Britain urges every household to stockpile three days of food and nine litres of water, Sweden demands a full week of self-reliance 'in case of crisis or war', Europe's governments hand the first 72 hours of every disaster back to the kitchen

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The UK has launched a 'Be Ready' campaign urging every household to stock three days' worth of food and up to nine litres of bottled water, the latest in a wave of European governments telling citizens to fend for themselves for 72 hours or more. Sweden goes further: its civil defence guidance tells households to manage on their own for at least a week 'in case of crisis or war'.

Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, France and Japan have issued similar advice, and the Swedish bulletin does not mince its vocabulary. 'War is being waged in our vicinity,' it states. 'Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common. Terror threats, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us.' UK security minister Dan Jarvis described the advice as 'simple steps', while defence secretary Wes Streeting told the BBC there was 'no sugarcoating the fact that we do live in a more dangerous and turbulent world', listing floods, wildfires, terrorism, cyber attacks and ultimately war as the scenarios in mind.

Governments that spent generations promising comprehensive protection are now formally handing the first 72 hours of any disaster back to the kitchen. The Nordic states are best placed for the pivot because they never abolished civil defence preparedness in the first place; Sweden's brochure is a continuation of an unbroken institutional habit, not a new departure. Countries that did dismantle their Cold War-era agencies must now rebuild the habit from leaflets.

What the campaigns carefully avoid is arithmetic. No government publishes the probability of the emergencies it warns against, or what difference nine litres of water per person actually makes against a named threat. Naming an enemy carries a diplomatic price; a generic warning about 'hostile state threats' costs nothing. On social media, the vagueness has produced its own result: speculation that European governments are preparing for war with Russia, which the brochures neither confirm nor deny.