Beyond the 72-hour kit: why preparedness is about capability, not just supplies

A preparedness moment, and what has actually been announced

Since late August 2026, household preparedness has been front-page news. Headlines told readers to stock up for power cuts, extreme weather, cyber-attacks or hostile-state activity, framed variously as war planning or common sense. It helps to separate what is known from what is reported.

• Announced policy. The Resilience Action Plan: 2026 Implementation Report commits to "new advice for households on preparing for disruption and emergencies", backed by a multi-year campaign anchored in GOV.UK/Prepare and "launching later this year" (Cabinet Office, 2026a).
• Current official advice. Prepare asks households to plan for "an emergency lasting a few days", with 2.5 to 3 litres of drinking water per person per day (Prepare, 2026).
• Reporting from unnamed sources. On 25 August the Guardian, following the Financial Times, reported that households would be advised to hold tinned food and water, freeing government resources "for the most vulnerable" (Elgot and Stacey, 2026).
• Ministerial comment. On 4 September the Environment Secretary, Angela Eagle, said a store of food to "keep you going for a while before the emergency services can get to you" would leave people "a lot better off".

The forthcoming campaign has not yet been published, so we do not know whether government will explicitly frame its advice around "72 hours". But three days is already embedded in the UK's preparedness measurement: the Government's 2026 survey asks whether households have three days of no-cook food and bottled drinking water. Internationally, the EU and countries including Finland also use 72 hours as a preparedness benchmark.

In March 2025 the EU's Preparedness Union Strategy asked citizens to be able to cope for at least 72 hours (European Commission, 2025). Launching Prepare in May 2024, the then Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden cited Finland's "72 hours campaign", which "encourages everyone to be self-sufficient in the first three days of any crisis" (Dowden, 2024). Current GOV.UK Prepare guidance itself does not use the phrase, and "72 hours" is not confirmed as the wording of the forthcoming UK campaign. Nothing in this article should be read as saying that it is.

Britain is talking about preparedness, but the conversation keeps turning into a discussion about what to buy. Owning supplies is not the same thing as being prepared.

A campaign worth having

This is not an argument against the campaign. Prepare already covers far more than supplies: being informed, making a plan, preparing your home and talking to others. A well-resourced campaign could make household preparedness feel normal. The question is whether good information is enough to change behaviour and build capability.

The gap between agreeing and doing

The most directly relevant national evidence comes from the Government's own UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness 2026: 10,791 adults, weighted to be UK-representative, and an official statistic in development (Cabinet Office, 2026b). It shows a steep gradient from belief to action:

• 74% agree effective actions exist; 61% feel capable of taking them.
• 60% have non-perishable food for about three days; 37% have three days of bottled water.
• 29% have key numbers on paper, 14% a household plan and 12% an agreed meeting point.
• 17% have talked about preparing with an adult outside their household.
• 13% feel largely or totally prepared.

Bournemouth University's EM-PREPARE study agrees. Of 931 respondents, 81% were willing to improve and over 70% had torches, yet only 39% held copies of key documents (Miles et al., 2025). The sample is unweighted, but the pattern matches.

Most people agree preparedness matters. Far fewer have a plan, and fewer still have talked about it with anyone.

None of this surprises behavioural scientists. Roughly half of people who intend to act do not follow through (Sheeran, 2002). In disaster research, risk perception alone is a weak predictor of protective action. Coping appraisal matters more: believing an action works, feeling able to do it, and its cost (Bubeck, Botzen and Aerts, 2012; Paton, 2003). This is the logic of Protection Motivation Theory. It also fits COM-B, widely used in UK government behavioural work: behaviour needs capability, opportunity and motivation together (Michie, van Stralen and West, 2011).

So a straight line from awareness to intention to action to capability is too tidy. A loop is more realistic: a small first action builds confidence, which makes the next one more likely.

The evidence also qualifies our own starting proposition, that the UK has a capability problem rather than an information problem. Only 23% of adults recall any preparedness advice in the past year, and 14% have visited Prepare. There is a reach problem too. The accurate claim is that information is necessary but not sufficient.

Possession is not preparedness

Consider two households.

Household A has bottled water, tins, a torch, a radio and a power bank.

Household B has some supplies. It also knows where the stopcock is, can isolate the electricity, has agreed how to reach each other if mobile networks fail, has thought about medication, keeps contacts on paper, knows which neighbour might need a knock on the door, and has tried some of this.

Household B appears more capable. But that distinction exposes a weakness in the evidence base: we know considerably more about what households possess and report doing than about which combinations of preparedness behaviours actually improve outcomes.

