Imagine it’s the dead of night. Your phone pings with a text – it’s a government emergency alert: “Leave your home immediately! Only take with you enough supplies for the next three days.” What would you want in your go-bag?

Our new survey of UK adults (results not yet published) has found a surprising number of people prioritised sentimental belongings such as a childhood teddy bear.

In the face of climate change and growing geopolitical instability, governments have started to advise citizens to prepare now for disaster. In 2024, the UK government launched its Prepare initiative. This was followed by preparEU, a flagship EU project which argued: “Today’s threats are fast, complex and interconnected; our response must be more proactive.”

These initiatives typically recommend that people should have enough food, water and medicine to last 72 hours. In addition, they need ready access to documents, cash, batteries or power banks and a wind-up radio, plus a working knowledge of emergency support in their local area.

But when that message pings in the night, will you already be packed, with documents, food and medicine in a go-bag? Or will you be scrambling to find things, hoping you have enough essentials to keep you going?

In April 2026, as part of the After the End project – a Wellcome Trust-funded research project exploring how people experience and recover from crises – we surveyed 1,000 UK adults to understand how prepared they were for a sudden crisis or disaster.

We found that most people have less than half of what is recommended by the UK government and the US Federal Emergency Management Agency. Only four out of 1,000 people reported being fully prepared.

Our findings echo the 2025 UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness, which found that of 10,536 adults, only 13% felt largely or totally prepared.

Withstanding the emotional toll of crisis

However, the focus on practical items and supplies may not capture what people need to withstand the emotional toll of crisis and disaster.

When asked what other items they would take with them during a crisis, many participants felt that personal items would be critical to their post-disaster wellbeing. They expressed a strong desire to keep sentimental items such as jewellery, family photographs and objects from their childhood close to them during crisis.

As one participant wrote: “My childhood teddy bear. He is going to the grave with me. Apart from that, nothing matters much.”

Pets also featured heavily in people’s responses. Animals such as cats and dogs were often described as members of the family. Some participants even found comfort in the idea of taking the ashes of deceased pets with them if they needed to flee in an emergency.

A concept in psychology called extended self theory explains why these types of items hold such importance during everyday life – and also during crisis. It suggests that our sense of self is fragile, and continually built and maintained through our connections with the world around us.

In this way, the things we surround ourselves with do more than serve practical functions. They help us construct, stabilise and make sense of our identity. Consciously or subconsciously, our possessions become part of who we are.

A childhood teddy bear, therefore, becomes a possession imbued with memories and emotions which tell a tale of who we are, where we have come from, and who we care about. Objects can reinforce continuity of identity over time and space.

A strong sense of self

Having a strong sense of self can be beneficial during times of crisis. If we enter such a period with a sense of identity that is stable and coherent, it can act as a psychological anchor. A strong identity helps us cope in a challenging situation, and reduces the likelihood of ruminating about negative experiences.

Research also suggests that our ability to connect with items from pre-disaster periods influences our ability to cope and recover psychologically following an emergency. So, salvaging photographs and other items of sentimental value during disaster could help to preserve and rebuild our memory and identity.

If everything around us falls apart, a treasured item can help us maintain some sense of normality. This is perhaps why survivors of the 2011 Japan tsunami frequently described the loss of family photos as one of their greatest emotional losses.

Sentimental items can maintain or even improve our belief that we are capable of achieving our goals. Psychologists refer to this as self-efficacy. And research suggests higher levels of self-efficacy are associated with greater preparedness for, and better coping after, a disaster – particularly in vulnerable groups such as those with disability.

Our analysis found that people who reported greater self-efficacy also said they had more of the items and knowledge recommended by the UK’s Prepare initiative.

Sentimental items can also help to rebuild communities. Heirlooms and meaningful everyday items from before a crisis become points of storytelling afterwards. So, remember to save a little space in your backpack for something that means something to you.

Whether it is a childhood teddy bear, your late mother’s engagement ring or a beer coaster from a first date, these items are more than just “things”. When so much else is uncertain, the small objects that remind us who we are may be among the most valuable items we can take with us.

Ruth Ogden receives funding from British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council, CHANSE and Horizon 2020.

Anna Powell receives funding from the Wellcome Trust through the After the End Discovery Award, and from The Pandemic Institute through a partnership with CSL Seqirus UK.

Patricia Kingori receives funding from the Wellcome Trust through the After the End Discovery Award and the Antitheses Research platform.

Have you ever heard the phrase “you only use 10% of your brain”? In reality, there is no way of measuring the percentage terms of consciousness – partly because the brain has no static baseline.

