoft went down; the US grounded all flights; trains across London were disrupted and I got two parking fines in the post. Okay, that last one isn’t related but it really felt like the world was conspiring towards chaos that day.
All of this got me thinking. If the National Grid went down and we had no power, no internet, no means of communicating with each other - where would I like to be? And the answer became pretty obvious to me. I wouldn’t want to be sheltering in my flat in London - undoubtedly I’d start to feel a bit unsafe with so many pent up and anxious people around.
I’d want to be in my cabin.
It’s already off-grid. Always has been. Getting electricity from solar power, heat from the log burner and an ability to cook food over fire or with its own private gas supply - it’s the perfect place to hole up in during a blackout. Not to mention we’ve got tea, coffee, torches, blankets, hot water bottles, board games and books to keep cosy and entertained.
Then I realllly started to think… Would I enjoy a 3 day blackout? Perhaps a bit rogue, but I think [I know] I would. I’ve been encouraging people to experience their own self-imposed blackout for the last 3 years. The Re experience is all about tuning out the noise, disconnecting from the grid - whether that be national or instagram - and getting back to the basics: making a fire and being self-sufficient.
People joke that they’d like to have me around in the apocalypse because I’m pretty handy, tougher than I look and I’m calm under pressure. And because if it all goes to shit, you need someone who can make a fire and build a shelter.
Anyway, I started questioning myself more deeply. Was I hoping that there’s a blackout so that I can have an imposed pause? No question. Life has been really busy lately with projects, building a hiking community, getting my Mountain Leader qualification and trying to keep my head above water when winter keeps kicking my immunity in the bin. The rat race has been really race-y lately… a little three day (or longer) pause would be quite nice, actually.
And then it hit me. I’m so disconnected from the reason I started Re. Normally you don’t have to tell me twice to take a little time off, but lately I’ve been so sucked into the rat race that I forgot that I don’t actually have to wait for a nation-wide blackout to take a break. I can actually just book a cabin break whenever I want. Go off-grid and enjoy being unreachable for a few days. [Hopefully] civilisation will still be there when I re-emerge.
So, this is me logging off and taking a 72 hour self-imposed civilisation blackout. See you in a few days.
Monica x
