Survivors: Nairn
I’ve been enjoying the Survivors series from the BBC, and it had me wondering what I’d do if faced with surviving a post-apocalyptic event.
Initial thoughts were to grab lots of tinned and carton food, make a shelter in the middle of Culbin Forest, and then wait for things to calm down. Possibly even have a secondary camp on the spit of land because of its defensible position.
There are also a couple of farms within and close by the Culbin, which could provide a place of shelter, storage, or even communications access (I’m not convinced the internet would give out too easily).
The main reasoning was to ensure isolation from any chaos and violence that may ensure, especially in terms of keeping my family safe.
However, the current icy weather, and memories of horse flies around Culbin Forest suggests that perhaps I need a rethink. 
Perhaps staying around the town would be safer and easier; perhaps having direct access on the A96 would allow for better contact with other groups and/or individuals for building a larger and more protective social community. Perhaps it really would be worth staking a claim on Somerfield.
Either way, I’m not expecting anything soon – but the Highlands and Nairn I think do offer a lot of potential protection from a range of potential cataclysms, from:
- high ground to protect again flooding,
- accessibility of agricultural and pasture land for food development and availability,
- population distribution means less likelihood of widespread violence through direct competition of resources,
- easy access to fresh water
- availability of shelter via existing human developments
- land, river, and sea transportation access
So the people or Nairn are probably in a relatively safer position than, say, living in the middle of Birmingham.
Okay, so I’ve thought about this sort of stuff before – probably because of how growing up as a boy under the threat of nuclear apocalypse, and being very aware of it, keeps a potential survival instinct sharp.
While Mutual Assured Destruction no longer seems on the cards since the Iron Curtain fell, there are many potential (if somewhat remote) new contenders for creating a cataclysmic scenario – everything from tsumanis caused by comet impact or undersea landslides, to a bird flu pandemic or rogue state nuclear, biological or chemical attacks.
Perhaps I don’t take them particularly seriously, but somehow being in the Highlands feels refreshingly safe in the event of a major cataclysmic event.
In the meantime, just as a thought exercise, what would you do in such a situation to survive?
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Just hope that enough folk from Nairn Allotment Society survived so as to pass on the skills that would feed humanity
By the time the apocalypse came we might have a block of flats built on the land that Somerfield owns anyway. Come to think of it if we all suddenly were made to buy food in Nairn then the queues of hungry folk would look very hairy indeed.