Fact Check: Are Governments Telling People to Prepare for 90 Days Without Power?

Posts all over social media say governments want you ready for three months without the grid. That's not what any of them said. Here's where the 90-day number really comes from, what the official advice actually is, and why governments are talking about this at all.

By the Sphinx Agent Editorial Team · Published October 31, 2026 · Facts checked against official sources up to October 31, 2026.

Where the 90-day number really comes from

The 90 days is real. It just isn't about you.

On September 30, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced FORTRESS America, short for "Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply and Survivability." The Army's write-up of the speech says the goal is for every installation to eventually "run under its own power."⁴ On October 6, a Pentagon memo set up a program office to run it, with "installation hardening and cyber resilience" as one of five pillars.⁵

The specific number came on October 25. Fox News, citing "documents reviewed by Fox News Digital," reported that every major military installation in the continental United States must be able to "sustain essential operations independently for at least 90 days," covering power, water, fuel and communications. The plan includes microgrids, large-scale battery storage and portable nuclear reactors.³

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell explained the thinking: "We don't want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense."³

Three things to notice:

• It's about bases. Not homes, not civilians, not you.
• It hasn't been published. The 90-day figure comes from documents Fox News reviewed. IBTimes UK noted there's no publicly released Pentagon directive with that benchmark.¹²
• It's a long-term building project, not a warning about something imminent. The Army's micro-reactor program at Fort Benning, for example, targets its first working reactor by 2028.¹⁴

Somewhere between that Fox story and your feed, "military bases should be able to last 90 days" turned into "the government says you need 90 days of supplies." That's the whole rumor.

What governments actually told households

The longest civilian recommendation anywhere on that list is Germany's 10 days. Nobody is asking for months.

What the UK actually said

The UK's Be Ready campaign launched on October 22, 2026, as the first stage of a three-year push. It asks households to prepare for three days of disruption. The threats it names are severe weather, like last winter's storms and this summer's wildfires, which can knock out power, water, phone signal and the internet.¹

Security Minister Dan Jarvis kept it low-key: "Those who can follow this advice should follow this advice."¹

A lot of coverage framed the campaign around Russia and cyber sabotage. The government's own announcement doesn't mention either.¹ The campaign site does list "cyber" as one of its hazards, but that page is about criminals getting into your online accounts, not attacks on the grid.²

Where the bigger timelines come from

Commentators and influencers have attached their own numbers to these campaigns: 30 days, 90 days, "three months." We couldn't find any of those figures in an official government recommendation. If someone tells you "the government says" a number, ask them for the link.

So why are governments talking about this now?

Not because of one event. The reasons they give are fairly ordinary, and some are genuinely worrying.

• Weather. The UK names storms and wildfires.¹ The Netherlands cites climate change alongside geopolitics.⁷
• Cyber and "hybrid" threats. The EU's 2025 strategy, which set the 72-hour baseline, explicitly lists "hybrid and cybersecurity threats."⁶
• First responders need room. If most households can look after themselves for a few days, emergency crews can focus on hospitals and the people who can't.

The grid cyber risk is real

This isn't science fiction. It has already happened, and U.S. agencies say the groundwork for more is in place.

• Ukraine, 2015. Attackers remotely opened circuit breakers at three power companies and cut electricity to about 225,000 customers. The U.S. attributes it to Russian state actors.¹⁷
• Ukraine, 2016. Malware called CrashOverride (also known as Industroyer) was built to switch grid equipment on and off directly.¹⁸
• United States, now. A joint CISA, NSA and FBI advisory says the Chinese state group Volt Typhoon has been "pre-positioning" inside U.S. energy, water, communications and transport systems "for disruptive or destructive attacks in the event of a major crisis or conflict," in some cases keeping access for at least five years.¹³

One more correction while we're here. The huge blackout that hit Spain and Portugal on April 28, 2025 is often cited as a cyberattack. Spain's government found "no evidence of cyber-incident or cyber-attack." It was a grid failure with several technical causes.¹⁹

How this connects to the Binance hack, PHP2Shell and hardware wallets

Let's be clear first: no government advisory mentions the Binance hack. The UK campaign launched a week before it.¹ But this month has given everyone a preview of what "digital disruption" feels like in real life, and that's why these stories are being shared together.

• Your money can be frozen without anyone touching your account. After the $6.3 billion Binance hack, withdrawals were paused for days while the exchange rebuilt its security. Customers' balances were fine. They just couldn't move them.
• Governments unplugged their own websites. When PHP2Shell hit, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland took public websites offline on purpose rather than risk them being taken over.
• A company told customers to unplug. In Japan, GMO Internet Group told users of one service to back up their data, shut down their PCs and unplug them before a ransomware deadline. GMO refused a $50 million ransom demand.²⁰
• "Offline" storage isn't automatically safe. The 2026 hardware wallet attacks showed that even a cold wallet depends on where you bought it and how it made your seed.

None of that means the grid is about to go down. It means a lot of everyday life now depends on systems you can't see or control, and it's worth having a small plan for when one of them stops working.

A note on crypto and cash

Deposits at a U.S. bank are insured by the FDIC to at least $250,000 at each insured bank. The FDIC lists crypto assets among the products it does not insure.²¹ And in a power or internet outage, neither a banking app nor a crypto wallet is much use. That's why the UK checklist tells people to keep some cash in coins and notes.²

How to actually prepare, without panic-buying

Start with three days. If that's easy, stretch it to a week. Here's a list built only from official guidance, plus a few digital extras from us.

The basics (from official checklists)

• Water: at least 3 litres per person per day for drinking (UK), or 1 gallon per person per day including cooking and washing (U.S.).^2,15
• Food: non-perishable food you normally eat, ideally things that don't need cooking. Check dates every six months.²
• Medicine: essential medication, a first aid kit, and a written list of medications and doses.²
• Light and news: a torch or flashlight with spare batteries, and a battery or wind-up FM radio.²
• Power: a charged power bank.²
• Cash: some coins and notes.²
• Documents: copies of ID and important phone numbers on paper.² Ready.gov also suggests copies of bank account records.¹⁶

Digital extras (our advice)

• Write down the numbers you'd need. Bank and card fraud lines, your insurer, your doctor. Your phone may be dead when you need them.
• Know where your crypto backup is. If you hold crypto in a hardware wallet, make sure your recovery phrase backup is on paper or metal, stored safely, and that a trusted person knows how to find it in an emergency. Never store it in the cloud.
• Don't keep everything in one place. One bank, one exchange or one app is a single point of failure.
• Turn on two-factor login that works offline, like an authenticator app or hardware key, rather than relying only on text messages.
• Be suspicious of "emergency" messages. Every crisis brings scams. Check official sites directly.

Frequently asked questions

Are governments telling people to prepare for 90 days without power?

No. Official household advice ranges from 3 to 10 days. The 90-day figure is a reported goal for U.S. military bases.^1,3,8

What is FORTRESS America?

A Pentagon initiative announced on September 30, 2026 to make U.S. military installations less dependent on civilian infrastructure. Reporting says it calls for major bases to run independently for at least 90 days.^3,4,5

How many days of supplies does the UK recommend?

Three days, including 3 litres of drinking water per person per day.^1,2

How much water should I store?

At least 1 gallon per person per day (U.S.) or 3 litres of drinking water per person per day (UK).^2,15

Is the Binance hack why governments are warning people?

No. No official advisory mentions it, and the UK campaign launched a week earlier.¹

Was the 2025 Spain and Portugal blackout a cyberattack?

No. Spain's government found no evidence of a cyberattack.¹⁹