Prepping News Roundup

Looking for some of the hottest UK prepper news? Then you’ve come to the right place. Here we’ll take a peek behind some of the headlines that have been making the news.

Ukraine – prepping for survival

Regular readers will have noticed that here at Prepper Weekly we generally avoid discussion that tends to cast prepping in anything like an apocalyptic light. But there are situations when prepping takes on nothing short of that description – the stakes really are those all-or-nothing, life and death issues.

And that is the desperately sad situation that millions of Ukrainians now find themselves in.

Some of the prepping tips offered by a UK resident in response to the war in eastern Europe – and relayed through the pages of the Daily Star newspaper on the 7^th of March – might, therefore, be especially relevant.

The correspondent – a woman and her partner in Scotland – describes how they are preparing for the fallout from the war by growing their own food and stocking up on emergency kit such as candles and lanterns whilst they have already started a savings fund to pay for at least the next three months of energy bills.

As energy supplies become ever more depleted, the woman stressed the need to get to grips with a camping stove for cooking and to have arranged reliable methods for sterilising water.

What’s it cost to stock your bunker?

A report by Wales Online on the 19^th of March took a practical look at what it might cost to prepare for war or a serious natural disaster.

The woman in this case first started to think about planning for some end of the world event around 11 years ago. Now she has amassed food supplies and prepping materials designed to see her and her family of three through at least the first two years following the outbreak of catastrophe.

She built a concealed bunker underneath her home at a cost of some £7,650 and spent a further £15,300 to date on non-perishable stores of food – which she estimates could stay good for 25 years or more – together with other prepping supplies.

Addressing the current crisis in Ukraine, the woman insists that everyone needs to take some responsibility for the food they’ll need to eat in an emergency.

Survival kit gadgets

Taking a more sober look at more likely emergency or crisis situations, the BBC’s Science Focus magazine on the 24^th of February looked at some of the latest gadgets you might want to add to your bugout bag or survival kit:

• Waterproof matches – essential for starting that life-saving fire for warmth;

• Your personal water filter;

• Wind-up or “clockwork” radio;

• Camping stove;

• Indestructible – and warm – jacket;

• Sturdy boots;

• Mesh-networking dongles – so you can still send your GPS location and text messages even when there is no WiFi signal; and

• Survival guide – your “bible” for survival in extreme situations.

Surge in demand for self-defence classes

Prepping for self-defence might serve you well before there’s any generalised breakdown in the social order of things.

A broadcast by ITV television on the 2^nd of March, for instance, explained how the demand for self-defence classes has shot up in the wake of the rape and murder in South London of 33 year-old Sarah Everard by former Met police officer Wayne Couzens.

One year on from that horrific crime and in the aftershock of the murder, protests have been held, outrage expressed, and shockwaves felt across the whole of the country. As women have demanded the freedom to go about their lives unmolested and as they choose, so there has been a surge in applications for instruction in self-defence. One martial arts club in Reading, Berkshire, told the television reporters they had received an 80% increase in applications since the end of the pandemic and in response to the events of a year ago.