A study of 1,114 New York households after Superstorm Sandy found that "having a kit, plan, and medication did not reduce risk of adverse outcomes" in that sample (Clay et al., 2020), and a review found little evidence supporting disaster supply kits (Heagele, 2016). These are cross-sectional US studies, and the highest-risk households may prepare most. They do not show preparedness is pointless. They show the field has measured possessions far more than ability.

An organising framework: have it, know it, plan it, practise it, share it

ResiliGroup organises this thinking with a simple framework, drawn from the evidence but not validated.

Four of the five closely match Prepare's own structure. The distinctive element is practise. Previous disaster experience is one of the more consistent predictors of preparedness (Kohn et al., 2012), and direct success builds self-efficacy more reliably than persuasion (Bandura, 1977). Practice may be the cheapest way to gain experience without a disaster. That is a hypothesis to test, not a finding.

Make preparedness ordinary

Does dramatic framing about war help? The evidence is more mixed than critics of "fear messaging" suggest. A major meta-analysis found fear appeals do change behaviour, most strongly when paired with clear, achievable actions (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). Yet between 2025 and 2026 the share of UK adults who saw war as likely rose from 19% to 28% while preparedness actions stayed broadly stable (Cabinet Office, 2026b). That is correlation, not proof, but heightened threat alone does not seem to produce action. Our reading of how this story was framed in the press is set out in our rapid review of UK preparedness media coverage.

Consequence-based framing may travel further. Storms, cyber-attacks, infrastructure failure and hostile acts often produce the same household consequences: no power, water, internet or mobile signal, and no easy trip to the shops. A proposition to test: don't prepare because something terrible is about to happen. Prepare because disruption already happens.

Smoke alarms, which 78% of UK adults report having, became normal through regulation, social norms and a simple routine, not fear.

Not everyone can buy three days

Preparedness is unevenly distributed. In the 2026 survey, 29% of adults said lack of money had stopped them preparing further, and 18% cited lack of storage space. People in lower social grades complete fewer preparedness actions, and disabled people report lower self-efficacy and more barriers (Cabinet Office, 2025). Renters, carers, families with babies, pet owners, people who rely on powered medical equipment and people who are digitally excluded or isolated all face their own constraints.

The Young Foundation is blunt. Storing food and buying torches "is never likely to be in the top 100 things" households are thinking about, least of all those in financial distress. It argues that centralised broadcasting of risk "will not achieve the intended outcome" without local, trusted organisations (Goulden, 2025).

Whole-of-society resilience should add to collective capacity. It should not quietly withdraw collective responsibility.

Household capability complements resilient infrastructure, public services, emergency response, the voluntary sector, businesses and local networks. It does not replace any of them.

The resilience asset that isn't in a cupboard

Households do not face emergencies alone. In the 1995 Chicago heatwave, social isolation was strongly linked to who died (Klinenberg, 2002), and research across several disasters finds social ties among the strongest predictors of recovery (Aldrich and Meyer, 2015).

The survey suggests considerable willingness to help others, but much less evidence that preparedness is being discussed in advance. In the 2026 survey, 71% of adults were willing to volunteer locally and 48% said neighbours would need extra support, yet only 17% had talked about preparedness outside their home. One of the strongest resilience assets a household has may be another person.

Returning to 72 hours

None of this is a case against the 72-hour idea. It is memorable, it prompts a first action, it eases early pressure on emergency services and it buffers short disruptions. Finland and Czechia pair it with skills, neighbours and support for children, which shows how it can open a wider conversation.

The risk is that the number comes to define the goal. 72 hours of supplies is not the same as 72 hours of resilience.

What should success look like?

Reach, visits and awareness are easy to count but do not show improved resilience. Better indicators would be the share of households that have discussed a plan, know how to isolate utilities, hold key contacts offline, have supplies suited to their needs, understand warnings, have considered medication and care, know who nearby might need help, and have checked or practised their arrangements.

The Government already measures many of these through its annual survey. Adopting it as the campaign's formal baseline would answer the question that matters: did the campaign generate attention, or did it change household capability? Our earlier analysis of what a new disaster literacy framework tells us about household resilience capability looks at how such capability might be described and measured.

Where ResiliKit fits

ResiliKit is one of ResiliGroup's practical experiments with a behavioural question: how can good preparedness information become small actions households actually complete? It sits alongside government guidance rather than competing with it. Government provides authoritative advice. ResiliKit explores how households might turn it into personalised actions, plans, prompts and practice that build over time. The approach is evidence-informed and still evolving. It has not been shown to improve outcomes and needs independent evaluation. We set out that reasoning in why we built ResiliKit the way we did.

