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?
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.
Some special military operations are planned like that 🙄
Not war, but special military operation.
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.
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.