The Government has apparently been advising us to stock up on non-perishable food and other essentials, enough to survive for three days in the event of a national emergency. Predictably, some people are complaining. Quite what there is to complain about escapes me. Nobody is suggesting we dig an Anderson shelter beneath the patio or start cultivating potatoes on the village green. Just keep a few essentials handy in case the electricity goes off, the water stops flowing or the supermarkets can't open.
I would have thought most households already had considerably more than three days' food in their cupboards. We certainly do. Between the freezer, the fridge, the tins and the various things lurking at the back of the pantry, I'm reasonably confident we could manage a week without going shopping. Admittedly, the menu might become a little eccentric towards the end, but we wouldn't starve.
In fact, thinking about it, we're rather well equipped for the collapse of civilisation. We have solar panels and a substantial battery, bottled gas for cooking, a log burner that heats the whole house, a well and an enormous pond. The latter two aren't exactly ready sources of drinking water, but they're useful things to have around. Apparently, we've been preparing for the Third World War for years. We thought we were just trying to keep the energy bills down.
And this is where Vladimir Putin comes into the picture.
Russia has spent years demonstrating how the vulnerabilities of modern European societies can be exploited. We depend on electricity, communications, water supplies, transport and electronic payments. Disrupt enough of those systems and you can generate economic damage, public anxiety and political pressure without sending a single tank across the border. Putin doesn't necessarily need to defeat NATO militarily to achieve some of his objectives. If he can persuade European populations that supporting Ukraine and standing up to Russia will make their lives sufficiently uncomfortable, he may hope they'll pressure their governments to back down.
This is why the Government's advice is rather more significant than it first appears. Deterrence isn't simply about persuading an adversary that you can hit him back. It's also about convincing him that hitting you won't achieve very much. If people are prepared for disruption, and know they can manage without normal services for a few days, threats to those services lose some of their psychological force.
I don't suggest that the campaign was devised primarily to send a message to Moscow. Floods, storms and ordinary infrastructure failures are perfectly good reasons for being prepared. Nor will three days' emergency rations defeat the Russian military. But civilian resilience is part of the wider defence strategy that NATO increasingly regards as essential. A society that is difficult to frighten or disrupt is a less attractive target for coercion.
There's a certain irony in the complaints. My parents' generation thought nothing of keeping a well-stocked larder, just in case the balloon went up, as they used to say when contemplating the outbreak of war. These days, apparently, being advised to own a tin opener is evidence that the Government knows Armageddon is just around the corner. We don't need to resurrect the Blitz spirit, but a little elementary self-reliance hardly seems an outrageous proposition, particularly from those who are forever telling us that Britain should stand on its own two feet.
There are, of course, people who cannot afford to build up emergency supplies, and the Government ought to help them. National resilience is not much use if it extends only to people with reasonably comfortable bank balances. But that is an argument for making preparedness more widely achievable, not for dismissing the idea altogether.
Which brings me back to our own preparations, and a couple of minor difficulties.
Our solar inverter is perfectly capable of providing emergency electricity, but I have yet to establish whether the installer actually connected the backup facility. Which means that, in the event of a national power failure, we could find ourselves sitting beneath a roof covered in solar panels, alongside a fully charged battery, in the dark. Modern technology does occasionally have a rather perverse sense of humour.
More importantly, there is one area in which our preparations remain woefully inadequate.
Homemade ice cream.
It's all very well having a log burner, bottled gas, solar panels and enough food to survive a modest siege, but what happens when the ice cream runs out? There are limits to the privations a civilised society should be expected to endure. I shall therefore be concentrating my immediate efforts on establishing a strategic reserve sufficient to last at least seven days.
Provided, of course, I can get the bloody battery to keep the freezer running.
Putin must not be allowed to win.
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