Europe is preparing for war, sabotage and major disruption and we need to stop assuming it won't happen here

In the last week there have been warnings from Poland, preparations in Germany, military exercises across the Baltic, evacuation planning in Lithuania and another reminder from Finland that its citizens need to be mentally and practically prepared for disruption. In Paris, Emmanuel Macron summoned France's political leaders to the Élysée Palace, where the heads of the country's intelligence and security agencies briefed them on the deteriorating international situation.

Macron said the Russian hybrid threat against France and Europe had intensified and ordered stronger protection for critical infrastructure against drones, cyber attacks and foreign interference. NATO, meanwhile, has been talking increasingly openly about Russian sabotage, cyber attacks, arson, drone incidents and attempts to undermine public trust across Europe.

Just days ago the alliance said hybrid attacks against our societies, infrastructure and digital networks are happening more frequently and published new resilience requirements designed to keep water, energy, food, communications and healthcare functioning during a crisis or conflict.

I think people in Britain need to understand what that means. It doesn't mean that Russian tanks are going to arrive in Kent next Tuesday. It doesn't mean that somebody in NATO has a date circled on a calendar for the start of World War Three.

But it does mean that the security environment we have become used to over the last few decades has changed, probably for a very long time. Serious disruption is coming. In some forms, it is already here. Cyber attacks, sabotage, attempts to interfere with infrastructure, drones around sensitive sites, disinformation and attacks designed to cause confusion or fear are no longer theoretical scenarios sitting in government planning documents.

NATO's deputy secretary general recently described Russia as the biggest threat to Euro-Atlantic security and pointed not only to the war in Ukraine but to airspace violations, attempted sabotage, arson and intelligence operations across Europe. NATO's military leadership said this weekend that Russia's efforts to undermine trust and weaken unity are a real threat.

That is why I increasingly think we have to stop talking about preparedness as though it is something slightly eccentric people do because they spend too much time watching survival videos on YouTube.

Last week I spoke to Lord Harris, chairman of the National Preparedness Commission, and one of the things that struck me was how undramatic his advice actually was. His basic argument is that Britons need to become more self-reliant because there could be periods during a serious emergency when the systems we depend upon simply aren't available.

The power could go off. Mobile communications could fail or become overloaded. Water supplies could be affected. Card payments might stop working. Shops could struggle to replenish supplies. Emergency services could be dealing with far more serious problems somewhere else. For several days, perhaps, we might have to look after ourselves and the people around us.

I don't think enough people have really understood that possibility. Whenever I talk about this, I hear the same things. It won't happen here. It won't happen to me. There isn't going to be a war. The government is trying to scare us. Or, increasingly, the government is trying to control us.

At the weekend I was talking to someone in a pub about exactly this. I was explaining what a genuinely serious national emergency might actually mean, a cyber attack combined with a power failure, communications disruption, problems with water or transport, perhaps several systems beginning to fall over at the same time. He wasn't particularly worried. If things went wrong, he told me, he'd just go to Tesco.

But what if Tesco isn't working? What if the electricity is off and the tills don't work? What if the card network is down? What if the mobile network isn't functioning properly?

What if the distribution centre can't communicate with the shop? What if fuel deliveries have been disrupted? What if the shelves have already been emptied by thousands of people who had exactly the same idea?

That conversation has stuck with me because I think it shows something much bigger about the way we live in Britain. We have become extraordinarily dependent upon incredibly complex systems while simultaneously becoming almost completely detached from them.

We flick a switch and the light comes on. We turn a tap and water appears. We tap a piece of plastic against a machine and money moves between banks. We open an app and food arrives at the door. We walk into a supermarket and expect thousands of different products to be sitting there waiting for us.

Because those things have worked every day for most of our lives, we assume they will always work. That assumption really does make us vulnerable..

The UK Government itself is now telling households to think about supplies they might need during an emergency lasting several days, including power cuts and water outages, and says it will launch a wider public campaign to improve household resilience.

NATO has gone further at alliance level, explicitly arguing for a “whole-of-society” approach in which critical civilian services must continue operating during shocks, emergencies and conflict.

Other European countries are simply further along this road than we are. In parts of northern and eastern Europe, asking people to think about several days without electricity, communications or normal government services isn't treated as alarmism. Sweden has distributed preparedness information to millions of households. Finland has extensive public guidance about coping during crises. Countries sitting closer to Russia have spent years thinking about evacuation, civil defence and what ordinary people would need to do if normal life suddenly stopped functioning.

In Britain, we are only really beginning that conversation. Even the Liberal Democrats have moved firmly into this territory. Ed Davey previously called for a “war-ready Britain” and a national public information campaign explaining how households should cope with conflict, cyber attacks, power outages and disruption to essential services.

