Although Christmas is on the horizon, I feel some of you may be getting worried about the other list you carry round with you at this time of year along with the usual who-gets-what-from-Santa stuff. Namely, your Apocalyptic End Of Time Disaster Survival List.
You may have had one from last year when you got ready for the Mayan Prophecy farce, and perhaps you think that will do again. But I always think its best to keep these lists up-to-date while you can. You'd feel pretty stupid scratching round for pencil and paper under all that rubble wondering whether you really have got the best choice of survival gear, right?
I do understand that last year was a bit of a downer, what with the Mayans getting it totally wrong, and I also freely acknowledge it was par for the course. As far as I can tell without doing extensive research there has never been an end-of-the-world prediction that has come true. But with each one the likelihood factor doesn't diminish. In fact it gets more likely because one has to be correct sometime I think you'll agree.
There have been some big disappointments over the years when it comes to saying "that's it, it's all over" (I am thinking Millennium Bug here from a shadowy time when people weren't anywhere as near dependent on computers as we now are) and no one has felt it more bitterly than those people who took a cash bet that the world would end. Despite generous odds they never collected and many a bookie has reluctantly banked the fat profits from failed End Of Everything predictive bets.
On the other hand they would never have collected if they were right, so either way those who placed a bet might have well have thrown their money down a drain and not gone into the bookies.
Frankly, it gets embarrassing to remember past failures of doom arriving, so let's be positive and look ahead to the Next One Big as we call it. Or if it hasn't happened before, the First Big One.
Before we go too far into this please remember that life clings, on this planet, to a very thin sheen indeed: we as humans can't go very deep and we can't go very high from the surface. Someone once said that a layer of dust on a snooker ball has far more depth than the margin we live inside on this planet. That's pretty thin, you will agree. There is also within this thin layer not many places you can go should it all go pear-shaped. 'You can run but you can't hide' sums it up neatly.
I am fully aware that a comet, having played that old trick of passing us by might sneak round the back of the sun and return to put an end to it all. I am also aware that those ecoloons who screamed and wept that the old filament lightbulbs that lit our lives were reducing the planet to a graveyard of dead polar bears amid arid deserts about to be overwhelmed by rising oceans simply can't wait for it to happen. What with cows farting poisonous methane by the tanker load every day we are lucky to get through to Christmas any year.
Living on a prayer, sang Bon Jovi, and he wasn't joking.
But let us say the end of everything isn't quite the end. You know, while dinosaurs (earth's most successful large creatures, probably) were wiped out in the blink of an eye by a lump of flying rock from the heavens, the ants somehow carried on among the grasses. So say there is some life left, and you really would like to join the cockroaches in making it through the next living hell.
This is where your survival list comes in handy. To help you, here are my suggestions.
1) Get something sharp to help you. A good saw is probably very useful, but a sharp knife and a better still, a good axe are going to be invaluable. These can cut meat and chop wood for fires and fend off those less fortunate than yourself. Sorry, I know this is hard to believe but there will be people out there who want to take what you have got off you, and that might include your life. I do know that many liberal wet-thinkers will believe during an apocalypse the government will swiftly set up diversity and equality forums and oversee empowerment committees to help people like yourself understand the disaster. Counselling may be available, but unlikely. Stress levels may rise as the bien pensant among us slowly realise that the great function of modern government they loved -- namely watching one's every step and controlling all thoughts -- won't be around to airlift you and yours to a safe place where free food and comfortable housing with pleasant views will be the minimum hand outs.
Trouble is, although that person you voted for had all those fine words about caring for people and protecting you, he or she will get hungry too when their carefully manufactured shell breaks. That favourite newspaper pundit of yours who argued so eloquently for the disadvantaged artist can be just as desperate as anyone else when push comes to shove, or push comes to flattened. You may need a sharp instrument against them, too, as arguments like "but I loved your critique of the fast food corporations" may not stop them thinking the piece of bread in your hand ought to be in theirs.
2) Get something to start a fire. Matches are good, but will run out in time. So learn a way of keeping warm without turning the central heating up. I recommend flint and tinder. Not perfect and a little labour-intensive, but it will probably work in all conditions.
Oh yes, and don't forget to take something with you that will, in fact, catch fire. You will, if you are a liberal wet, be tempted to think that right-wing publications are the most inflammatory of all but truth is paper of any kind burns well. In this regard, while your professor of applied culture studies said that your treasured thesis on how crass capitalism has degraded the purity of Marxist ideals and was one of the best exposes of how a modern world chose to reject the utopia of socialism, it will burn just as well. Possibly better as it already contains hot air.
3) Learn a useful skill. While I accept that you think being able to sit round a campfire and tell everyone your theories of social inequality, institutional racism coupled with right-wing media bias will inevitably entertain people for several hours and never fail to get you invited to the best campfires, the stark truth is that what people will want in the end aren't social observations but those with practical skills.
If you can grind flour or catch fish or even fashion a shelter from animal skins you will be very welcome indeed. Even being able to tell which berry or fungus won't make you violently sick is a start.
Eventually the survivors will need clock makers and mechanics and boatbuilders and of course potters to make pots, but the immediate priority will be getting through one day and into the next. Those skills will be essential, if however somewhat dull and not intellectually exciting the way a good debate with like-minded people can be.
4) Preserve greatness. You won't want to be hampered by carrying paintings and works of sculpture, but you may want to put in your bag at least one book that you can best use to stay alive. This could be a survival manual or a guide to cooking dead birds, but perhaps you can find room for one more book. I would suggest that you avoid taking Karl Marx with you as probably plenty of others like you will be eager to also preserve the words of this fabulous thinker, and the world -- once it gets back on its feet -- will naturally need a socialist hierarchy to implement regulations and guide all thoughts once more.
Until then, you may want to take with you say a recognised great book that does not deal with harsh political realities, but prefers to tell a damn good story and reveals something of the eternal human condition. Dickens, Shakespeare or a translation of one of the great non-English authors may be a consideration.
Poetry would be good too, though the lyrics of a popular rap artist may not be as universally appealing as say Byron. But as always it's your bag, your choice.
5) Be ready for change, or better still, a change back. This sounds odd but while you will need to focus on the fact that things won't be as once promised, don't lose heart. For example, as society is making such good progress in accepting the views of a violent minority for which you are an enthusiastic supporter you may be pained to see that sterling progress interrupted and this in turn may damage your self-esteem. However you need to be ready to slap down those who think this is an opportunity to start afresh.
There will, at this point, be those who will foolishly think that once the edifices of hypocritical political privilege have been brought down, the unconsidered waste of money stopped along with the crumbling of shallow intellectual ivory towers, that humankind will have the chance to avoid this sort of thing again. These ignorant people will inevitably believe that real change, freedom of thought and independence leading to the chance to start again is a good thing.
If you are a committed liberal thinker, you will recognise the need for these unregulated thoughts to be checked and corrected, but you will have to accept that a change back to what you think acceptable cannot come at once. Patience is needed and anyway no one ever said a comprehensive taxation plan was easy. Even forming a cultural subcommittee to report on fascism in the under fives takes time.
Give yourself time to bring the world to back to what it was. You may as a result be remembered and perhaps have your portrait painted as a stick figure on the inside of a cave one day. The one where you are running shrieking from a dinosaur who sees fast food ahead.
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