The difference in that instance is you know it'll open again, full of supplies. In the hypothetical 'preppers' vision, those deliveries wouldn't be coming.

Ah. Woosh.

Anyway, with the advertising revenue this place makes, perhaps RLFANS could look to get a bunker complex set up? A male and female from each subsite to be kept safe. Just to be sure that people in the post-apocalyptic future have somewhere to go for employment, health and financial advice?

I'm prepared.

Prepared to point and laugh at "survivalists" who think all they need to survive a nuclear attack/zombie apocalypse is a shedload full of Spam, a tin opener and an assault rifle.

It's easy to laugh at the Doomsday Preppers. But once you get past all the nonsense there is, I think, a serious question - how would people who have known nothing other than a life filled with internal combustion engines, electricity, an over-arching, fully-featured cradle-to-the-grave medical service etc. cope in the event of a cataclysmic catastrophe such as nuclear war, a meteorite strike or perhaps runaway global warming?

We often think of people living, say, two hundred years ago as primitive - but they at least would be able to identify edible crops, make fire, catch wild animals for food, clothing or any number of other uses. Aside from people who pursue outdoor activities seriously - who in Britain would survive one or two bad winters?

I'd go back and live in the little Northumbrian pit village where my wife was raised until I dragged her kicking and screaming to civilisation - everyone there killed things for the kitchen table, they all grew things in their gardens and allotments to eat and they all shared the produce out on a Friday night in "tha clerb".

Most of them were related to each other as well but still...

Won't bother me too much either. I can catch fish and have no problems with killing, cleaning and eating other animals. I can brew ale & wine, the only thing I'll be short of would be baccy.

I remember the fuel "crisis" in 2000 and someone asking me if I'd stocked up on bread. They seemed genuinely surprised when I told them that I had flour, rice & pasta and so long as I could get water from the tap and a source of heat, I could manage the staples.

Driving through Featherstone the other day i thought it had already started, is it always like that?

I don't think that's what they are saying though. For the reasonably sane ones, the supplies are to get them through the panic stage. That's when everyone in the country realises we're royally up the swanny and panics, evaporating all resources like a plague of locusts, then turning on each other.

The ones that do make me laugh though are the obese middle aged women who believe hoarding as much food as possible will enable them to survive the apocalypse. There was one particularly vile example on the show last week who would put raw meat in jars and store them in hollowed out books or behind hidden panels in cupboards without a care for refrigeration.

The frightening thing about "Doomsday Preppers" is the appetite many seem to share for the end of the world. They're positively aching for the bombs to drop and rid them of taxes, government intrusion and pesky gun controls.

I can only think of one female active on the Saints board, do you really want to be locked in a bunker with her?

I'll wait outside and embrace the impending doom thanks.

these people always assume they'll be the ones that aren't turned into zombies in the scrambled scenes cut with news footage at the beginning of every zombie film, or the ones crushed by a falling tree in the 'freak weather hits east coast' news articles at the beginning of every natural disaster film

Having watched a few episodes, I think that they are people, for whatever reason, who do not like or cannot cope with the modern world. The hoard goods and food in the hope that they are proved 'right' and the modern world is washed away. In years gone by, they would have been evangelicals taking about the end of the world and praying morning noon and night for our sins.

It's all very well hoarding food, but it wouldn't have been much of a doomsday if Sainsbury's was open again after 3 months so what do you do then?

Hoarding seeds, roots, etc and gardening/farming implements would be the answer. Of course you also need a bit of land, preferably hidden. But if there's a nuclear winter as a result of a meteor strike, supervolcano or indeed nuclear war, you're screwed.

One person could hoard food to last a few years if they so desired - many tinned foods will last up to 3 years, dried food often 2 years. Bottled water, pop, etc will keep for over a year.

It's always worth keeping a few essentials around just in case of long-term power cuts, but 'preppers' seem to be people secretly hoping for some global disaster so they can demonstrate their superior resilience, survival skills and get back to basics by eating from giant tubs of refried beans.