'My children think I've lost my mind': The Scot prepping for when the lights go out

Inside Brian's home is enough food to feed his family for 165 days.

He's also storing hundreds of gallons of fresh water, two generators, battery power packs and stacks of military rations.

The 52-year-old lift engineer, who lives in Croy near Cumbernauld, says he has spent about £2,500 on freeze-dried food alone this year.

"My children think I've lost my mind," he says.

"But I say to them, 'you have the luxury of being able to doubt and still be safe because it's my responsibility'."

Brian is part of a growing group of people known as "preppers".

These are individuals who are taking precautions in case of emergencies such as severe weather, power cuts and major disruptions caused by conflict or cyber-attacks.

"I've ramped up my preps quite a lot in 2026 because of the number of things ongoing," he says.

Top of his current list of concerns are the UK's "creaking" electricity and water infrastructure as well as the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Iran.

For Brian, the biggest threat is the power grid going down.

"Everything in a modern society is relying on power so I always prep for the depriving of power," he says.

"I can't stop a cyber-attack, I can't stop a rogue state, but if I prep it gives me a measure of self-confidence, resilience and peace of mind that should something go wrong, regardless of the source or cause, then I'll be okay."

Brian says his prepping began in 2010 when there was particularly severe winter weather which brought much of the country to a halt.

He says he was amazed by how quickly the shelves in the supermarkets became empty and how soon people's tempers started to fray.

"I was tripping through the snow with a sledge to Tesco which had one till, nothing on the shelves," he says.

"People arguing and pushing for very limited supplies and when I got home I decided at that point that I'm not going to be in that position again."

Brian says he has calculated that he now has one million calories of food energy stored in his purpose-built workshop as well as a separate outbuilding.

"I keep a mixture of tinned food which is 25 years duration," he says.

"British Army ration packs make up another third of my food supply, and then long-life 25-year shelf life freeze-dried food."

He also has 165 gallons of fresh water which he stores in a cool place and rotates every six months.

Brian's home is kitted out with solar panels with storage batteries as well as back-up batteries which he can move to anywhere he needs them.

He also has two generators, one for back-up.

He has become such an expert that he spends a lot of his free time telling others how to prepare on his YouTube channel.

While "prepping" to Brian's level remains niche, his fears have been echoed by UK government ministers and backed up by the updated National Risk Register - which details what types of threats we face as a country.

A new national resilience strategy is due to be unveiled by the end of this year.

Announcing it at the start of the summer, Cabinet Office Minister Darren Jones said that next year the government would carry out ''the largest UK home defence exercise in several decades'' to ensure we're ready ''should the worst ever happen".

The National Audit Office recently warned of the vulnerability of Britain's food supply chain, saying we're too reliant on private companies to handle disruptions.

It also said UK households are less prepared for emergencies than those in several other countries such as Finland, Sweden and European Union nations.

Brian says we only need to look at what happened in Spain and Portugal last year to see how quickly power outages cause massive problems.

On 28 April 2025, the Iberian peninsula's electricity supply was shut down, leading to widespread chaos, as internet and telephone connections were halted and transport links came to a standstill.

The outage hit schools, universities, businesses and public buildings, with some areas not recovering power for 16 hours.

Brian says prepping is an "insurance policy" - he argues it is about having agency in the face of a very uncertain world.

His wife was initially reluctant to get on board with Brian, but after the Covid-19 pandemic, she realised the benefit of having extra supplies at home.

"My wife actively helps and also shares the financial burden when I buy things," he says.

He sees prepping becoming more mainstream and says many people may be doing it without thinking of themselves as survivalists.

"Every time you decide to get a little extra in one month, or get solar panels and batteries fitted, that's a form of prepping," he says.

"You're saving yourself money at the same time as building resilience into your home."