I’ve had a couple of friends ask me if I’m prepping.
Prepping for what?
I see the UK is doing a Be Prepared campaign and Fucking Dan Bongino said something on a podcast. What’s that about?
Most European countries have a version of this, but what is driving Britain’s “be prepared” campaign seems to be:
- Seeing what happened during COVID.
- Russia et all doing shit.
- Several rounds of cyber attacks.
- America making noises about Greenland and getting concerning and less reliable over all.
- Effects of climate change (Heatwaves and Storms).
Basically a load of civil servants have been asked to figure out how we can be prepared for emergencies and they’ve come back with “people should be ready for a disaster so we have some wiggle room during our response”.
A lot of it in reality is just general advice to save the government some energy if something does happen and a lot of other countries have more extraordinary things (The Netherlands have disaster sirens, Poland has bomb shelters).
Do I think it’s preparation for a war? No. I’m not getting Protect And Survive vibes, but things are getting rather concerning in terms of things like methods of attack (cyber attacks) and climate change (we just had some horrible Heatwaves). Basically the government is asking people to prepare for disasters in case something happens that they don’t expect (like what happened with COVID).
I feel like maybe 10% of people would actually prepare correctly. If those preparations are tested, there will be a huge mess
Russia is a threat to Europe again. You may have left the EU but you’ve not physically moved anywhere. They probably won’t bomb UK directly but they can and will try to sabotage things. You’re a member of NATO still.
Extreme weather and storms will be more common with climate change.
Critical infrastructure is all connected. One vulnerability could take banks offline for a few days for example.
Yes yes yes, Russia. Check under your bed too.
Notice the world is rearming with alarming haste? The post WWII calm, the rules based order, just died, due to Russia’s military agression of conquest, China’s weaponization of trade and America’s unmittigated use of both.
The predictable world marked by moderation in good things and bad, is gone now. When the hits come, you can expect the bullies to take your lunch money. Partnerships with other countries are just one election away from turning on you or changing allegiances. You can’t even count on geopolitical analysis of rational behaviour and self interest. This being exemplified by Russia and the USs self immolation.
The governments around the world understand the risks, and expect more discontinuity of services. Pandemics, freezer hackings, war, AI, planetary boundaries and climate change and more all mean that our previous quests of efficiency and profitability instead of resilience and sustainability as a goal, make everything hyper fragile.
When the government says stock up to last a while during disruptions, its because they know they aren’t capable of shielding everyone from everything. They are warning you “we’ll take care of the big stuff, but for the small stuff you’re on your own.”
LOL with the Russia stuff. In the meantime, how much did the US do? Israel?
The fact that we’re running out of cheap easy high quality fossil fuels? Nothing? No connection?
Honestly this should be the tagline if truth and action is really what’s needed from the populace. “We’ll take care of the big stuff, but for the small stuff you’re on your own.” Back in the WWII days people did much more… take a look at victory gardens as an example. We’re very accustomed to getting what we need easily and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to remind people that can change.
In my family we have an ongoing argument regarding when instant gratification became the norm. I say it’s the ATM. My husband says it’s the car. Obviously things have increased pretty rapidly since either of those.
My dad talks about the air conditioner. He says how people don’t go out on the porch now which leads to talking to neighbors because the temperature inside is nicer. That not talking to neighbors means doing it all on ones own which requires that instant gratification.
I want to argue but this last summer was definitely a staying inside one.
You have perfectly described Florida after a hurricane. All the neighbors chillin’ together, power comes back, BYE. Just did that two weeks ago.
Not a brit but when I think about the kinds of sacrifices people used to make and are still making in some places and I try to apply that to, like, my parents, my mind boggles.
My mom becomes sullen and just so unpleasant if a restaurant takes more than 20 minutes to get her food out, even when she can see they’re very busy. She’s not the kind of boomer that yells at the waitstaff (actually she’s Gen X anyway lol) but she bitches nonstop to everyone waiting with her, which makes it hard for everyone else. It always felt like she was never raised with any expectation to moderate her own feelings about things at all.
