WSJ What’s News - Inside the New Era of Emergency Readiness

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

Between the regularity of extreme weather events, the reality of total blackouts and the increasing threat of war, survival prep is becoming more popular. While individuals across the globe have been prepping for decades, now some governments are making sure their citizens are ready for when a crisis strikes. We speak to Denmark’s minister for resilience and preparedness as well as executives from delivery service Wolt, and explain why Taiwan is asking people to pack go-bags. Plus, preppers in the U.K. and U.S. explain why getting ready for disaster doesn’t have to mean going it alone. Caitlin McCabe hosts. Further Reading What’s in Your Go-Bag? How Taiwan Packs for Disaster Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings, February 24 through January, 2025. Hey, what's news listeners. It's Sunday, October 26th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News Sunday. On the show this week, we take a look at prepping, the expanding universe of survival prep. For decades, preppers were cast as people who were building bunkers or stowing away resources for a looming apocalypse. But in a world filled with increasing threats, governments and people are increasingly finding, that being prepared is just plain prudent. I can imagine people would want to adapt to that increasing uncertainty by trying to get themselves more prepared. If critical infrastructure were to fall out, whether it's man-made or it could be a natural disaster,

it is important that most of the people are able to take care of themselves. This is new territory. This is like, okay, what do I really need to do to mitigate for this. At the start of this year, a risk report from the World Economic Forum found that the more than 900 experts it surveyed had grown increasingly pessimistic amid a multitude of extreme weather events, growing societal polarization, and new technologies ramping up the spread of misinformation. But events lately have put global risks into sharper focus. Suspected Russian drones have recently been spotted flying over NATO countries.

5,000 miles away, Taiwanese leaders are preparing for what they see as the possibility of a Chinese invasion by 2027. Meanwhile, it wasn't too long ago that the lights went off in Spain and Portugal for a day during a massive blackout, and California is still recovering from devastating fires at the start of the year. So how do you manage this new, seemingly riskier world? The European Commission earlier this year advised residents in EU countries to build a stockpile of essential supplies that could last for at least 72 hours. And the Taiwanese government recently updated its crisis response handbook featuring a go-bag packing list for locals on the island.

Preppers themselves say government guidelines are an important starting point, but they're also taking matters into their own hands. We'll chat with two preppers from both sides of the Atlantic after first exploring how governments and businesses are stepping up. Just a few weeks ago, something rather unusual happened in Poland. More than a dozen Russian drones entered the European country's airspace. Then, not long after, drones appeared in Denmark and then Germany. The incidents have prompted. a rethinking among European countries and companies of how to defend against drones flying through their skies, but also how to prepare residents on the ground. Our Sandra Kilhoff recently

headed to Denmark to get a sense of what's happening in the usually steady nation. Now, I've gone to Denmark because, one, I'm Danish and I like to visit my family, but also because I wanted to find out how Danes are feeling about recent drone incursions and what that means for prepping. I have friends and family that have all stocked their kitchen pantries or sheds with the recommended water, canned food, and first aid kits. My mom even brought a wind-up radio so she can get updates from the government in the event of a crisis. All of these essentials, including keeping a bunch of cash to hand, are part of the official recommendations the Danish government sent to everyone living in the country last year.

Dane should be able to take care of themselves for 72 hours in case of a crisis. occurring. That's the Danish Minister for Resilience and Preparedness, Toastenshack Pillarsen. I think if you saw the TV pictures from Spain and Portugal when they had their power bag out just some months ago, you could see that they were running to the supermarkets and emptying them for water bottles. So prepping is a way to make our society more resilient. And it's a way to make sure that authorities, they can focus on the real problem when a crisis occur. Instead of bringing bottled water and toilet paper to the suburbs, because people didn't take the personal responsibility of following the guidelines from the authorities. At first, many Danes ignored these

guidelines, but then came the drone incursions last month. All of a sudden, canned mackerel was sold out across the country, and the delivery app, Vault, which is owned by DoorDash, saw a spike in demand for freeze-dried camping food. So we're at Woltz headquarters here in Copenhagen, about to have a conversation about prepping with you today. I met with a couple of Vultz general managers, Svinson and Miguel Feisleben, to talk about prepping because the company last month created a category for prepping goods on their app. So you can get your water and canned food delivered to your door in just 30 minutes.

Water is, of course, extremely important, but also things that you can stay warm with. So you need matches to light a fire, you need candles to have light, you need canned food, things that are easy to prepare without a lot of the current amenities, things with long shelf lives, and the demand has been searching in the last couple of weeks. Our point of view is that as a society, we might as well play on all the possible ways of solving a crisis like this. We are not here to say we can replace all other options, but we are just one extra way of making life go on after a crisis. 70% of these households can buy supermarket goods from our platform,

assuming there's electricity. So we believe we can be an extra add-on to how we as a society prepare for darker times. Because of that heightened threat assessment in Denmark, the government is encouraging businesses to help. Here's the preparedness minister Pillerson again. Just a few weeks ago, I invited the Danish supermarket for grocery, shops to a meeting because I'm inspired of what they've done in Finland for a number of years where they are preparing to have emergency grocery stores that are able to make sure that

the citizen they can get necessities in a crisis situation, even though there might be no electricity or no payment system working. But a crisis in the form of a massive power outage that takes out the internet would render most tech firms unable to do business. I asked Sons-Vincen how Volt is preparing for such a hybrid attack. We do what we can, but there are limitations as of now. I think it's definitely worth considering. Can we pretend to accept cash in our in our world market stores in case of emergency? But we don't have that playing certain stone yet. But it's something you're interested in potentially. I think we owe ourselves and the society that we find a way to solve that problem.

