90 Days for Them But Just 3 Days for You.

Britain is telling households to put aside three days of food and water. The Pentagon is preparing military stockpiles for ninety days and planning bases capable of operating through prolonged failures of civilian infrastructure.

That gap deserves considerably more attention than it is getting.

On 22 October, the British government launched a three-year preparedness campaign⁠, with more than five hundred organisations signed up to spread the message. Families are being told to prepare for interruptions to electricity, water, phones and the internet.

Sweden’s central bank has worked with the payments industry on an agreement enabling offline card purchases⁠ of essentials during communications disruptions lasting up to seven days. It also advises households to keep around 1,000 kronor in cash per adult⁠.

Australian households should take note. Our food, fuel, water and wages move through networks most of us barely notice until they stop working.

So what explains the urgency?

Severe weather features prominently in Britain’s explanation. But storms are hardly a discovery in British life. If three days of bottled water were the whole answer to rain, a three-year campaign would be an extraordinary way to deliver it.

Then comes Russia, the establishment’s reliable bogeyman. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, has given Britain “a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win”⁠.

But invoking Moscow hardly explains the worldwide case for household preparedness. Taiwan’s official guidance⁠ asks households to hold at least seven days of supplies, including three litres of drinking water per person daily. Germany recommends up to ten days⁠.

Then there’s the Pentagon’s FORTRESS America programme.

Dale Marks, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment, has described plans to power bases for “30, 60, or even 90 days without a single watt of outside power”⁠. He has also outlined 90-day stockpiles of critical parts, fuel, propellants and ammunition. The funding model is public-private partnership, because, as he puts it, the model he wants is “not me having to go back up on Capitol Hill with my hand out.”

Military bases are preparing to keep fighting through prolonged disruption. Households are being given a three-day starting point. The comparison exposes the scale of failure officials consider worth preparing to survive.

Ninety days for military reserves. Three days for your cupboard.

The state intends to keep functioning if civilian systems fail for an extended period. So what happens to the people outside the gates?

A coordinated attack on electricity, telecommunications and payments could disable several essentials at once. An ordinary family might have food in the pantry and money in the bank, yet no means of cooking the food or reaching the money.

A financial crisis raises another question: how would people buy essentials if banks or payment networks restricted access? The advice to keep physical cash deserves attention from anyone being sold the convenience of an entirely digital life.

And then there’s AI. Could it be that there’s about to be a global shutdown to eliminate some rogue AI like SkyNet in the Terminator movies? It’s a reason governments would never say out loud principally because AI models can read the press releases. Cutting power stops a model thinking, and “prepare for total darkness” fits a decided shutdown better than it fits weather.

A powerful storm on the sun could also disrupt life on Earth. In 1859, one such storm sent electrical currents surging through telegraph networks, causing fires. Today, we depend on electricity and communications for everything from pumping water to buying food. How much could fail at once, how long would repairs take, and whose services would be restored first?

Setting aside all the potential reasons, the warnings raise an immediate political question: what powers would governments exercise during a prolonged emergency?

Who could order evacuations, restrict movement, ration supplies or control access to essential services? How would Parliament scrutinise those decisions? What would prevent temporary powers becoming permanent arrangements?

Those questions need answers while the lights are still on.

Families can fill cupboards. They cannot secure the electricity network, restore telecommunications or guarantee the delivery of fuel. Ministers and essential-service providers also owe the public an account of what these preparations are actually for. And climate change isn’t going to cut it.

Something is brewing. Governments are preparing for disruption serious enough to require independent power, fallback payments and extended military stockpiles.

Watch what they build. Demand to know what powers come with it.

And stock up on non-perishable food and water.

“The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”
– James Madison