Disaster Prepping: Should We All Stock Up? (Mike Chappell, prepper)

Gabriel Gatehouse (0:08)

Hello, and welcome to Radical, conversations about the underlying forces reshaping our world and the radical ideas that could define the future. What would you do if your local supermarket ran out of food for days and then weeks? Or if your water was cut off, the power went out, and not just for you, but for everyone. How long do you think you and your family, your loved ones, could survive? How long before law and order begins to break down? And what would you do then?

I'm Gabriel Gatehouse, I've spent half a lifetime reporting from places where that has happened, war zones, disaster zones, but honestly, it's not something I've ever seriously considered we might have to face in this country. But my guest this week believes that we should be preparing for exactly that kind of scenario. Mike Chappell is a prepper, and I'll admit, for me, that word conjures up images of tinfoil hats and gun-toting loners preparing for a zombie apocalypse. But maybe I'm wrong, because the British government is now urging us to stockpile food and supplies to guard against extreme weather scenarios, and the National Audit Office is telling us that our supply chains of food are vulnerable to cyberattacks and disease. So maybe Mike is right. Maybe we should all be preppers.

If so, how far should we take it? How practical is prepping for most people living a modern life on a small, densely populated island? And what exactly is the threat that preppers are getting ready for? Can't we just rely on the government to sort things out for us if it all goes wrong? As ever, we'll approach the subject with an open mind and a critical lens.

Mike Chappell, welcome to Radical.

Mike Chappell (1:59)

Hi, thanks for having me.

Gabriel Gatehouse (2:02)

To start briefly, you're a prepper. What is a prepper?

Mike Chappell (2:06)

So a prepper is anybody who's getting ready and supplies in for any scenario that's unexpected. That can be from something minor like localised flooding, wildfires like we've seen, all the way up to the extremes you see for apocalypse, end of days, that kind of thing.

Gabriel Gatehouse (2:24)

And are you happy with the terminology? Do you like being called a prepper or would you prefer something else?

Mike Chappell (2:29)

No, I like prepper. I'm trying to, my whole premise is trying to get that word normalised a bit more. It's not like the doomsday preppers that people have seen on TV. So it needs to be taken away from that and reclaiming the word, shall we say.

Gabriel Gatehouse (2:46)

Okay. All right. Well, we'll get into it.

First of all, what is your radical idea?

Mike Chappell (2:52)

Everybody in the country should have at least two weeks worth of food, water and ways to cook that and stay warm.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:01)

We should all be preppers.

Mike Chappell (3:02)

We should all have two weeks worth of supplies. We should all look at our grandparents and be more like them.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:07)

Why?

Mike Chappell (3:09)

Because two weeks will cover most disasters. I mean, if it's my family talking to me, I will tell them to get 90 days worth of food and water.

Because in 90 days time with no power, no sanitation, no clean water, 90% of the population won't be here.

Gabriel Gatehouse (3:27)

That sounds very scary. What are you basing those estimates on?

Mike Chappell (3:30)

It's a ballpark figure, but it's based on after X amount of days, sewage will start coming up in your toilet. After X amount of days, most people's supply of this would have run out. Supermarkets would have run out and stuff like that.

And after that point, whoever's left need to work together, right? It's as simple as that. But two weeks will cover everything that we've seen in our lifetime. The storms, power cuts, blackouts, all of that would be covered with two weeks worth of food that you just replenish on a regular basis.

Gabriel Gatehouse (4:05)

How did you get into it? Where are you from? Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Mike Chappell (4:09)

So, I mean, I grew up with a family that always had 30 days worth of food because we lived in a rural part of Wales and it was 60 miles, so then you were a supermarket. So doing that every week was a pain, so it was a month's worth of food every time and then you'd top up with local shops. So I've kind of always had that mentality of there's always something in.

As I stepped more into the prepping world, I discovered the Carrington event, which was a giant solar flare in the mid 19th century. And that hit earth with a CME, or CME, coronal mass ejection. So when there's a solar flare, it has a coronal mass ejection, very similar effects to what people see in the movies with an EMP.