Conclusion

For perhaps the first time in decades, household preparedness could become part of ordinary national conversation. That is valuable. But success should not be measured by checklists read or bottled water bought. It should be measured by whether households can act when normal systems fail, whether people can use what they own, and whether neighbours and communities can support one another.

Three days of supplies may help us through the first 72 hours. Capability is what helps us through everything that happens next.

More of our work on household preparedness capability and building household resilience is collected on our household resilience topic page.

Sources and further reading

1. Aldrich, D.P. and Meyer, M.A. (2015) 'Social capital and community resilience', American Behavioral Scientist, 59(2), pp. 254-269. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764214550299.

2. Bandura, A. (1977) 'Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change', Psychological Review, 84(2), pp. 191-215. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191.

3. Bubeck, P., Botzen, W.J.W. and Aerts, J.C.J.H. (2012) 'A review of risk perceptions and other factors that influence flood mitigation behavior', Risk Analysis, 32(9), pp. 1481-1495. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01783.x.

4. Cabinet Office (2025) UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness 2025: supplementary sociodemographic analyses. London: Cabinet Office. Available at: gov.uk (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

5. Cabinet Office (2026a) The UK Government Resilience Action Plan: 2026 Implementation Report. London: Cabinet Office. Available at: gov.uk (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

6. Cabinet Office (2026b) UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness 2026: headline findings. London: Cabinet Office. Available at: gov.uk (Accessed: 22 September 2026). The full questionnaire records the three-day food and bottled water measures cited above.

7. Clay, L.A., Goetschius, J.B., Papas, M.A., Trainor, J., Martins, N. and Kendra, J.M. (2020) 'Does preparedness matter? The influence of household preparedness on disaster outcomes during Superstorm Sandy', Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 14(1), pp. 71-79. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2019.78.

8. Dowden, O. (2024) Deputy Prime Minister speech on resilience, 22 May. London: Cabinet Office. Available at: gov.uk (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

9. European Commission (2025) European Preparedness Union Strategy, 26 March. Available at: european-commission.europa.eu (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

10. Finnish National Rescue Association (SPEK) (n.d.) 72 hours: preparedness recommendation for households. Available at: https://72tuntia.fi/en/ (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

11. Goulden, H. (2025) Community, not catastrophe: what a 'whole society' approach to preparedness really means. London: The Young Foundation. Available at: youngfoundation.org/our-work/publications/community-not-catastrophe.

12. Heagele, T.N. (2016) 'Lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of disaster supply kits', American Journal of Public Health, 106(6), pp. 979-982. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303148.

13. Klinenberg, E. (2002) Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Available at: press.uchicago.edu.

14. Kohn, S., Eaton, J.L., Feroz, S., Bainbridge, A.A., Hoolachan, J. and Barnett, D.J. (2012) 'Personal disaster preparedness: an integrative review of the literature', Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 6(3), pp. 217-231. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1001/dmp.2012.47.

15. Michie, S., van Stralen, M.M. and West, R. (2011) 'The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions', Implementation Science, 6, 42. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42.

16. Miles, L., Zhang, Y., Ball, F. and Miles, L. (2025) Enhancing household resilience in the UK: EM-PREPARE Technical Report 2025. Bournemouth: Bournemouth University Disaster Management Centre. ISBN 978 1 85899 348 5. Available at: staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/report/406586.

17. Paton, D. (2003) 'Disaster preparedness: a social-cognitive perspective', Disaster Prevention and Management, 12(3), pp. 210-216. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/09653560310480686.

18. Prepare (2026) Get prepared for emergencies. Available at: prepare.campaign.gov.uk (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

19. Sheeran, P. (2002) 'Intention-behavior relations: a conceptual and empirical review', European Review of Social Psychology, 12(1), pp. 1-36. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14792772143000003.

20. Tannenbaum, M.B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R.S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K. and Albarracín, D. (2015) 'Appealing to fear: a meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories', Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), pp. 1178-1204. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039729.

21. Elgot, J. and Stacey, K. (2026) 'UK to warn citizens to stock up on food amid threat from climate crisis and hostile states', The Guardian, 25 August. Available at: theguardian.com (Accessed: 22 September 2026).

ResiliGroup CIC is a community interest company researching and translating evidence on resilience capability, particularly at household level. This article distinguishes between evidence (what sources show), interpretation (what we think it means) and ResiliGroup propositions (ideas we are testing). ResiliGroup has no affiliation with the authors of the sources cited.