Gavin Esler: Let’s fix things now rather than fearing for the future

Many of us will remember that during the early years of the Troubles, loyalist strikes caused power cuts across Northern Ireland.

My parents lived in County Antrim and my father always prepared for disruption. Our family loved camping, so we had a portable gas stove, torches and gas-powered lights on stand-by.

My father would also - like everyone else - fill up the car with petrol and make sure tinned food was stocked in the kitchen cupboard, just in case. Nobody made a big deal of this. It was common sense.

More recently – and perhaps more on the fringes of common sense – there are those who seem to think we need to prepare for something bigger: the End Times and Doomsday.

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They call themselves “Preppers”, preparing for something much worse than the lights going out for a few days. They are preparing for the lights going out for all of us, forever.

Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper headlined a recent “prepper” story this way: “Meet Britain’s growing army of women preppers readying for WW3 – and why they think YOU should do the same.”

The newspaper featured Dr Sarita Robinson – sometimes known as Dr Survival – at her home in Preston, Lancashire. In preparation for World War Three, the Mail account said she keeps “several months” supply of toilet rolls and a “three-month supply of food under the stairs including milk powder, flour for bread making, a huge sack of rice, drinking water” and other necessities.

Dr Robinson always has her mobile phone handy “in case we should receive the government’s emergency warning alarm that an attack is imminent”. She and her husband ‘have a plan in place with our adult children as to where we would each seek refuge and meet up, depending on where we all were in the country at the time”.

Perhaps some may find Dr Survival’s advice useful. But I’m sceptical. I suspect World War Three involves Russia, France, the UK, the United States, and possibly China. These powers have enough nuclear weapons to destroy all human life on Earth forever. WW3 might therefore be the kind of conflict in which Dr Robinson and the rest of us find baking bread, flushing the toilet or charging mobile phones to be problematic.

Even now, in peacetime, across England, flushing the toilet seems to result not so much in waste disposal as in sewage rearrangement, polluting our waterways and seas. The recent Oxford-Cambridge boat race included warnings to crews not to jump into the polluted River Thames because of the risk of swallowing filthy water.

These are real risks right now. World War Three is of course a risk for our future but surviving it is going to take more than a sack of rice in the cupboard and a few multi-packs of soft toilet tissue.

Yet despite my scepticism, the “prepper” idea is infectious. And profitable. I did a recent reporting assignment about GB News. I found the channel amateurish, embarrassing and incredibly boring to watch, full of weird scare stories about Islam and nonsense about “wokery”.

But GB News viewer comments were more interesting. They were full of paranoia and fears about the future. One viewer said: “I’m a prepper. I prep for societal collapse. I’d advise anyone with any sense to start thinking about doing the same.”

Some people therefore really are preparing for World War Three with extra shopping for food and toilet rolls, while others predict “societal collapse” and still others have found a way of making money from all this.

I discovered that a number of what used to be called “camping shops” or “outdoors outfitters” have rebranded themselves to cater for survivalists and “preppers”. One online ad promises “the cheapest rations you’ll find in the world”. Another offers body armour, although I can’t see how that would be helpful in a nuclear holocaust.

Then there are bulk-buy boxes of military rations (including 50 packs of dried fruit and nuts) and even a handy kit for surviving a nuclear winter that you can keep in your car, alongside the de-icer and the washer fluid.

World War Three is of course a risk for our future but surviving it is going to take more than a sack of rice in the cupboard and a few multi-packs of soft toilet tissue

Back in the real world, perhaps what would be helpful would be to “prep” to fix real problems that affect us right now. Like – say – the lack of NHS dentists, nurses, midwives and doctors, the underfunding of universities, the abysmal state of roads, under-achieving schools, the rail strikes and… all the other real world problems facing us in 2024.

Surely fixing NOW rather than fearing the future would make us all less paranoid and more happy?

I could be wrong, of course. It could indeed be the End Times. But if I’m wrong, you won’t be around to correct me, will you? And neither will I.

:: Gavin Esler is a writer and author most recently of “Britain Is Better Than This”