3 hours ago
5
I have seen the future. It was one morning last week – at the Co-op. Shelves that once groaned now had nothing much on them. Sad signs where the baked beans and tinned tuna once lived reduced to a study in impotence. Following a cyber-attack more than two weeks ago that decimated its supply systems, the supermarket has struggled to recover. We would like to sell you stuff, but our cupboard is empty, the shelves say, as yours must now be.
Surveying the emptiness, I turned to the stocky stranger beside me who was reaching into the pastry cupboard with the plastic tongs. “This is what it will be like when the bomb drops,” I said. He smiled, nodded, and grabbed another croissant. He’s smart. If this is what is coming, what a simple cyber-attack can wreak – nothing to do with Enola Gay or the Peaky Blinders bloke as Oppenheimer – two croissants a day will seem an ambitious diet.
Are you prepping yet? I haven’t been. Things are bleak and the world seems as tinderbox dangerous as it has been in my lifetime, but I have yet to fill the apocalypse preparatory bag, as so many have, and as an increasing number of governments say we should all be doing.
The Swedish government wrote to its people last year, warning “we live in uncertain times”, and advising them to keep a minimum of 3 litres of water per person, per day at hand for that break glass moment. (Here, I’d counsel customers of financially knackered Thames Water to do the same.)
The Swedes have been pointed towards non-perishable foods, those that can be stored at room temperature and gorged using flints and fingers: dried meat, tinned fare, crispbreads, pesto, cheese in a tube. If there was ever a point to the rounds of Babybel cheese entrenched at the back of your fridge, this is it. They are like an aircraft’s black box: virtually indestructible, made for the apocalypse and prepping.
The Swedes, like many European countries, have ample geographical motivation to prep. If you pulled back the curtains in the morning and saw Vladimir Putin peering through binoculars at your house from across the street, you’d pack a prep bag too.
The Brits are less anxious, but then we are us. Our official “Get prepared for emergencies” advice is less a megaphone declaration, more a ministerial mumble on a website, that advocates the stashing of water, “ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables (and a tin opener)”. That’s the key wisdom, don’t forget the tin opener: apocalyptic fistfights will be fought over tin openers, even the basic ones that don’t work.
Clearly the need to pack a bag grows urgent and daily their usefulness becomes apparent. Even now, residents traumatised by this year’s Los Angeles wildfires testify to the value of having a go bag ready. Popular Science magazine is clear. “Everyone should be a little bit of a prepper,” it said. “From gun-toting, cabin-living, former military members, to crunchy homesteaders in Vermont, to suburban parents ready to transform their minivans into go-vehicles at the drop of an apocalyptic hat.” And that was before my Coop ran out of anchovies.
Of course, what goes in the rucksack will vary. What’s a luxury: what’s essential? It’s arguable that for some it may, on some level, be cultural. I have not searched hard, but I have yet to stumble across jerk chicken in a tin, and I would need that to cope for even a moderate period of time. I have a humorously doom-laden friend who proclaims – in the style of a latter-day Moses – “One day, my people, the chicken will run out.” In apocalypse go bag terms, he’d struggle too.
Though water is a no brainer, how much room would I have for bottles of Supermalt? I’m sure there isn’t a saltfish and ackee patty in a tin. No West Indian Saturday soup, that I’ve seen, with yams and dumplings and vegetables. Is there such a thing as curried goat squeezed from a tube? I don’t think so.
All of this needs addressing by a prepping industry ready to serve diverse societies. Perhaps it will be: unless a go-ahead Reform government here decrees the only tinned meat should be the squaddie’s wartime favourite, bully beef.
As days pass, the beleaguered Co-op says things are getting better, but it takes a row of pockmarked shelves on a weekday morning to bring it all home: this is a troubled world, in which the clock can so easily stop on just in time deliveries, where each day Cormac McCarthy looks like a visionary, The Road a documentary.
I have seen the future. It’s bleak: it’s tumbleweed in the aisles and a few squashy croissants – and they’re going fast. Be prepared for it.
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Hugh Muir is a Guardian columnist
