Three tips on how to survive an apocalypse

Looting. I mean, you just would, wouldn’t you? I’d start with a supermarket and a gun shop. Come to think of it, I should probably know where my local gun shop is. Let’s see. Archway? Really? Who knew?

Obviously I’m not expecting an earthquake in north London. But who says it has to be an earthquake? Any one of the five modern horsemen of the apocalypse staples would do it, which is to say, nuclear war, natural disaster, disease, zombies and aliens. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the literature — and by the literature I mean Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, any number of films and that curious genre of children’s books about high school kids surviving a nuclear war that we all had to read in the 1980s — then that one thing is that it pays to be prepared.

Rule One, you want a rendezvous. How many times have you seen Bruce Willis (or similar) trawling a cityscape scarred with collapsed buildings and bits of spaceship (or similar) in desperate search of his other half? Bit of forward planning, Bruce, that’s all you need. The wife and I, we’ve agreed on a particular beach on a remote island in Scotland. Because you want to get out of the cities, don’t you? That’s Rule Two. No matter if it’s nukes or killer flu or brain-harvesting metalmen from Sirius B, the cities are apocalypse Ground Zero. You want to be out in the countryside, so you can spend your days gazing wistfully at the bloodshot sky, and your nights huddled around a primus stove in a bobble hat, trying to persuade that saucy, strangely experienced chick you met in the burnt-out garage to help you out with breeding a new civilisation. At least until the mutants come, that is, and eat your kids.