Cupboard
What you keep. The 72-hour home kit, the go-bag, the car kit.
- Water: 9 litres per person, stored somewhere cool
- Tins you'd actually eat cold, and a tin opener
- Torch, radio, batteries, power bank
- Medicines, first aid, baby, pets
The calm UK guide to being ready
Ready, not worried.
Three days of supplies, six months of calm, and a body that can cope. Plain, sourced advice for normal households — what to keep, what to save, what to practise — with none of the fear.
Independent. Every figure cites GOV.UK, NHS, WHO, the Met Office or the Environment Agency. Reviewed by named people. No ads. No bunkers.
Cupboard
Do you have three days of drinking water stored?That's 3 litres per person per day — about 9 litres each. Bottled is fine.
Three minutes · no email needed
Our baseline is the Government's own Prepare guidance. We just make it doable.
- 3 L water per person per day
- No-cook tinned food + opener
- Torch & radio, battery or wind-up
- Power bank charged
- 105 to report a power cut
- Priority Services Register
- Flood alerts signed up
Ready in three places
A stocked cupboard, a cash cushion, and a body that can cope.
Everything on this site lives in one of three places. Sort those, in that order, and you've done more than most of the country.
Cushion
What you can absorb. Money and paperwork that keep a bad week from becoming a bad year.
- £100 or so in small notes at home
- One month of essentials saved, then three, then six
- Priority Services Register and insurance checked
- Alerts: flood, storm, boil notice
Capability
What you can do. Strength to carry, legs to walk, hands that know first aid.
- The five Ready Body tests
- 12-week programme, no gym required
- Purify water, cook without power, keep a fridge cold
- First aid practised, not just intended
Ready Body · the pillar nobody else has
The best piece of emergency kit you own is you.
Every real emergency in Britain looks the same up close: carrying water up stairs, walking home when the trains stop, lifting a neighbour, being on your feet for a long day. Five simple tests tell you whether your body is ready. Then we get you there, twelve weeks at a time.
TEST 1 · CARRY
Two heavy bags, two flights
15–20 kg up two flights of stairs without putting them down. That's most of a week's water for one person.
Pass: no stop, no strain
TEST 2 · WALK
Five kilometres in an hour
The distance most people would need to cover if transport stopped. Brisk, not a march.
Pass: 60 min or under
TEST 3 · GET UP
Floor to standing, no hands
The clearest everyday marker of leg strength and balance, and the one that keeps you independent.
Pass: both sides, unaided
TEST 4 · CLIMB
Ten flights, then talk
Lifts stop in power cuts. Ten storeys of stairs and you can still hold a conversation at the top.
Pass: conversation intact
TEST 5 · HANG ON
Thirty seconds on a bar
Grip is the strength you use to hold, pull, carry and steady. It's also the one that fades first.
Pass: 30 s dead hang
None of this needs a gym. The NHS asks adults for 150 minutes of moderate activity a week plus strength work on two days — the Ready Body programme is simply that guidance, organised around the five tests, with progressions for people in their thirties and people in their seventies. Written by people who run a functional-fitness gym for a living, reviewed against the official guidance, and free to start.
This week's move
The shopping-bag carry
Two bags of tins, one in each hand, walk to the end of the road and back. Add a tin a week. In three months you'll carry a week of water up the stairs without thinking about it.
This weekend · under £100
Seven things, one trip to the supermarket, and you're ahead of most of the country.
Tick them off as you go. Prices are typical UK supermarket prices in August 2026 and are checked monthly.
Even among households that have made a start, only 23% did anything further in the last three months (LINK Cash Index, 2026). This list takes an afternoon.
Bottled water, 9 litres per personThree days at 3 litres each. Store under the stairs, rotate when the clocks change.
£1.50 /person
Nine no-cook meals in tinsBeans, fish, fruit, soup you'd eat cold. Plus a manual tin opener.
£12
A proper torch and spare batteriesHead torch if you can; your phone is not a torch.
£10
A 20,000 mAh power bankCharges a phone four or five times. Charge it now, top up monthly.
£20
A wind-up or battery radioLocal radio is where the real information is when the internet's down.
£15
£100 in cash, small notesCards stopped working for a day across Spain in April 2025. Notes didn't.
£0 extra
Sign up for flood and weather alertsTen minutes on GOV.UK and the Met Office app. Most people haven't.
Free
Family of four, one set of tins to start≈ £63
Some links on our kit pages earn us a small commission at no cost to you. We choose the kit first and add the link second, and we say so on every page.
Guides
Calm answers to the questions people are actually asking.
Scenario
The water's off, or there's a boil notice. Here's what to do.
Boil water notice UK or no water in the house? A calm, step-by-step plan for the first hour, day and week, including bottled water stations and your rights.
ScenarioStorm and flood: the calm plan for the week the river rises
A calm plan to prepare for flooding in the UK: free flood warnings, what the three warning levels mean, floodwater rules, storms and the clean-up.
ScenarioWhat actually happens in a long power cut, and what to do
How to prepare for a power cut: what actually goes off, the free 105 number, fridge and freezer timings, safe heat and light, and compensation rules.
CapabilityThe five Ready Body tests: is your body ready for a bad week?
Five self-checks for fitness for emergencies: carry, walk, get up, climb and hang on. Pass standards, what each tells you, and a 4-week plan if you can't yet.
CupboardThe UK home emergency kit: what to keep, from £60 to £600
A calm, sourced guide to building a home emergency kit UK households actually need: water, tins, torch, radio, cash and more, in three budgets from £60 to £600.
CushionEvery alert worth signing up for, in ten minutes
Flood alerts sign up, Met Office weather warnings, Emergency Alerts and power cut updates: every free UK warning service and how to register.
CushionHow much cash to keep at home, and where
How much cash to keep at home in the UK: around £100 in small notes, somewhere sensible. Why fives and tens beat twenties, and what insurance covers.
CupboardEmergency food for normal people: tins you'd actually eat
How to build an emergency food supply UK households will actually eat: ordinary supermarket tins, a costed three-day menu, and painless rotation.
The Ready Brief · Thursdays
One email a week. What the weather's doing, one thing to do, one move to try.
Three minutes to read. No fear, no affiliate stuffing, no urgency theatre. Just the calm version of the week.
A sample issue · what Thursdays look like
Amber heat warning Friday; check on the neighbours
The Met Office has an amber heat-health alert for the south from Friday afternoon. Fill some bottles and put them in the fridge tonight; the tap water stays fine.
One thing: put the water company's number in your phone. Two minutes.
One move: the shopping-bag carry, twice this week.