Her ONLY HOBBY is TV, and it’s all she has to look forward to after work. She can’t sleep without her one specific box fan. I feel like rolling blackouts would send her into absolute fits.
China’s weaponization of trade
Eh, I don’t think the threat of Chinese trade is that it is being strategic. The problem is that China has set itself up so that it only really needs natural resources to maintain its economy and won’t/can’t open itself up to import other manufactured goods of significant quantity.
It is incredibly hard for any industrial or service led economy to export enough goods and services to China to make up for the goods that China wants to export.
In general yes, but don’t forget China’s witholding critical minerals for example. China wields trade policy like a bludgeon, not a tool. Trade policy of China, between business interests and strategic interests are inseperable.
This is entirely Putin’s plan to dismantle America and attack Ukraine so Europe rearms.
He wants to attack his perceived ennemies so that they can rearm? What kind of plan is that? Also the US can dismantle itslef without him and that would be still be a net positive for the world.
Not really what you’re asking, but having several days of bottled water on hand is arguably a good idea in general.
Water’s one of the things that you’re going to need before too long if some sort of disaster does strike. It keeps well, and it’s not terribly expensive.
Yep.
I’m not a prepper but I have an emergency water supply that, under the worst circumstances, could last me a month and a half. It’s really nice when the water’s out for whatever reason to have zero disruption.
Same with food, roughly 1.5 months worth.
I agree that when it comes to the essentials to live, it’s just a good idea to have reserves.
Yeah, you are a prepper.
How much water and food is that? We could easily live for a couple of weeks off what’s in our pantry and freezers. Losing electricity would shorten that considerably.
I haven’t crunched the numbers exactly, but I have six 12-packs of canned, purified water. I’d guess I have about 50-60 packs of dry, shelf stable goods like rice packs and mac-and-cheese, but also have a bulk pack of twelve jars of peanut butter that I bought solely to keep in case of some unimaginable cataclysm.
So yeah, not prepper level, but definitely stocked adequately for any short-term disruptions.
I started building up my pantry after ‘Liberation Day’, because I was concerned supply chain disruptions would get worse and more frequent.
Most people that do legitimate emergency preparedness programs tend to only go two weeks out, because unless you have specific geographic restrictions, any emergency that lasts longer than two weeks is essentially going to end the world.
Thank you for that information.
Anything.
Could be an unfortunate freak accident that disables the electricity grid.
Could be that all trees around your home all fall down and block the roads so you can’t get to the store.
Could be that you break your leg and can’t go to the store to get food or water for 10 days.
Could be flooding, could be drought, could be wildfires, could be a reversal of earths magnetic field or a solar storm that destroys all electronics and throws us back to the stone age.
3-10 days is the realm of “something could happen that meaningfully disrupts the general supply chain”. and also still reasonable to expect of people. Like, they’re not going to ask you to stock up 6 months worth of water and food in a 50m² apartment. That’s not going to happen. Too expensive, don’t have the room. And they’re also not going to ask you to stock one (1) cookie for an emergency in case you get hungry tomorrow afternoon.
And also, if the problem is so huge that the government, military and NGO people can’t fix it in 10 days, that’s a pretty damn big problem and it could be that stocking up from 1 month doesn’t help much more than 10 days, because they can only solve it in 5 years.
3-10 days also buys time to figure out evacuation without having to think about literally the next meal.
I know some of it is from the problem of cyber security issues, very real ones, that stem from ai models, both the llm kind and the more advanced multi modal coding variety that have made finding vulnerabilities and then incorporating attacks into home brewed or nation state brewed targeting much, much easier and faster. This has resulted in very real network problems, and isn’t expected to get easier to defend against because it’s not like you just update for ai facilitated hacks and you’re done, they are just going to increase in numbers until basically an entirely different method of protecting systems is employed.
