What if people could have large residential storage units in their neighborhoods and apartment complexes, where everyone could stock up on their own personal supply as needed?
In fat, lazy, individualist countries like the UK and US? No way.
For the positive, see Finland, which is working hard to be a very well-prepared nation. Heavy buy-in from all across the populace. Exactly the kind of nation I was talking about - their survival depends on it. Poland, Sweden, Denmark all doing similar.
For the negative, see UK and US during COVID. The individualism that has underpinned society since Thatcher/Reagan as made us less likely be prepared, less likely to look out for our neighbour. Both are isolated by water, so we're naturally less bothered about invasion.
And the only ones who do buy-in are gun lovers and preppers, which are not a major demographic.
I thought I had read that Sweden had made some changes to military service recently, is that not true?
You don't know anything about sweden, clearly. The only people I speak to in the neighborhood are immigrants and homeless people who live in the nearby shelter.
> I thought I had read that Sweden had made some changes to military service recently, is that not true?
Yeah they are wasting time and money with conscription. Very useful.
And regarding the changes to the military, that is still a very small amount of people who are doing the basic conscription service.
Friends in London seem to talk about it as if we don't have it in the UK (I know that's true) but that Sweden does.
Not claiming it's a bad place to live in or that there aren't worse places, but the high trust society thing is a myth.
I've had my wallet disappear while I fell asleep on the shore of a lake, in one of those tiny villages where everybody knows each other for example :)
The people in Warsaw, Stockholm and Copenhagen aren't more prepared than the people in Madrid or NYC, most people in medium/large cities give 0 shit about these scenarios, they're the same as everywhere else. Having studied in Denmark I can tell you that if anything the Danish youth is even more oblivious to risks in general given that they live in such an utopia. The state and older generations might be more aware of their perilous position but that's about it.
In my opinion, and that's all I have here, they are much, much more likely to do the right thing for their neighbour in an emergency than a Briton or American.
All of my friends from Baltic nations are concerned about Russia. All of them. Maybe its an age thing, we're early 30s and some have children.
All my shelf stable products have been in my pantry for a few months before I even open them. You can do FILO yourself and have always a nice emergency supply and it can even cheaper because you can buy the stuff on sale most of the time. The problem is that many people just buy day to day and already have a problem when the shops are closed for a holiday they haven't anticipated because they buy just in time.
Hate having to annotate explanations to obvious things but I guess it wasn't obvious:
Stock up for the next few months. (after paying for it)
If they don't need/use it, it gets redistributed. (from the local shared storage unit)
Doesn't realy change the second part of my answer though. People could already keep some stock at home right now but most just don't. I don't see how such a shared storage would change that.
Also stock up for a few months is what the government is for at least where I live. [0] Personel emergency supplies are only for the time till the government can start distributing their own stocks.
[0]: https://www.bwl.admin.ch/en/we-advise-emergency-supplies