UK Government Urges Households to Keep 3 Days of Food, Water and Cash as Cyberattack Risks Grow

The UK government yesterday urged households to keep three days of food, water and cash at home. Among the risks cited are cyberattacks that could disrupt power, internet access and card payments.
This week showed how quickly such disruption can happen. As news of critical PHP flaws spread, attempts to exploit them climbed into the millions, and several websites went dark while they worked to secure them.
A wider outage affecting several essential services at once could mean:
- Card payments failing at checkout
- ATMs and banking apps going offline
- Pharmacies unable to access prescriptions
- Hospital systems going down
- Airlines unable to check in passengers
- Company systems locked and mobile networks down
Users would not need to be hacked directly to feel the impact; the services they depend on would only need to stop working.