This has made many people nervous and believe that it’s only a matter of time before financial systems, energy sector systems, water systems, basically all the critical infrastructure, are attacked and have to go offline until long term fixes are found.
There will be people saying ai is all an illusion and just next word predictive analytics that can’t even do basic math, but those days are over, it was true months ago, but the modern models are much, much more capable and llms aren’t what’s being used to do the hacking, llms are being used to find known vulnerabilities that were largely ignored or orgs have been too slow to patch, but that’s not the only method being used to find new vulnerabilities. It’s a problem, cybersecurity in the ai companies have said they’re probably 18 months away from developing models that are specifically for defensive cybersecurity, so even they can’t and aren’t profiting from this issue right now, so it’s not just hype.
That being said, I’ve always been a believer in having a few days at least of food, water, medical supplies, and power generation. I don’t believe more than that will be necessary because if it is, we’re all screwed and no amount of prepping will ensure safety and over stocking will just make you a target and put a target on your family and property. Just be smart and have the basics you would need for a really bad weather event. You should always have that.
Should have kept critical infrastructure offline then 😁 this is their own doing.
Agreed
If people are using LLMs to find vulnerabilities then why doesn’t cybersecurity do the same. Run patches and updates through simulations until it’s as AI proof as possible. Is there a reason why AI can’t be used for white hatting?
Many are, but it’s not enough. Yes ai is expected to be used to automate white hatting, and already is by the most reasonable and advanced orgs, but greed and stupidity do exist and always will. Many companies fired or minimized security staff because they wanted to minimize overhead or thought ai would make one security staff member able to do the job of five. Many servers and sites just sit there run by private individuals or small companies that don’t even have a cybersecurity team.
A huge issue is ai tools have done a very specific thing that makes it harder to shore up - it used to be tedious and boring to implement hacks once a vulnerability was discovered, so a vulnerability would sit unused for days, weeks, months. Ai now ca do all that tedious, boring work for you, and lowers the bar for who can. That drastically increases the number of attacks and the discovery and dissemination of zero day hacks. Ai won’t be omniscient, so it won’t prevent everything even when it can be always on and just as capable defensively.
Also, it’s a good rule of thumb to expect destructive forces to take less time than constructive ones, depending on the target and the goals. Constructing things properly takes care and planning, but taking a sledgehammer to a system can be pretty swift if you know where to hit
So the root problem goes back to capitalism really. AI is the tool but greed and ignorance are the engine as usual.
That’s how I read it too. All because they hope it pays off for rich people… and maybe some of us poors. But probably not.
Whose AI are you using to secure your systems? If you’re in the UK and your using American AI to harden things, you could be just installing their back doors. Maybe you get the lesser AI and they use the top of the line.
Edit maybe they just quietly interfere with your cloud infra, under a secret presidential order.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. A white hat would design their own AI for the specific purpose of stress testing a security system.
Not sure what you’re talking about. A white hat doing home hobbyist levels of DIY AI building will get blown out of the water by the corporations and governments sponsoring serious systems.
I don’t understand why you think someone contracted or works for a cybersecurity company would be some hobbyist DIY guy with a computer.
Cause you are talking about some guy, not the collective efforts of companies or governments.
Climate change affects power generators.
When rivers dry up, it obviously affects hydroelectric generators.
But it also affects nuclear power, because they’re dependent on a constant source of cool water. If a river water level drops below the nuclear power plant’s water intake pipe, the plant has to shut down because it can’t cool the nuclear reactor vessel
Not just Nuclear, Coal and Gas plant use loads of water as well. A typical 1,000 MW plant consuming up to 2.5 billion liters of water per year, mostly for cooling.
Regardless of how you heat water, you need water.
A coworker asked about that here in the US. He said he heard people were told to start saving food. I said that some of Europe had been told that but it’d be a good idea in America as well.
