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.
Not that long ago, somebody was telling me that actually I ought to buy a patch of land in Argentina. Lots of hospitable bugger-all in Argentina, apparently. More hectares of hospitable bugger-all per person, they say, than anywhere else in the world. It’s a bit of a hassle to get to, though, starting from Camden Town, so I think I’ll stick with rural Scotland. That was the wife’s idea. ‘If there are going to be flesh-eating zombies,’ she pointed out, quite reasonably, ‘then I want to be somewhere where they’ll be fat and wheezy and easy to outrun.’ She’s practical like that. If I don’t make it, and you meet her in that garage, you’ll be doing well.
I’m going off the ‘remote island’ bit, though. It’ll do for now, until we think of somewhere better, but the thing about remote islands is that they generally require boats. Come the apocalypse, I’m not sure that Caledonian MacBrayne will still be running the ferry. No, we need somewhere on the mainland. Or maybe an island you can swim to. That’d work.
Rule Three, though, is the big one. Don’t do what you are told. Those helicopters flying by? With speakers on? Telling you to sit tight and wait to be fed and counted? Ignore them. All the literature agrees on that. The people who stay at home and wait to be rescued are the ones who die in chapter two, thereby convincing the heroes that they need to toughen up. The apocalypse is going to be like a plane crash — the people who make it will be the ones unafraid to palm the stewardess in the face, shoulder-barge the captain out the way, and trample over heads to get to the door.
The wife always tells me I’m too polite to survive a plane crash, and she’s probably right. Temperamentally, I suppose I’m more suited to the latter parts of the apocalypse, the bits that happen once you’ve discovered that the aliens are fatally allergic to ketchup, or whatever, and co-operation becomes the key to the future of mankind. I could still probably move myself to a spot of early looting, though. Maybe I could steal more guns than I need, and give the spares to other people?
Sure, there must be some idiots who look out on their flattened city, devoid of power or shelter, and think ‘Yep, I gotta get me a new flatscreen TV.’ But in general, I tend to think, post-disaster, the proactive looter is the only person who has properly gotten his or her head around what is going on. Strange then, that in our reporting of disaster, we always seem to consider the looter up there with murderers and rapists and the very worst of sinners. That’s society talking, but when apocalypse hits, society isn’t going to help you. Most looters, I tend to think, get an unfairly bad rep. I mean, you just would, wouldn’t you?
Spare a thought for Stephen Gough, otherwise known as the naked rambler, arrested again last week, and not for the rambling part. And now, into that thought, try to insert the issue of Muslim women in burkhas. They are the same issue. Much as they might hate to share a lift.
More commonly, the wearing of burkhas is considered side by side with the wearing of crosses. This is a misleading concurrence for wearing a cross is nothing like wearing a burkha, unless the crosses in question are hollow, and very big, and flexible, and have a little slit cut out for the eyes. Their only similarity lies, usually, in the motivation of the wearer.
Being a naked rambler, though, is very much like wearing a burkha. You have your reasons for doing what you do, but most people don’t really care about them. They just care that you are wandering around on their streets having adopted an appearance that they’d rather not come face to face with. This is not just their fault for being intolerant. It’s also your fault for showing off.
Given the similarities, nonetheless, the heavy-handedness of authorities in dealing with Stephen Gough ought to serve as a warning for those who, like Nigel Farage of Ukip, want to see the burkha banned. Gough has spent most of the past seven years in jail. He finished a stint in December, walked nude from prison and was promptly re-arrested again. Last week he was given the choice of getting dressed or going back to jail. Despite it being January, and despite being in Perth, he chose the latter. So back to jail he went.
Farage reckons the burkha is a symbol of an ‘increasingly divided Britain’. Call me a cynic, but I’m not sure that banging up a bunch of young Muslim mums is going to heal the rift.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
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