National Survival Plan Rests on Tinned Peaches and a Tin Opener
UNITED KINGDOM: The government has advised households to prepare for emergencies, and Britain has responded by preparing a shortage of everything required to survive one.
Iceland Tinned Food Sales Jump 40 Per Cent After Be Ready Campaign
Following the Be Ready campaign, Iceland reported a 40 per cent rise in sales of tinned products over a weekend. Shops also saw increased demand for bottled water, torches and radios, according to The Guardian. The government’s advice, as Grocery Gazette sets out, centres on food that keeps for a long time and can be eaten without electricity.
The country has apparently decided that the first response to a national crisis is to deny everyone else access to peaches.
Emergency planning is sensible. Keeping water, essential medicines and a few days of supplies can make an interruption less frightening, and the British Red Cross has said as much for years.
But British retail psychology is a different branch of science.
Panic Buying Psychology in British Supermarkets
When the government says buy a little extra, shoppers hear: the final tin of beans on Earth is being held hostage by a woman called Denise in aisle seven.
A father in a household preparedness trial run by The London Prat buys a torch, discovers it requires batteries, buys twenty batteries, then discovers the torch is rechargeable.
He purchases a wind-up radio to obtain news during a power cut, spends three hours winding it and receives a discussion about whether the BBC has become too dependent on discussions. His family votes to return to the darkness.
Emergency Radio Sales Surge as Britain Doubts the Kettle
According to contemporary retail reporting, emergency radio sales increased sharply and some models sold out.
This creates a remarkable future for British radio. After decades of competing with television and podcasts, the humble transistor has found a new audience consisting entirely of people convinced the kettle may never boil again.
A government guidance note should probably explain that a radio will not make the kettle work, although it may announce whose fault that is.
The British Survival Ration: Soup, Custard Creams and a Moral Dilemma
There is a distinctive national character to our proposed survival rations.
Americans imagine wilderness skills, generators and heroic independence. Britons imagine three tins of tomato soup, a packet of custard creams and a morally difficult conversation about who gets the last Jaffa Cake.
An emergency in Britain is officially declared when somebody offers tea and no one can locate a functioning kettle.
The Prat Emergency Preparedness Index, developed without the inconvenience of government funding, rates households according to four measures: drinking water, accessible medication, working batteries and the ability to open a tin without watching an online tutorial. In the resulting survey, 94 per cent of families have purchased supplies, while 11 per cent remember where they put them. Every house contains at least one drawer that makes the second figure plausible.
What Sensible Emergency Preparation Actually Looks Like
Government advice should remain practical, not apocalyptic. Buy what you actually use, check expiry dates, store enough for a short disruption and leave some for your neighbours.
A sensible emergency kit is reassuring. A garage containing seventeen hundred tins of pineapple rings is simply a personal dispute with the concept of fresh fruit.
Ministers may consider the campaign successful. Britain is certainly ready for one emergency: a sudden shortage of supermarket shelf space.
Should civilisation collapse, our last surviving institution will be a queue outside Iceland, where somebody will inevitably ask whether there is a loyalty-card discount on the end of the world.
Evidence From the Aisles
Exhibit A: Label on a Tin of Peaches, 410g
Peaches in light syrup. Best before: see end of tin. Contains peaches. May contain the last peaches in aisle seven. Tin opener sold separately and currently out of stock. Do not shake a neighbour for the last tin.
Exhibit B: One-Star Review of a Wind-Up Emergency Radio
★☆☆☆☆ “Wound it for three hours. Got forty seconds of a panel discussion about whether the BBC relies too heavily on panel discussions. Returned to shop. Shop had sold out of returns.” — Graham, Bromley
Exhibit C: Supermarket Incident Log, Saturday, Bromley Branch
08:02 — Customer enters, takes 31 tins.
08:09 — Second customer asks first customer where the peaches went.
08:15 — Duty manager asked whether the end of the world qualifies for the loyalty card. Duty manager says he’ll check.
08:40 — Digestive biscuits: gone.
08:41 — Custard creams: gone.
08:42 — Jaffa Cakes placed under the supervision of one reluctant colleague.
Exhibit D: Receipt for One Household Emergency Kit
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Tinned peaches x 40 | £38.00 |
| AA batteries x 20 | £24.00 |
| Torch (rechargeable) | £9.99 |
| Wind-up radio | £29.99 |
| Tin opener | £3.50 |
| Second tin opener (first one now lost) | £3.50 |
| Total | £108.98 |
Five Observations on Stockpiling
- The government said “buy a few tins” and within an hour a man in Swindon owned four hundred. Nobody told him what a few was. Honestly, nobody ever does.
- Everyone’s got a drawer with three torches in it and no batteries. That’s not a drawer, that’s a museum of optimism.
- You know what I’m prepping for? Not the apocalypse. I’m prepping for the moment my wife says “where’s the tin opener” and I have to pretend I didn’t hear.
- Tinned peaches. Of all the foods. If the world ends I’m going to be sitting in the dark with a fork, eating peaches, and the last thing I hear will be someone complaining the syrup’s too sweet.
- Britain’s idea of resilience is a cup of tea and a long sigh. We beat the Blitz with that. We’ll beat the baked beans shortage with that. Possibly.
Further reading:The Guardian on emergency stockpile sales; Grocery Gazette on the government’s advice; LBC’s guide to what the government suggests buying; British Red Cross emergency preparation.
Disclaimer: No tins of beans were harmed in the writing of this report, though several were stockpiled. For a full list of things we have made up, consult our page on UK satirical news, which is kept in a cool, dry place.