Everybody else here captured the uncertainty in the world, but even without specifics you can still do a tabletop exercise without jumping all the way into a rabbit hole and see what you’d need to have to spend three days without being able to buy supplies. Most of those kind of lists just end up being things you’d need anyway: water, food, any prescriptions, some local currency if credit card machines are down, etc. Decide how much you think some event is likely and how much budget you have and react accordingly, or don’t. Take it as an opportunity to change out the batteries in any smoke dectectors or battery powered radios, maybe top off any power bricks you have for charging phones.
If you decide to stock up on something there are a lot of resources out there already on what makes sense. If you decide not to stock up on anything then be aware that people might not be willing to share if something does happen; you had the same opportunity to prep and the same information that everyone else did.
Most of my knowledge of UK preparedness is either from WWII documentaries or dubious sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgwaOEg0Uqo
Bovinejonyono is a grifter dumbass
That being said, my nearby gas station just ran out of fuel, which is weeeird.
You enjoy bridges? I hate them, especially the super tall ones and the ones with metal grates. What part do you like? What are your favs?
Maybe they meant the card game…
What the fuck did you smoke, mate?
… looks at username…
…ooooooh… nevermind…
It’s probably nothing but anxious news cycle before the elections picking up any “abnormal” signals. However, these kind of announcements are most likely unrelated to any expected threat and more to prepare population for general instability, whatever it might be.
With the way Trump is sticking his orange nose into foreign countries business and his war mongering you should be watching that madman in conjunction with Putin for the reason the world is talking about an “ Armageddon event”…….the last days of a mad narcissist like Trump usually include a total destruction of everyone he can to get even for the hatred directed to him!
It’s midterms baby
Just to increase the anxiety that’s already there.
gotta spread that fear and panic among the plebes.
Quite a lot of EU and UK politicans expect the Russia-Ukraine military confict to spread into Europe, and many even seem to want that. So they want people to prepare for disruption from stuff like drone attacks. Why is this happening? IDK, you’ll have to use your own wisdom to figure out what is going on.
Nothing.
It’s just a thing that’s trending on social media the past few days, and stupid people are freaking out about it.
Remember when everyone horded toilet paper for no good reason during the pandemic? same thing. Stupid people see stupid shit and panic and spread their panic.
This explanation misses the mark. People hoarded toilet paper during the pandemic to gain some sort of sense of control. This question is about a government issued advice. Very different.
Also because not having toilet paper is inconvenient.
Also true. Tho people hoarded it like they were going to shit themselves to death.
some did.
Trying to gain a sense of control about things you can’t control is what stupid people do.
You realize governments push new and updated info campaigns all the time right? They just don’t trend on social media typically.
But hey, if it makes YOU feel special that there is going to be a major disaster next week, feel free to think that Just like the people who prepped and freaked out about the end of the world on Dec 21, 2012. Last time I checked the world didn’t end on that date… but clearly I’m living in a computer simulation so what do I really know!
Whoa, someone’s cranky! Maybe grab a snack and have a nap?
If you read my reply carefully, I did not buy into the alarmism here. In fact, elsewhere in the thread I commented:
It’s probably nothing but anxious news cycle before the elections picking up any “abnormal” signals. However, these kind of announcements are most likely unrelated to any expected threat and more to prepare population for general instability, whatever it might be.
But seriously, get those blood sugar levels up and watch your sleeping.
Right, because I’m not panicking and filling my bathtub with water tonight, I’m the one who is a immature child. Clearly if I was a mature adult I’d have a 3 months supply of survival rations for the inevitable collapse of society, because that’s what responsible mature people do!
It’s not that preppers are stupid and delusional people, whose beliefs are mostly driven by their egotism that they are someone going to survive the end of the world.
No, you’re the immature child because your response is cranky as hell. Remember, use your inside voice first if it all is just trying to pour out, then pick what you want to say with your outside voice.
Also, I hope you had a good sleep and are fresh for a new day!
Or you just characterize people you disagree with as children to feel superior because you don’t have any real legit counter argument or perspective.
We call this projection. Accuse your opponent of what you are doing.
