The I Hate It Here Guide To Surviving The Credit Crunch

Pictured above: You, next Thursday.

We're going through some dark times, people. The financial world is teeter-tottering on the brink of appalling collapse, for reasons that are far to boring and complicated for the likes of me to comprehend (although I suppose you'll claim to be totally au fait with the whole thing, won't you? You condescending sack of shit.). So here, for your reading pleasure, is a brief guide to the options available to you once Western civilisation has imploded like a tin of beans at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

1.Deny, Deny, Deny.
A popular choice, this, and one that's long beloved of humankind the world over. Its popularity rests on its staggering simplicity: you just carry on with your life as if nothing is happening at all. Apply for credit cards, take long foreign holidays (and to heck with the carbon emissions!) , fit granite worksurfaces in your specially designed kitchen - because hey, you deserve it, right? - and generally continue to exist in a state of luxury and opulence unheard of by pretty much every other generation to ever walk the Earth. Those of a more philosophical bent might like to argue that since money doesn't, in fact, exist - being as it is just a bunch of numbers on a computer somewhere - then they can't actually take it away from you. That's like, logic. Although please bear in mind that logic can't fill up a sandwich or prevent you from dying of hypothermia.

2. Blame Someone Else.
I hear Iceland makes a convenient scapegoat.

3.Stockpile.
In the very near future cash will be most likely be worthless. In such a scenario what you need is stuff. Real, actual stuff. I won't presume to tell you what possessions you should be amassing because, frankly, I'm not your bleeding mother and I've got my own problems to be dealing with. But I will say this: do your research. You need to be looking at things like clean drinking water, petrol, shotgun shells and kendal mint cake. If it all goes tits up and you're wandering around with a wheelbarrow full of wetsuits and Bee Gees records then you've only got yourself to blame.

4.Retreat!
This goes hand in hand with item three. Mass rioting in every city on every continent will make beating a hasty retreat a top priority. Plan your escape route and leg it as soon as possible before you're raped and butchered for your last bottle of Evian. You could come round to my place, if you like. I'll have plenty of work for you on my methane farm.

Pictured above: Me, in a joke that will be meaningless to anyone who hasn't seen Mad Max 3.

4.Retrain.
With the resultant change in the job markets that will inevitably come with our new global situation you might want to consider retraining and brushing up on skills that will be more useful during the coming apocalypse. But Pete, I hear you piteously whine, my relatively sheltered childhood and pointless university degree have only prepared me for a life of soul sapping low-grade admin work. What skills do I have that will see me through the hard times ahead? And my answer is this: don't do yourself down, my friend. You have many assets that will always be in demand, regardless of prevailing global trends. Those lily-white buttocks of yours, for example, will fetch a pretty penny in the souks and casbahs of the new radioactive wasteland. My advice would be to cultivate that tiny secret deadness that we all have inside. Nurture it, feed it, and soon you'll be choking down the profits like an old pro. It really won't be that different from life now, when you think about it.