The public will be urged to stockpile food and water in case of a cyberattack from Russia, under widescale plans to prepare Britain for “should the worst happen”.
A new “resilience” campaign will urge people to be prepared for emergencies, while ministers will test military and civilian responses in the largest defence exercise on UK soil in decades next year.
Chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones said: “This campaign will help the public to take small but important steps to be prepared in case of emergencies and disruption – be that severe weather or a cyber-attack, which can impact access to power, water, or phone signal.
“Being prepared not only helps people keep themselves and their family safe, but also means the emergency services can focus on helping the most vulnerable in communities.”
Last month Lord Peach, the former chief of the defence staff, told The Independent households should load up on food and water but also cash as he warned that it was “time to be serious” about threats facing Britain from Putin.
On Monday, the UK and allies accused Russia of an attempted hack targeting Poland’s power grid last December that, they said, could have left 500,000 people without electricity in the depths of winter.
The public will also be urged to prepare for other types of emergencies including severe weather. An estimated 2,700 people in England and Wales are thought to have died because of a series of heatwaves in recent weeks.
Dubbed Operation Albiston Shadow, the home defence exercise will take place over several days.
Ministers said it would “ensure that should the worst ever happen, we will always be ready”.
Mr Jones said on Tuesday he had added seven new entries to the UK’s National Risk Register, the official assessment of the most significant threats facing the country.
Those include the cyberattacks targeting data and water infrastructure and police systems, as well as “digital resilience failure” like the 2024 Crowdstrike outage that knocked infrastructure, transport and healthcare systems offline.
As Labour ministers seek to bring in new laws on political donations, also added was the risk of foreign interference in the UK’s democratic process.
Mr Jones said: “Throughout our history, the UK has overcome challenges from plagues and pandemics to war and our fair share of wet weather.
“It is right that we consistently evaluate the risks we could face and plan for what may come.
“This year we saw temperatures across the UK breaking records in May, only to be exceeded again in June, and AI offers new ways for criminals to carry out cyber-attacks against us, as well as offering huge opportunities for our economy and security.”
