Meet Britain's growing army of women preppers readying for doomsday: Middle-class mums, an a academic, a crime writer - they are all preparing for WW3 or the next pandemic by hoarding food and practising survival skills. And say YOU should do the same

Most of us like to have our mobile phone to hand so we can scroll through social media in idle moments. Dr Sarita Robinson always makes sure she has hers with her ‘in case we should receive the ­Government’s emergency warning alarm that an attack is imminent’.

She and her husband ‘have a plan in place with our adult children as to where we would each seek refuge and meet up depending on where we all were in the country at the time’.

At home in Preston, Lancashire, she keeps ‘several months’ worth of loo rolls and a ‘three-month supply of food under the stairs including milk powder, flour for bread making, a huge sack of rice, drinking water, bags of pasta and a vast stock of tinned tuna’. Collected rainwater can be purified for drinking with chlorine tablets bought on Amazon, she says.

‘There’s also what I call my ‘go bag’, containing a bit of cash, some self-heating meals from ­Amazon, Kendal Mint Cake to keep sugar levels up (it won’t melt like chocolate), a blanket and a change of clothes.’

Dr Robinson, 48, is an associate dean in the school of psychology and humanities at the ­University of Central Lancashire, but she is also a prepper.

Married to a retired computer programmer with two children in their 20s, she is part of a burgeoning trend: the mums readying themselves and their families for a natural disaster, the breakdown of civil society, or even the beginning of World War III, which they believe could happen at almost any time.

With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of ending and Russian sabre-rattling growing ever shriller, prepping is gaining popularity not only with the middle-aged men who have always liked to don army surplus combats and polish their crossbows.

Today, say prepper veterans, more and more women are joining their ranks, too.

‘The perception of the prepper is changing fast,’ says Lincoln Miles, who owns one of the country’s biggest prepping stores, Preppers Shop UK. ‘Nowadays, preppers are just regular-looking, normal people who you might pass in the aisles at Tesco.’

Of course, it’s not only the eastern borders of Europe that are causing unease. The pandemic is fresh in the memory; international conflict in the Middle East is proving brutally intractable; new, apocalyptic weather patterns look ­increasingly likely, and Artificial Intelligence, we are told, poses an existential risk to humanity itself.

Are the preppers, indeed, starting to look like the sensible ones?

‘Depending on your point of view, we are either the most intelligent people in the UK or the ­battiest,’ says Dr Robinson.

‘We’re still blighted by the stigma that preppers are mad Americans with a haul of weapons, digging bunkers in the desert, preoccupied by thoughts of surviving a nuclear war or the apocalypse. But, actually, what we do is build stores of food, water and ­medicine, and work on developing survival skills such as hunting and shelter building.

‘Mums are the best preppers of all.’

When nobody had face masks, hand-sanitising gel or protective gloves, she had long been storing essential stuff under the kitchen sink ‘because I’d been thinking that we were overdue a pandemic’.

It’s a useful exercise, she ­suggests, to ask yourself, ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen?’ ‘I think we have a social responsibility to prep. There’s more awareness today that things can go wrong, and if they do, if you can look after yourself, that ensures government resources go to those who really need the help.

‘My view is that prepping is essential but shouldn’t interfere with your life or cost much money. I don’t have a bunker in my ­garden — though I would quite like one — nor a collection of weapons.’

Instead, she makes sure she always has her foldable shovel in the boot of the car ‘in case I get stuck in snow’, and a burns kit in the kitchen in case of fire. Everyone in her family knows how to get out of a building fast. They also know they could rely on her if they had to survive the ­breakdown of civil society.

‘I’ve done wilderness training in the Lake District, which involved practising skills like fire-making, foraging and water purification.

‘And I took part in a military ­survival exercise where I was abandoned on a remote beach for five days and had to fend for myself, learning how to build a shelter and what seaweed on UK shores is edible. More than ­anything, it taught me mental resilience and the importance of also prepping your mindset for an emergency situation.

‘The ability to push through when things are bleak, cold and wet, and somehow to maintain mental optimism are vital to ­survival, whatever practical help is at your disposal.’

At his business premises on an industrial estate in North ­Cornwall, Lincoln Miles has also noticed an uptick in female ­customers. Preppers Shop UK used to cater almost ­exclusively to middle-aged men, but ­‘increasingly, we’re getting women — more and more of them’.

Business is booming in general. His sturdy metal shelves groan with portable power generators, freeze-dried ‘meals’ in tins, gas masks and combat first-aid kits. Orders are flooding in for hurricane lamps, ‘decontamination packs’ and former military full-body ‘NBC suits’, designed to withstand nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

He says: ‘One customer recently spent £24,000 with us on portable solar panels, food, generators and water-purifying systems.

‘When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, people were immediately concerned it might develop into World War III and we had a big run on food stocks.’

Astonishingly, that initial demand came not only from the UK — the shop also fulfilled an order from the Ukrainian ­government itself, sending 600,000 foil-wrapped meal pouches to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops on the front line.

