The European Union will soon ask us to keep supplies of water, food, medicine, and batteries at home to last at least 72 hours. It's impossible not to shudder when reading the news, even those of us who have never taken tap water and gas for granted, and who have always thought that those tearful families we've seen parading on the news all our lives could one day be ours too. After all, they were there less than a century ago, and we remember them well.
Having a minimum of reserves at home is the obligation of any head of household and any adult who has already understood that absolute security does not exist. The problem isn't this, but when the EU leaks that civilians should prepare materially for war (with Russia), it is already preparing us psychologically. If governments have begun rearmament in Europe, they must protect civilians. It's not that war is inevitable, but the needle on the scoreboard has been at the very unlikely level for a long time, and now it has moved slightly toward probable.
The question is, while we prepare for any attack, what is the EU doing to prevent it, beyond putting us on the path of a self-fulfilling prophecy? We don't know if the specter that haunts us will take the form of cyberattacks that disrupt the supply of essential services as a form of warfare. It's very hard to think that we've moved from the Europe that abolished borders in the EU agreements to theOde to Joyto return to military training or to lend our children and grandchildren to fight in an armed conflict that never ends well. Because if we're talking about bombings, after what we saw in Ukraine or Gaza, having reserves at home won't be of much use.
