paint your windows white.
put a table or bed at a 45º angle against the wall.
provide one to three weeks drinking water.
provide one to three weeks urine and excretea space.
if your granny dies in the shelter put her in a plastic bin liner and leave her outside.
wait till the soldiers come.
if the soldiers dont come there's nothing left.

find an old TV and hook up a video so the next generation can watch Blue Peter.

dont eat any rhubarb with legs.
dont watch meteorite showers.
wait till the soldiers come.
if the soldiers dont come there's nothing left.

ensure you have enough bartering goods just in case.
Cigarettes, Condoms, gold watches and Levi Jeans are considered trustworthy.
wait till the soldiers come.
if the soldiers dont come there's nothing left.

Dont Panic, but your really ought to start "panic buying" now. I and my squat mates did this in the lead up to Y2K. We stored over thirty litres of water, a rake of waterpurification tablets, 3000 cigarettes, and a considerable amount of blotter acid.
in the weeks leading up to Y2K the supermarkets in Streatham increased the price of baked beans from the lowest 3p (at LIDL) to 11p (at Sainsbury's) to a whopping average of 30p a can of in store brand baked beans dec 27th 1999. This meant in the eventuality of a global economic crash, we wouldn't have been able to afford to eat baked beans and would have survived "till the soldiers came" on blotter acid.

we were prepared to make that sacrifice.

Obviously a propaganda exercise to promote fear and then justify harsher laws (which Blunkett is already working on). Similar tactics to the way things are in the US - see Fahrenheit 9/11 for Michael Moores discussion.

I suggest anyone who receives one of these post it back to Blunkett with a message - Stop wasting public money - or something similar.

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/27/parody_not_funny_gov/

The government's nonsensical scaremonging website can be found at:
 http://www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk/

Meanwhile and almost immediately student Thomas Scott created his own superb spoof site at:

 http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/

The government have asked him to take it down:

Dear Mr Scott,

Regarding your website, www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk

We run the Government website for the Preparing for Emergencies
public information campaign, on
www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk, and are very concerned that
the material on your site will confuse people about the sensitive
advice and information that we are giving to the public.

This is a very is [sic] serious campaign that should not be
trivialised. In the interests of helping people to cope in the
event of a crisis or a disaster we would ask that you to take
down the site, immediately, and not put it up again in another
guise.

Sincerely,

[name removed]


Thomas says he won't take the site down, but has made it clearer that the site is a joke. He told El Reg: "More than anything, I'm amazed that a silly joke's gone so far so quickly. I'm also rather suspicious about the British Gas van that's been parked across the street not doing anything for the last few hours..."

What seems to be especially unfortunatate for Blunkett was the timing of the release of his guide. It comes right after Michael Moore's documentary which exposes the US government attempts to scare its own population through very similar tactics. Millions will have seen the documentary and many now will be able to see what Blunkett is up to, especially as he announced wanting new tougher laws just the week before.

You can find many more of Thomas Scott's political parodies at:  http://www.thomasscott.net/.