W T Actual F

The ultimate guide to rebuilding civilisation arrived in my Insta feed the other day: It's finally available at only £79, that thing you've always promised yourself; the illustrated guide on how to restart our world once it's a) burned to a crisp b) completely flooded c) a bleak radiation wilderness d) temporarily run by Satan while we await the return of Jesus e) being managed by hostile AI bots that we are unable to communicate with or f) invaded by aliens who regard us as farm animals ... I could go on but that's enough of the happy stuff. 

Just imagine the joy on your loved one's face as they open up this at Christmas; actually I can see the appeal, albeit somewhat limited. A book that may come in handy one terrible day, basking there on the kitchen shelf along with Jamie Oliver, 100 Microwave Meals and Mrs Beaton. I imagine the pages will be covered in highlighter ink with yellow stickies peeking out between them. The chapters on "How to make fire", "How to find your keys" and "How to kill and eat a pigeon" will be well marked up and thumbed.

It's pretentiously titled "The Book" so it's really out there to undermine or replace the "Good Book" which I think we all know isn't going to be much help for rebuilding anything unless you want to be ruled by mad kings and priests and struggle under a ton of incomprehensible laws and oppressive guilt, whilst eeking out a grim existence in some desert wilderness awaiting a messiah who will never arrive. A lot of Christians only ever bother with the New Testament at Christmas and Easter, the rest of time it's the full on misery of the Old Testament they swallow so they'll love the idea of that. Ongoing nuclear austerity for God's chosen few. That'll be popular with the Tories and Reform folks too.

I wonder if there's a short, possibly final chapter on how to build an atomic bomb from scratch, just in case your first few efforts at sorting things out on Earth II go a bit doolally and uncivilised. Perhaps that task is already addressed in the "For Idiots" series of books. The other problem is that over 300k copies have already been sold, mostly to Americans who wear red hats and have a healthy supply of guns, so I'd imagine. It's just not going to work.

Actually looking inside via the preview it's all a bit Steampunky, over drawn and odd, just another innocent stab at seasonal fun, promoting insecurity and raking in some cash over Christmas really, like a Temu T-shirt offer or a new kind of LED strip light. It's all a big, silly laugh but I'm still not buying it. If your next door neighbour gets a copy you can always nick it from them come the day, then burn their house down and then eat their warm flesh as per the instructions in Chapter 3.