A disaster class in collapsing society

WE'RE gonna need a bigger list. That was the first thought as I surveyed the assembled items.

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Like a good citizen I had just followed the advice of the previously little-known EU Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management, Hadja Lahbib.

Last week Commissioner Lahbib went viral when she urged 450 million Europeans to stockpile vital supplies in case of an imminent disaster.

How imminent and which disaster is anyone's guess these days.

The commissioner recommended water, tinned food, matches, a torch and a deck of cards, which were located easily enough.

A more rigorous search was required to locate a 40-year-old Swiss army knife salvaged from the sale of my old family home.

There was no cash in the house, as suggested, so that entailed a trip to the ATM, today's equivalent of making a call from an old street phone box.

PACK

Pride of place in the kit was an old FM/AM radio, a gift from a Christmas that time forgot, in the days before tech firms discovered 'built-in obsolescence' was a licence to print money.