19–23 September 2026
Stockpiling headlines: what people read
After the "government urges citizens to stockpile" headlines, visits to PreparedBritain rose sharply, and most of those visitors read the page that checks the claim. Figures are percentage changes against our late-August average (24 August to 3 September 2026), from our own site analytics.
- Daily visits rose about 90% from 4 September 2026, the day of the El Niño stock-up stories, and averaged 90% above late August from 4 to 18 September.
- Peak on 21 September 2026: up just over 4,000% (4,077%) against late August. The average from 19 to 23 September was about 2,300% above late August.
- 73% of visitors from 19 to 23 September read our explainer, published 19 September: "Is the UK government telling people to stockpile food and water?" Read the explainer →
- Daily visits from 19 to 23 September against late August, by page (rounded as on the chart; unrounded figures in brackets):
- How much food to store (guide)+2,600% (2,579%)
- Emergency foodalmost +2,000% (1,964%)
- Water storage+1,900% (1,887%)
- Emergency kit list (guide)+1,800% (1,770%)
- Emergency radios+1,400% (1,401%)
- Clicks from our pages through to retailers rose about 600% (603%) from 19 to 23 September against 4 to 18 September. Radios and water storage were clicked most. These are clicks, not sales: we do not sell kits, and we have no sales data to share.
- Daily sign-ups for our free emergency checklists rose more than a hundredfold against the first half of September.
- From 19 to 23 September, 86% of visitors were in the UK and 77% were on a mobile phone (21% desktop, 2% tablet). About 96% arrived from a search engine (Google about 91%, DuckDuckGo 4%, Bing 2%); social media brought under 1%.
Please print these beside the figures
- PreparedBritain is a young site, launched in July 2026, so some of this growth is our own. The jumps line up with the news days.
- "Visitors" means daily unique visitors per page, as counted by our own analytics. The percentages are against a small late-August base, which makes them large; the shares (73%, 86%, 77%, 96%) do not depend on the base.
Context
- The government has not issued a new instruction to stockpile. GOV.UK Prepare advice is unchanged: a few days of bottled water, food that needs no cooking, a torch, a radio, a power bank, a first aid kit and any medicines, to cope with a few days of disruption such as a storm, a flood or a power cut.
- A national resilience public information campaign, anchored in GOV.UK/Prepare, is being developed by the Cabinet Office and will launch "later this year" (UK Government Resilience Action Plan 2026 Implementation Report, 14 July 2026; written parliamentary answer, 21 September 2026). It has not launched, and the written answer lists no items and asks no one to stockpile.
Charts for this story: Daily visits to PreparedBritain, change against the late-August average · What people looked at: rise in daily visits, 19–23 September vs late August