This weekend, as I reported, the party went further, calling for a voluntary civilian emergency register so people prepared to help during a national crisis could identify themselves before one happened. Whatever you think of the specific policy, it illustrates how far the preparedness debate has moved into mainstream politics.

And perhaps the most important thing Lord Harris told me wasn't about food, water, batteries or radios.

It was about trust. Because imagine all of those problems happening at once. The power has gone out. Your mobile phone isn't working properly. ATMs and card payments are down. Rumours are spreading online about contaminated water or attacks on infrastructure. Nobody quite knows what has happened. Government tells people to remain at home, or avoid a particular area, or use water sparingly.

Now imagine thousands of social media accounts appearing almost instantly telling you the government is lying.

That the outage was deliberate. That the water is poisoned. That the police are hiding casualties. That ministers knew an attack was coming. That a photograph supposedly showing devastation somewhere nearby is real when it was generated by AI. That an emergency message is fake. That an actual fake message is genuine.

You don't have to persuade everybody of the same story. In fact, that isn't necessarily the point. You just have to make people uncertain enough that they stop knowing who to believe.

NATO explicitly warned this weekend that Russia is investing in what it calls “cognitive warfare” designed to undermine trust and weaken unity. The British Government has also added interference in democratic processes to the National Risk Register alongside cyber attacks.

That worries me because distrust is already everywhere. Healthy scepticism is essential. I am a journalist; questioning what governments and institutions tell us is literally part of my job. But there is a huge difference between scepticism and automatically assuming that every official warning is a conspiracy.

But, if we reach the point where millions of people reflexively refuse to believe anything coming from government, the police, emergency services or established news organisations, then a hostile actor has been given an extraordinary weapon without needing to fire a shot.

And that brings me back to what I think Lord Harris was really saying. Preparedness is about stuff, of course. Have some food in the cupboard that doesn't require much preparation. Have drinking water available. Have a torch and know where it is. Keep a power bank charged. Keep essential medication available.

Have a little cash. Think about how you would contact members of your family if the mobile network stopped working. Know which neighbour might need checking on.

But preparedness is primarily a state of mind. It means understanding that there may come a day when you flick the light switch and nothing happens, and that electricity may not return in ten minutes.

It means understanding that the emergency services may know you need help but have fifty people ahead of you who need it more urgently. It means understanding that the shop might be shut, the cash machine might not work and the phone in your pocket might suddenly become little more than a very expensive torch.

Most importantly, it means accepting that the government cannot guarantee that somebody will always be there immediately to fix things for us. That is difficult for people in Britain because, broadly speaking, the system has worked. Somebody has usually turned the electricity back on. Somebody has repaired the water main. Somebody has answered 999. Supermarkets have been restocked. Mobile networks have returned.

We have been conditioned by decades of stability to assume that recovery will always be quick.

I don't think we can make that assumption anymore. And I think governments need to be much more direct about this with people. Not frightening them. Not telling them war is inevitable. Not producing ridiculous Cold War-style propaganda. Just treating adults like adults and explaining that the world has changed, that hostile states are actively testing European countries below the threshold of conventional warfare, and that the consequences of a serious cyber attack, sabotage operation or infrastructure failure could reach directly into their homes.

One of the most dangerous things we can do now is convince ourselves that talking about this somehow makes it more likely.

It doesn't. Planning for a house fire doesn't mean you expect your house to burn down. Wearing a seatbelt doesn't mean you expect to crash. Having smoke alarms, insurance, savings or first-aid supplies isn't paranoia. It is simply accepting that bad things sometimes happen and that preparation makes the consequences less severe.

National resilience should be viewed in exactly the same way. Because something is changing around us. European governments can see it. NATO can see it. Our intelligence and security institutions can see it. Governments are spending billions strengthening military forces and infrastructure while countries across Europe are reconsidering civil defence and asking what their populations would actually do during a prolonged crisis.

We should pay attention. This isn't about convincing ourselves that war is inevitable. It is about recognising that disruption is becoming part of the security environment we live in and that some of it will eventually affect ordinary people directly.

Lord Harris is right. Resilience has to become part of our national mindset before the emergency happens, not something we suddenly discover when the lights have already gone out.

Because one day they will go out. Maybe because of a storm. Maybe because something has failed. Maybe because somebody sitting thousands of miles away has deliberately made it happen.

Whatever the cause, that isn't the moment to discover that your entire emergency plan was to go to Tesco.

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EJ Ward is LBC's Investigations Editor and covers intelligence, defence and security topics.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

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