Miles’s best-selling items include a ‘one-month survival military ration pack supply box’, which includes 60 British military meal pouches (good for 20 years, ­apparently) with an option to add 60 teabags, 60 chilli powder sachets, 60 sachets of salt and pepper and 20 ‘military drink ­powders’ for £120. A vegan version costs £199.

Online, prepping is starting to appear on mainstream shopping sites — Amazon and eBay both feature prepping sections — while specialist sites proliferate. One, EVAQ8, sells a fully-stocked ­emergency medical kit on wheels containing ‘combat tourniquets’ for £570. Another, Sgt Prepper’s, has hazmat suits for adults and children starting from £95, and brass snares for trapping rabbits for £3.95.

Another sells ‘bug out’ bags ­containing everything you need for 48 or 72 hours’ survival, and offers instructions for building an NCB (Never Coming Back) or INCH (I’m Never Coming Home) pack for more extreme scenarios.

Even the British Government is recommending that we ready ­ourselves, with senior ministers issuing ever starker warnings. In a speech earlier this year, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps declared the potential threat from ­autocracies in Russia, Iran and China meant we have moved ‘from a post-war world to a pre-war world’.

In December last year Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden made the first annual risk and resilience statement to Parliament, warning that the British public was living in a ‘dangerous and volatile world’ with ‘the aftermath of a global pandemic, ­Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine, extreme weather events, cyber attacks and malign AI-use cases’.

As a result, Britons should become a nation of preppers, he said. ‘Stock up on torches and candles in case of power cuts.’

It is easy to see how life’s natural planners — mums who batch cook, meal plan and run their children’s diaries — might add prepping to their to-do lists. The more I talk to preppers, the more I find myself — yes, cynical but sensible, unparanoid and non-tinfoil hat-wearing me — nodding along.

I’m not ashamed to say that in my cottage in Oxfordshire, I’ve been hoarding wood for burning, dragging fallen boughs and branches off the side of the road and taking them home for (petrol-powered) chainsawing and stacking. I’ve sorted out a few down-filled sleeping bags, several (battery-powered) Roberts radios and ­collected all the candles I own and stored them in a dry place (do vetiver-scented ones count?).

I’ve also done something I never quite thought I would: I buy ­protective, rubbery, waterproof and virus-proof clobber that, while making me look a bit like a strange Kanye West fan, might also save my life.

Some of us are going much, much further than that. The bluntly-named Lincolnshire-based company Nuke Shelters has seen a ‘300 to 400 per cent increase in inquiries in the past couple of years’, according to boss Paul Thompson, who will build you a custom-designed bunker for between £50,000 and £100,000. For two adults and two children, you could get a bathroom and kitchen area in a semi-buried bunker measuring 5.5 metres by 2.5 metres, with a portable power station, water storage for 2,000 litres, carbon filters, pumps to boost water pressure and a cesspit for waste.

Where people might once have saved up for a hot tub and a covered bar in their back garden, now they are researching and buying bunkers in which to wait out the apocalypse.

Crime writer Lesley Tither, 71, from Cheshire, is part of Britain’s long-standing ­prepper tradition, and she too has noticed an influx of new converts.

‘More people understand why I prep nowadays, and don’t think I’m completely barmy,’ she says, adding: ‘But still too few of them think it’s something they should do themselves.’

The truth is, she says, anyone intelligent should be worried about the possibility of a conflict or emergency with the potential to change life as we know it. ‘The pandemic showed us how it happens, and has made more people contemplate survival. They know the everyday essentials we take for granted may not be available any more in the supermarket.

‘Being a prepper,’ she says, ‘makes you determined always to have enough supplies to get you through. I’m always prepping for any kind of natural or man-made disaster. If the road infrastructure is compromised, shops are unable to open due to bombing or lack of power, I know I can survive.’

Lesley carries a military knife gifted to her by a former boyfriend who used to be in the SAS. ‘There are always times you need to be able to whip out a knife to chop branches or trees for firewood,’ she says. ‘Or in more extreme ­circumstances you might need to dig a latrine or an escape route.’

She’s also willing to use her weapons should the situation take a darker turn. ‘If there was an emergency or disaster which meant food supplies were scarce or inaccessible, although I have prepped plenty of food stocks for myself and would be willing to share them if people asked nicely, desperation may force others to be aggressive about wanting what I have.’ Lesley says that lots of other older ladies she knows ‘carry at least a penknife’.

Lesley preps with the zeal of an ‘obsessive’. She keeps three sleeping bags of different tog ratings for survival in temperatures below minus 20c (minus 4f). She hoards large stocks of candles, batteries and matches, as well as a solar-powered charger for juicing up her mobile phone in the event of a power outage.

Her other apocalypse essentials include a foil space blanket, which is in her bag at all times, enough gluten-free, dry food to last ­several months, a two-month stock of rice, tea, dried milk, sugar, tins of sardines and tuna.

She also has enough wood for two years and a small, portable Rocket stove that will burn anything — leaves, pine cones and twigs. She uses a Kelly kettle, with its own fire bowl, to make a brew. There are piled up crates of ­bottled water in her shed and, as back-up, two giant water butts in the garden that collect rainwater.

‘Hope for the best but prepare for the worst,’ as us preppers like to say. I’m off to buy more candles.