Your neighbours are automatically your friends if it all goes down

Imagine that one day, it all goes horribly, rapidly wrong. Fires or floods or some other act of a largely benevolent but easily distracted God render your shit a right mess, instantly. No power to the whole street. No water to drink. Even worse, no Netflix to chill, as we believe the young kids would say these days. What would you do?

Last year, AAT went away on holiday, and had a lovely time somewhere very hot for a week or so. It was fabulous. We returned to great uproar and discontent, however, for there had been a three-day power outage. The horror! The freezer! Thankfully, our lovely neighbours had done exactly what you’d hope they’d done — casually banded together, checked in on each other, and made sure everyone was OK. Kettles were boiled by candlelight. Doors were knocked on. It was OK.

We live in ‘exciting’ times at best, so it was great to hear that this is the way it really goes down when the excrement is en route to the desktop ventilator. Obviously, we’re far, far luckier than others who have faced this situation, but we must also be aware that such horrendous fuckery is coming our way too.

You may have noticed, as we at AAT have, that some casual-sounding ‘why not build a survival store in your house’ type adverts have appeared, first in our local paper and then again on some of the crunchier, greener areas of the internet. We’ve done some costing, too, and we reckon that our family would need about £200–300 of essentials ‘tucked away’ just in case things went properly south for a week. So, how about you? If all exits weren’t available and you had to stay put, how are you fixed? Makes you think, dunnit?