United Kingdom

Armed conflict

Reviewed 2026-07-26

Use at your own risk. For education and research only, not medical advice. Check the numbers and rules for the country you are in. They change. Before you rely on these cards, have a medical professional or a fire safety specialist review them. Disclaimer

Do this first

At the air raid warning, move immediately to the deepest shelter you can reach: a cellar, a metro station or an inner room with no windows.

In armed conflict the injuries people survive come from glass, blast and collapsing light structures. Protection comes from mass and distance: below ground level, away from windows, with at least two walls between you and the outside. These habits can be learned, and the time to learn them is before the first siren.

Step by step

Learn the warning signals and the location of the nearest shelter today, and keep the emergency kit and documents ready by the door.
At the siren, go down at once: cellar, underground garage or metro. With no basement, use an inner room, corridor or bathroom on the lowest floor, with no windows and two walls to the outside.
In the shelter, sit away from the entrance and keep the kit, water and radio with you. Stay until the all clear, not until it merely sounds quiet.
If you are caught in the open during strikes, lie flat in any depression or ditch or behind a low wall, with mouth open and hands over your head, away from vehicles and glass fronts.
Never touch unexploded munitions, dropped weapons or unusual objects, however small or toy-like. Mark the place from a distance and report it.
Keep one contact outside the area whom everyone messages, agree family meeting points, and send short texts so the network can carry the emergency traffic.
Follow only official instructions on evacuation corridors and curfews, and carry documents and medicines on your body, not in a bag you might drop.

Never do this

Never film or photograph military positions, checkpoints or defence works, and never share their locations online. It endangers you and everyone near them.
Never approach cluster remnants, mines or tripwires, and never let children play in rubble or abandoned vehicles.
Never stand at the window to watch. The glass and the pressure wave arrive faster than the sound.

Call emergency services if

Anyone injured by blast, debris or gunfire. Use pressure on bleeding and the basics that work everywhere.
Found munitions or suspicious objects, reported from a safe distance.
People trapped in damaged buildings after strikes.

Common questions

What actually protects in a flat with no cellar?

The rule of two walls: an inner room on the lowest floor available, away from all windows, where a projectile or glass would have to pass at least two walls to reach you. A bathtub in an inner bathroom adds a solid shell around your core.

Should we leave or stay?

That depends on official corridors, your mobility and what awaits at the other end, and no card can decide it for you. What the card can say is this: decide early rather than under fire, keep the tank half full and the kit packed, and register with your country's embassy if you are abroad.