To be fair it's not just "impending war" - there have in recent years been increasing numbers of freak weather events ("The Beast from the East snowfall, various storms etc.) that have left people without power and shops unstocked for 2-3 days... it IS sensible to have a small stockpile of longlife essentials, and things like charged-up powerbanks/solar powerbanks for charging phones in an emergency (we have a couple of little solar USB-C chargers).
Even in that fairly recent little storm last month-ish (the fence destroyer we called it - for some reason everyone was specifically losing their fences
) we were stuck without power for nearly 48 hours. Still being able to charge phones/tablets etc. was a lifesaver.
In my day you couldn't do anything during a powercut, these days you can still watch Netflix
.