Government issues stark advice of what to do in the case of UK-wide power cuts

It's very serious

In fact, householders will also be urged to eat chilled or defrosted food first before tins, cook on camping stoves in their back garden.

According to public health advice from the UK’s chief medical officers, you should also prioritise family members for nutrition.

For the first time, the Government has published scripts that would be read out in the event of a national blackout.

There are concerns among experts who say that the public needs to be better prepared for such an eventuality, even though the Government has said that the prospect of a national power outage is “very unlikely.”

Battery or solar radios are considered the most reliable way to receive information from the Government in this extreme scenario, since the power cut would most likely make mobile and internet communications not function.

Political leaders in the UK and Europe have warned about the increasing probability of war with Russia, which is why these concerns have been raised.

And the risk of power cuts could be increased by cyber attacks or power surges from the increasing activity of AI data centres, according to the UK Government’s own risk register and chronic risk analysis documents.

People would be urged to listen for updates through battery or solar-powered radios, in the event of a nationwide outage.

The advice says that everyone in the country would lose their mains electricity supply “instantaneously and possibly without warning”, except those that have back-up generators.

The Department of Health document says that “this could also lead to the loss of mobile and internet communications, water, sewage removal and treatment, fuel, gas and the ability to make electronic payments, which would cause significant and widespread disruption and risk to health.”

People are also advised to visit the Government’s Prepare website now for practical advice on how to deal with a power cut.

“In the unlikely scenario of a national power outage, communicating health advice to the public would be challenging because phone, internet and television services would be disrupted”, the advice says.

“For this reason, emergency communications to the public would be limited to radio (BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4), which is the most power resilient form of communication.”

Households urged to buy one crucial item to prepare for power outages

This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on any sales generated from it.

Households are being urged to buy one appliance to prepare for mass disruptions like another pandemic, internet and power outages, and extreme weather conditions.

The government runs a website to prepare the public for national disruptions including power outages, war, extreme weather and cyber attacks.

As part of its list of advice for households, people are being told to buy one crucial item – battery or wind-up radios.

This is because this type of radio doesn’t need power from the National Grid, which may be disrupted during a crisis.

You can get a wind-up radio from Amazon here for your home emergency kit. And it can be used for activities such as hiking and camping.