Sweden's had this leaflet for years. Britain's government is still drafting it.

Author: Slightly Anxious Date: 9th September 2026 Time to read: 5 minutes

Slightly Anxious is here to help you turn any crisis into a manageable adventure — for you and everyone you care about.

In 2018, and again in an updated print run in 2024, the Swedish government posted a 32-page booklet called 'Om krisen eller kriget kommer' ('If Crisis or War Comes') through the letterbox of every single household in the country. Five point two million copies. It tells you what to keep in the cupboard, how to store water, and what to do if the lights and the phones go out at the same time. Finland has been running a near-identical scheme for years under the banner '72 hours', run jointly by its rescue services and its National Emergency Supply Agency, aimed at exactly the same audience: ordinary households, not preppers.

Britain announced it would do something similar back on 14 July. We're still waiting for the leaflet.

What was promised

On the 14th of July, alongside publishing this year's National Risk Register (we went through the household-relevant bits of that one in 'Two hundred pages of things that might go wrong, and the six that reach your house', if you missed it), the government told Parliament it would launch a national public awareness campaign "later this year", built on the existing GOV.UK Prepare guidance, aimed at bringing Britain "in line with European peers" who already run this sort of thing. It's due to include resources for schools and colleges, and it's been developed with civil society groups to reach people who don't normally see this kind of messaging.

That's a big commitment (the UK has never run a national household-preparedness campaign before, not once, not even during the Cold War, when Sweden was already printing pamphlets). And as of the time of writing, eight weeks on, there's still no date. Not a month, not a season. Just "later this year", and that phrase is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

What "in line with European peers" looks like

The Swedish booklet deserves a proper look, because it isn't shy. Alongside the food and water advice, it tells readers plainly what to do if Sweden is attacked, and expects a household to manage its most basic needs for at least a week without outside help. A week. Not the three days you'll see quoted almost everywhere else (ours included, in the small print of most of our competitors), but the same figure we've been using since this site started.

Finland's version asks for less: 72 hours, three days, is the headline number. But Finland has been doing this so long and so consistently, decades rather than months, that the country barely needs to ask for more. Everyone already keeps a bit extra in the cupboard as a matter of course. The number matters less than the habit.

Britain has neither the habit nor, yet, the leaflet. What it has is a promise, a risk register that quietly agrees with us on the numbers (see the piece above), and a government that appears to be discovering, in 2026, what Stockholm worked out before most of us were born.

Why we're not waiting for it

None of this changes anything we tell you to do. Reassuring or a bit deflating, depending on your mood. Pack the bag ('Slightly Anxious says Get a Grab Bag!' has the full list). Store water for a week, properly, not just a couple of bottles by the back door ('What to do when the water has been turned off with Slightly Anxious' covers how). Know which of your taps still run if the mains stop, and where the stopcock is. None of it waits for a government advert to make it official.

When the campaign does finally land, and it will, our readers will already have done the reading. That's rather the point of doing this now instead of when everyone else starts panic-buying tinned goods at once.

Consider it a very British kind of preparedness: quietly getting on with it while the official announcement is still in committee.

Remember, keep calm and visit us here.

Sources

• Written Ministerial Statement, National Resilience Annual Statement, House of Commons, 14 July 2026, Hansard.

• National Risk Register 2026, Cabinet Office, published 14 July 2026.

• 'Om krisen eller kriget kommer' ('If Crisis or War Comes'), Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), updated edition 2024.

• '72 hours' preparedness campaign, Finnish National Rescue Association (SPEK) and National Emergency Supply Agency (NESA), 72tuntia.fi.

This blog post has been AI-assisted with human oversight