With Brexit looming closer, there seems to be a whole lot of panic and uncertainty filling the air.
Rightly so, as no one knows precisely what will happen. And what do you do when you’re worried your favourite crisps are going to be discontinued, or you won’t be able to get your dog’s favourite tin food? Channel your inner doomsday prep, of course!
It stands to reason that if you don’t know how something is going to go, you should prepare for all possible solutions, or so Britain’s Brexit Preppers believe! With the possibility of facing a no deal Brexit, people have been preparing in unique ways.
There’s those who take a more extreme view on the effects…
Like a scene from Doomsday Preppers that aired on National Geographic back in 2011-2014, Mark McLean, from Glasgow, recently moved from his home to a remote location in the Scottish Highlands in the fear that riots will break out following a no-deal Brexit. He’s stocked himself two weeks’ worth of food and medicine and taught himself to hunt deer and catch rainwater. He even has plans to build an underground bunker!
The Emergency Planning College in North Yorkshire is holding a special weekend to teach attendees how to deal with any chaos that results from all forms of Brexit. The course covers how to survive prolonged blackouts and mass food shortages, self-defence, unarmed combat and urban foraging. The highlight of it all? Dog food is suitable for human consumption in emergencies….
“Some people have said this stuff won’t happen – and perhaps they’re right, but I would say supermarkets are stockpiling food, the NHS has created contingency plans for medicine shortages and the army has been put on standby. So, if these institutions are preparing for the worst, what do they know the rest of us don’t? Maybe we should be preparing too.”
Tom Linden, the survival expert behind the course, tells The Independent.
And there are those who take a more realistic approach….
Joe Elgarf is a moderator of the Facebook Preppers group 48% Preppers. However, she stockpiles reasonably. Preparing for shortages in supermarkets, she has simply been buying more of her family’s every day (non-perishable) items to keep her family going for up to six weeks.
While some may be a little crazy, it turns out most of the Brexit Preppers are educated, informed, cautious, and organised. A woman from Cardiff has a colour coded spreadsheet for her stocked items; makeup, alcohol, toilet paper, tins, cereal- everything! She predicts that dog food will be low on the list so has even stocked up a years’ worth of food for her pup.
And then there are those who have taken an Entrepreneurial approach….
Emergency Food Storage UK has taken a different approach to the Brexit Preppers. Realising the demand increase in storage space, they created the ‘Brexit Box’, a one month's supply of freeze-dried meals and packs of dried meat that can be used with other non-perishable goods (like pasta or rice). They’ve even included a water filter system and a firelighter system! These suckers sell at £300, and they’ve sold more than 600!
While there are those who think the worst, there are plenty of others who think nothing is going to happen.
“What I don’t think is going to happen, is that in any way people are not going to be able to get the food they need on a weekly basis, and that there will be a shortage of food in that way”
James Starkie to BBC Radio 4,
Special Advisor to Michael Gove inside the
Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs
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