Risks registered
“Be Ready”, resilience and public opinion
As Michael Jacobs has argued recently, restoring hope is one of the defining political projects of our time. Not far behind is another: preparing Britain and Britons for a riskier future. That demands not just new policies, but a shift in mindset. Are people ready? Do they want to be? And are they prepared to become active participants in national resilience?
As part of a new three-year campaign to strengthen national resilience, the UK Government is urging households to stock up enough emergency supplies to survive for three days in a crisis. “Be Ready” focuses on the need to be prepared for emergencies such as floods or wildfires but also comes alongside ministerial warnings about the possibility of war. It advises stocking up on water, non-perishable food, medical and other supplies, having cash, a torch and an FM radio (wind-up or battery-powered), a first aid kit and photocopies of passports.
The campaign reflects a change in Britain’s risk landscape which is no longer ‘traditional’ and exclusively military; defence of the realm stuff. Key risks have become more societal, interconnected, digital and information-based, as well as geo-political and climatic. “Be Ready” aligns Britain with European neighbours like Sweden, France, and the Netherlands, who have long targeted public preparedness with the result that ‘prepping’ is more commonplace.
They’re coming; “Be Ready” or not
Public awareness is catching up. Annual polling by Ipsos shows a shift in what people perceive as major risks. In Britain, as elsewhere, the threats most frequently identified as real dangers are disinformation and manipulation of public opinion (bringing instability and economic disruption), and hacking and cyber intrusion. These outrank traditional military threats.
Similarly, the UK’s 2026 National Risk Register has recently evolved to give more attention to cyber risks across healthcare, telecommunications, energy, banking and government. This year’s edition added ‘digital and data resilience’ and ‘democratic interference’. It uprated the odds of an entire region losing its water supply from less than 1% to 5–25%.
Since the Register’s publication, an Anthropic researcher has suggested a more than 10% chance AI ‘could kill all humans’. The current Prime Minister has talked about Russian interference in the Brexit vote and his predecessor warned of war with Russia by 2030. This month, an alert about two vulnerabilities within PHP (uncovered by AI) sparked a scramble to restore cyber-security. And while Britain has remained immune from the kind of unrest seen across Europe in recent weeks, according to Ipsos, three-quarters had expected this to happen at some point in Britain this year.
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The point is not whether any individual prediction proves accurate. It is that Britain’s risk landscape now spans geopolitical conflict, cyber vulnerability, AI disruption, infrastructure failure and climate impacts simultaneously.
Moreover, citizens are not just potential victims of risks; their attitudes and behaviours influence vulnerability to disinformation, fraud and cyber-attack. And no government agency can, alone, protect every household from flooding, heat stress, disruption to power and food supply. Thus, where once the solution was to defend the nation or ‘send in the army’ to tackle emergencies, a ‘whole society’ doctrine is needed to respond to more complex threats to systems, networks and behaviours.
This will be a test for the UK State which is not known for successful adoption of adult-to-adult approaches to policymaking or communications (to borrow Eric Berne’s psychological model) while also constantly fearful of criticism of ‘nannying’. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has added another tricky balance for government to strike; the country being “Alert not alarmed”.
Yet recent history suggests Britons are more willing to adapt than policymakers often assume. During Covid, millions changed behaviours rapidly and sustained those changes over long periods. More recently, the immediate consumer response to the “Be Ready” campaign suggests many households remain receptive to practical preparedness messages if those messages are clear and actionable. In a BBC report this week, an Iceland spokesperson said: “It’s clear consumers have listened to the government’s message as we have seen a 40% increase in sales of tinned products over the weekend and strong sales of bottled water too.” Robert Dyas reported a 160% increase in sales of radios, Maplin said sales in torches and power banks increased by 284% and 106%.
A mixed (emergency kit) bag
The Government’s own Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness found 84% of Britons considering it important for the government to share information with the public about plans to deal with large-scale emergencies/disasters. Encouragingly, Ipsos’ research with Axa found a similarly high proportion of both experts and the general population of the view that the risks that worry them most could be totally or partially avoided through prevention. Most, 75%, of the public are willing to adopt risk-reducing behaviours or say they have already done so.
Set against this, only a minority of people feel personally prepared to handle a major crisis such as a pandemic, economic collapse, natural disaster or cyberattack. There is also the issue of personal resources and opportunity; as with climate adaptation, behaviour change campaigns need to appeal to pockets as well as hearts and minds.
Resilience is unevenly distributed. Households with savings, spare storage space and secure housing can prepare far more easily than those already struggling to meet everyday costs. JRF estimates 7.4 million families were unable to afford essential items in the last six months, and 1.5 million households used a food bank in the same period. The FCA estimates one in ten UK adults have zero cash savings, hence strong criticism of ‘Be Ready’ as being about “middle-class pantries”.
On first sight, ‘Be Ready’ represents a very British response: an incremental attempt to catch up with practices that other countries have adopted for years. Yet it also signals something more significant. For perhaps the first time in a generation, government is asking citizens not simply to expect protection but to play a role in providing it.
Britain’s greatest threats relate to the systems, networks and behaviours that connect society together. Resilience, therefore, cannot be delivered by government alone.
Instead, it has to be built with the public, not merely for them.
