Scottish ‘prepper’ Brian Forbes’s children reckon ‘dad’s nuts’, but his wife is far from alone in coming round to his way of thinking
Published 17th Oct 2026, 06:00 BST
In 2010, after a particularly bad winter, Brian Forbes did something that would have been considered more than a little eccentric. He started building up stores of food and supplies, and became a member of the ‘prepping’ community – people who prepare for a forthcoming but unidentified disaster.
He’s still doing it. So far this year, Forbes has spent £6,000 on tinned food, army ration packs, rice, flour, solar panels, power banks, night vision goggles and the like, and now has enough to last 25 years.
When he began, his wife Donna was sceptical, but has since been won over, although their children “think dad's nuts, dad’s crazy, he's lost his marbles”. “They go to great lengths to tell me why I'm wrong,” Forbes said.
However, 16 years after he began, Covid, global energy shocks and geopolitical tensions have all put a rather different slant on the idea of survivalism. Forbes’s main regret is that his shelter is just a couple of sheds. “It's not a bunker. I wish I had bunker money.”
As they used to say at the end of BBC Crimewatch, “please don't have nightmares”...