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Encyclopedia Oceloticca: How to survive a nuclear war

In the 1980s, when we were still up to our knees in the Cold War, I remember my dad bringing home a basic traing manual from the Army base where he worked.

It was compulsive reading for an eight year old - I learnt the basics of how to set up an ambush, how to attack an occupied building… Oh and how to survive a nuclear apocolypse. Apparently it’s quite simple - if you see a mushroom cloud, you calmly lie down behind a convenient rock or tree, interlace your hands behind your head and press your nose into the ground. Even at that tender age, I fully understood that if you followed this advice, it would be the only tip of your nose that you pressed into the earth that would remain if you happened across a detonating mushroom cloud. Other useful tips in the excellent Government produced Basic Battle Skills included the advice to avoid looking directly at the explosion as this could damage your eyesight - quite how you could avoid looking at a flash happening before you at the speed of light is beyond me. And why you would worry about a change in your prescription as your entire head melts like a wax candle is also purely academic. Thinking back on it now, it probably was pretty good advice. I suppose lying down and pressing your nose into the ground is the only sensible thing you can do, and at least it would be more relaxing than standing up. There’s a fun US government website called www.ready.gov which provides some heartwarming advice. Here are some things that you and your family need to know - in bold letters it helpfully tells us “Taking shelter during a nuclear blast is absolutely necessary” I can imagine asking an official as the horizon erupts into a fireball and blots out the sun: “Is it absolutely necessary to shelter - I mean it’s all so frightully ghastly isn’t it?” It’s also good to prepare ahead of time - here’s what you can do to protect yourself: create an emergency supply kit. Some of the useful items listed include a fire extinguisher, presumably to fire at your own face as it drops off and grins back at you from the floor. Pet food for your pet - seems a little odd, because Rover is probably going to have to rapidly become human food before he starts eyeing you up as a handy food source yourself. Your bank account records - I’m guessing that one of your top priorities will be to find a cash point machine to withdraw some notes before then realising that small pieces of paper actually mean nothing in a post apocolyptic wasteland. A complete change of clothing - presumably an important consideration if want to dress nice and smart after receiving an invitation from that nice couple from fallout bunker number 408 to stagger over to their’s for a spot of rat fondue. I think that there’s scope for an honest advice publication detailing what to do in the event of a nuclear war - in fact I shall share my first draft with you. It goes like this: In the event of a nuclear war - relax, there’s nothing to do now, It’s over to the cockroaches - hopefully they will evolve to do a better job. It’s been a blast.