However, there is a general consensus among neuroscientists now that most of the brain’s processes are unconscious. That doesn’t mean you’re not using most of your brain though – it means there’s much more happening than you’re probably aware of.

Modern cognitive neuroscience has brought us right back to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic view of the unconscious mind. This is partly because the once-thought untestable theories are gaining scientific ground.

Freud, in 1895, proposed that the unconscious mind hides sexual and aggressive wishes, in his book with his colleague Josef Breuer Studies in Hysteria. They wrote that mental health symptoms like anxiety, phobias and compulsions emerge from unresolved unconscious thoughts.

Freud’s model (conscious, preconscious, unconscious) – maps onto our current understanding of memory. Nobel laureate, neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Eric Kandell says we have declarative and non-declarative memory processes. Declarative memory recall is conscious, like trying to remember the sequence of numbers on your credit card. Non-declarative memories involve unconscious, automatic recall.

And Freud’s structural model of the mind again arguably fits in with our understanding of cognition.

Freud proposed id made up the primitive part of your psyche and that the superego stands for our moral consciousness. Last, your ego mediates between your id and super ego. His idea of the id could be equivalent to unconscious neural processes – although there are convincing arguments that pleasure processing in the id is conscious too. Ego could also be represented by metacognition (awareness of your own thought processes) which is linked to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, right behind your forehead.

The superego could be reflected in the brain’s limbic system, which regulates your emotions and behaviour, and tells you whether something feels good or not.

However, behaviourism became dominant in the 1920s, with psychologists like J.B. Watson, in his “behaviourist manifesto” championing the view that only measurable behaviour should be considered in science.

The unconscious brain is back

From the 1980s it became clearer that people’s decision making and behaviour could be influenced without their awareness.

Later, it was also clear with neuroscience experiments and brain scanners, as my team and I showed in two meta-analyses, that both unconscious memory and conscious memory play a role in brain processes. For example, neuroscientists can show study participants hidden flashes of “subliminal” happy or horrified faces and the person will have no conscious recollection of the faces. But their amygdala (the arousal region of the brain) will show increased activation, which can influence people’s decision making.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow built on some of Freud’s ideas of primary and secondary processes. He proposed we have two modes of thinking where system 1 is a fast process that is impulsive and largely unconscious, whereas system 2 is a slow process that takes effort. The secondary process is reserved for when you need to pay attention to something new, dangerous or uncertain.

What neuroscience can tell us about the unconscious mind

Essential functions, like heart rate, body temperature, hunger and thirst regulation are unconsciously rooted. Similarly, coping strategies to diminish painful feelings, learned in early childhood, are not necessarily conscious. Infantile amnesia occurs until about three years old but remain in our unconscious brains for life. However, some aspects of unconscious processes could be brought into conscious awareness via talking therapy.

Other theories about how the conscious and unconscious brain areas interact, come from two prominent ideas. The Global Workspace Theory (GWT), and the Intergrated Information Theory (IIT).

GWT proposes that the mind is like a theatre stage, where the unconscious agents are busy behind the scenes making sure that the “conscious spotlight” on stage is in the right place.

IIT suggests that there are gradients of consciousness. The degree and complexity of integration between brain regions determines how “much” consciousness (“phi”) an organism has. So for example, a human with a complex network of brain regions has more “phi” than, say, a sea slug with far fewer connections. However, the problem with this theory, is how to validate the “amount” of consciousness different species have.

The founder of neuropsychoanalysis Mark Solms – along with neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Karl Friston – in 2010 pioneered a new theory integrating the idea that unconscious activity is the major force influencing our conscious decision making. In my view, it’s the best model we currently have.

This theory – called the Free Energy Principle (FEP) suggests the brain’s main role is to predict what will keep you alive and feeling good, within the predictable bounds we have evolved to survive in. Most of the time we do this unconsciously, with an internal model of the world, as well as pages of memories from our evolutionary rulebook.

But when something uncertain or surprising happens, it is like free energy in the brain that is not bound to a prediction. This causes our brains to be ultra-conscious for a brief period of time to create a new prediction that binds our thoughts, costing the brain a lot of energy. As Kahneman stated, we do sometimes need our conscious brain to help make more difficult decisions for us, when there are many unknowns.

More recently, consciousness research has started to move away from humans altogether. Solms has argued it is possible to give AI consciousness. If he turns out to be right, then according to his own work, the unconscious processes of AI entities will be shaped by their interactions with us.

Samantha Brooks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.