Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has launched the “Be Ready campaign” on October 23, urging households to stockpile three days’ worth of bottled water, non-perishable food, and cash to prepare for potential cyberattacks, severe flooding, and hostile state actions.
The three-year initiative aims to build domestic preparedness as ministers accelerate a broader overhaul of national defense strategies, including updating Cold War-era contingency plans and pushing the timeline of a home defense program forward from 2035 to 2030.
Streeting stated that the campaign seeks to make the public “alert, not alarmed.”
What the Be Ready campaign requires
A checklist available for download on the government’s new website, beready.campaign.gov.uk, recommends storing three days’ worth of bottled water—approximately three liters per person daily—along with non-perishable tinned food, a torch, a power bank, a battery-powered or wind-up radio, a first aid kit, cash in notes and coins, credit cards, and essential supplies for infants and pets.
Streeting described the initiative as practical preparation while renewing his call for a whole-of-society approach to resilience, noting that many households already possess these items.
According to The Independent, retail stores sold out of wind-up radios and torches within days, while data from The Prepared Household showed Scotland leading the UK in per-person search interest for emergency supplies ahead of the West Midlands.
Read Also: Britain Faces 1,000-Day Deadline to Prepare for War, Defence Secretary Warns
The driving push
The campaign’s rollout followed the discovery of a major vulnerability in the PHP programming language on October 21, which triggered millions of exploitation attempts and forced several businesses offline, according to Reuters.
Government officials cited the disruption to demonstrate the urgent need for national resilience. Simultaneously, Prime Minister Andy Burnham unveiled a military aircraft-based wildfire response plan following a record-breaking summer marked by extreme heat, drought, and wildfires.
Officials have also broadened the official definition of national threats, adding interference with Britain’s democratic processes to the national risk registry. Freedom of information data first reported by The Independent revealed that drone-related security incidents at or near Ministry of Defence sites surged to 340 in the year ending August 2026, up from 250 in 2025 and 126 the previous year.
