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Should Scots households keep 'war supplies' like Finns?

War resilience boxes are extra supplies of food, water, blankets, batteries and medicine that households in many northern Europe countries keep aside <i>(Image: Derek McArthur)</i>
War resilience boxes are extra supplies of food, water, blankets, batteries and medicine that households in many northern Europe countries keep aside (Image: Derek McArthur)
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From food and water to medicine and batteries, these are just some of the items that our European neighbours keep at home in case of war or a national emergency.

People in Finland, Sweden and Norway prepare "war resilience boxes" but should Scots do the same?

Essentially they are extra supplies of food, water, blankets, batteries and medicine that households in many northern European countries keep aside in case of a war or other national crises such as floods, power outages, extreme weather or terror attacks.


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In Finland it is a strong recommendation by the government for citizens to have these extra supplies to hand.

Unlike the Finnish baby box which is supplied for free to new parents by the state and has been adopted by the Scottish Government, citizens in Finland buy their own resilience supplies.

For the Finns the need to be prepared for the possibility of being cut off in an emergency may come from the risk faced by many of its residents in remote parts of being cut off in winter as temperatures plunge.

But it also relates to its relations with Russia.


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It was invaded by Russia in 1939 with the conflict ending with the Moscow Peace Treaty the following year.

Going further back, Finland was part of the Russian Empire as an autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland from 1809 to 1917.  After losing the Finnish War against Russia, Finland was ceded to the Russian Empire, maintaining its own laws and extensive autonomy under Russian rule. Finland finally declared its independence in December 1917. 

Following Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 there was new sense of nervousness in Finland about Russia with Finland joining Nato in 2023.

Russian President Vladimir Putin(Image: Alexei Nikolsky)

"For almost 75 years, this great alliance has shielded our nations and continues to do so today," Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared at time.

"But war has returned to Europe and Finland has decided to join Nato and be part of the world's most successful alliance."

In dropping non-alignment, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Finland was committing a "dangerous historical mistake".

The preparedness model is also in place in other countries including Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Last year each of Sweden's five million households was sent a booklet titled "If the crisis or war comes" which set out detailed instructions on how to be prepared.

"We live in uncertain times. Armed conflicts are being waged in our corner of the world ... we must stand united," advises Sweden's brochure, In Case of Crisis or War.

The Finnish Preparing for Incidents and Crises guide deals with situations that would have a broad impact on society and communities.

The government states on its website: "Situations that require preparedness include long power cuts, water outages, interruptions in telecommunications, extreme weather events, major accidents, and longer-term crises, such as a pandemic or military conflict.

"In addition to instructions, the guide contains information on hybrid and information influence activities, maintaining functional capacity, coping during crises, and helping others."

The guide suggests an emergency supply checklist which includes food, water and other essential supplies to cover at least 72 hours.

It instructs citizens to prepare based on their own specific needs, along with general recommended supplies, which include food, batteries, drinking water, batteries and a backup power supply, essential medications, clean containers with lids for water, wet wipes and sanitiser, a battery-operating radio, cash, a battery-operating flashlight, duct tape, iodine tablets.

It also advises households on how to build preparedness locally by identifying vulnerable neighbours or joining a civil defence group, and ways to verify sources of information.

I first learned about it during an early morning meeting in Edinburgh with senior figures from northern European countries.

Our breakfast host was rather surprised to find that neither of her Scottish or Irish breakfast guests that morning had a war resilience box at home.

I thought to myself rather sheepishly of the extra tins of baked beans and bottles of water I had stuck in a cellar during the Covid pandemic and concluded I may not be the best prepared should war suddenly break out.

But with increased global insecurity and what the former home secretary Yvette Cooper described earlier this year as "unacceptable threats to our national security" from Russia, is it something Scots should also be doing?

Should we have extra supplies of essential tucked away at home in case of war or another national emergency?

Defence experts think so.

George Allison, editor of the UK Defence Journal, said Scotland should be putting in place a Nordic resilience measures.

"A Nordic-style approach would help Scotland cope with disruption from severe weather, power cuts or wider crises," he said.

"Encouraging households to hold 72 hours of supplies and supporting local resilience networks would reduce pressure on emergency services and make society more robust in the face of shocks."

Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, went further and said it is something that should already be in place, particularly if preparedness lessons are to be learnt from the Covid pandemic.

"It is something we should already have in place," he told The Herald, adding that as well as the Nordic countries, Poland and Estonia were well advanced in their household resilience planning.

"When Oliver Dowden was the deputy prime minister [in the previous Conservative government] there was a launch of a plan for households to have supplies of batteries, food, water etc in the context for more resilience for a war scenario but it was something that was so poorly communicated - and also there is no society readiness in the UK - so it wasn't adopted.

"The UK has been very poor in learning [resilience] lessons from the pandemic and from capturing the mood from the pandemic. It's like 'the pandemic is over now we can get back to normal.'"

He added: "RAF Lossiemouth hosts all of our P8 maritime patrol aircraft - effectively a lot of Nato's capability to track Russian submarines in the North Sea and the North Atlantic come from Lossiemouth.

"Lossiemouth is absolutely a target of the Russians, whether that is through a strike, which is more difficult, possibly more likely, a more direct attack from the land.

"Scotland in a war is not going to be immune. There will almost certainly be direct attacks on Scotland and probably in more rural settings than in the cities."

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