Sandra Kilhoff there, reporting from Copenhagen. Now, outside of Europe, some governments have long operated with a preparedness strategy. In Japan, disaster management began in the 1960s, following what is still the most deadly typhoon to have ever hit the country. This culture of preparedness has saved countless lives from earthquakes and tsunamis. In Taiwan, the government recently revised its strategy, asking locals to pack a go-bag so that they can evacuate in the event of a natural disaster, or if, as many predict, Chinese forces cross the Taiwanese strait and blockade or invade the island. Joy Yu Wang is the Wall Street Journal's reporter in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.

So it basically trying to tell people how they should prepare for a crisis. For example, like what they should do, if an airway sirens goes off, what kind of supply they should keep at their homes, but also including how they should prepare their go-backs, which is not just for yourself, but also have specific tips for if you have a pet or if you have elderly family members and also for smaller kids or even babies. So there are different types of go-backs that people are. actually prepare the four different needs.

Coming up, what does preparing for unknown disruptions look like for The Everyman? And what role showed your community play if real risks materialize? We take a look at those questions and more after the break. D.C. politicians want to enact harmful credit card mandates that could take away your cashback and rewards points. Perks that stretch your budget and make life a little easier. Losing these benefits means less money for your family's everyday essentials like gas and groceries. The perks you rely on could disappear, leaving you with higher costs and fewer options. Tell Congress to guard your card and oppose the Durban Marshall credit card mandates.

Paid for by Electronic Payments Coalition. Prepping can sometimes sound like something out of an apocalypse movie, but it wasn't too long ago that we all found ourselves facing an extraordinary disruption, COVID-19. Think back to those early days when supermarkets were briefly out of toilet paper and dry pasta and cleaning products. That's the kind of situation that Dan Goss in the United Kingdom is trying to avoid for the next time crisis strikes. As I've grown up, become an adult and had a family of my own, you start to see the immediate day-to-day utility in being able to respond to unexpected situations as they come up.

I'm a long way off nuclear bunkers and self-sufficient compounds, so it's got to be quite a sensible close-to-the-ground approach at the moment. Dan is the founder of Start Prepping UK, which he describes as a grassroots resource to help others get started with prepping. I'm trying to essentially treat it as a piece of mutual aid, helping people to become more resilient and more prepared for disaster as a general way to lessen the severity of those disasters. I feel like the more people that are prepared, the better off we all are collectively. Community is a big focus for Dan and many preppers for that matter. Here's Jonathan Jones and his wife, Kailene, preppers from central Utah. I think there is that perception out there that this is the government's responsibility. responsibility and the government will just take care of us. And that's a very unrealistic expectation

because the government cannot, and I agree there are governments that are more proactive in encouraging people to have some food, some water, the ability to evacuate if they need to. Ultimately, it is not the government's role to take care of us. I think it's my responsibility to make sure that I can feed my family and take care of my family if something happens. I don't expect somebody else to come in and do that. I expect to be able to help my neighbors and for my neighbors to help me. The Jones's focus on self and community resilience comes at an interesting cultural moment, with trust in the government hovering near all-time lows. According to the Pew Research Center, only 22 percent of Americans last year said they trusted the federal government to do what is right

almost always or most of the time. That's down from nearly three quarters of Americans in 1958. For preppers like Jonathan and Kailene, that has meant running a series of experiments over the last 15 years to test their survival skills. One such test included a 90-day no-shopping challenge, during which they couldn't go to the grocery store or eat at a restaurant. So when they ran out of milk, they turned to bartering. One of our friends had a milk cow. And so we would exchange garden produce that we were producing, form fresh. milk. And there were different things that we did like that that was amazing because we can't do it alone. That doesn't mean you necessarily need to begin bartering. Dan, Jonathan, and

Kileen say there are simple ways to get started. It doesn't take much to meet your basic needs. I mean, you need water, food, fuel, and shelter, security. Those are the basics. And if you get those basics covered, you can be okay. And that's it for What's News Sunday for October 26th. Today's show is produced by Zoe Colkin with supervising producer

Sandra Kilhoff and deputy editor Chris Sinsley. I'm Caitlin McCabe and we'll be back tomorrow morning with a brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening. Boardrooms love buzzwords, AI, climate, resilience. But what do they actually mean for CFOs and execs trying to survive the next earnings call? That's where the pre-read comes in.

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