I’m ready to be scared. Just tell me what to be scared of

What I’m lacking, really, is any sense of the parameters. As I understand it, a best-case scenario involves the Greeks doing what they’re told. Everybody else tightens their belts a bit and there’s a bout of quite dispiriting inflation, followed by the ejection of a couple of countries from the euro, the slow retrenchment of almost every European public sector, the fundamental restructuring of industry here and in America, and a slow, slogging march back to stability and prosperity so that, in a decade or two, we can do it all again. Yes? Is that about right? So what’s the opposite? What’s the worst-case scenario? What happens when it all goes wrong?

I haven’t a clue. Nobody is saying. Is it like the above, but just slightly worse? Or is it, you know, taking-wheelbarrows-of-cash-down-to-Budgens-to-buy-a-loaf-of-bread territory? In the evenings, will the streetlights still come on? Will the streets be dark or, in fact, never dark, due to the roaming armed gangs and burning cars? Come Christmas 2013, I suppose my question essentially is, are we going to be eating a slightly smaller turkey, or some kid from down the road? I feel I should have some sense of this, and I have none at all.