I HAVE mentioned this many times before, but as a devotee of the disaster movie genre, I pride myself on being prepared for any catastrophe that might come my way.

If an earthquake should rent the rock asunder (preferably right through the Waterfront), I shall follow the example of Charlton Heston in the 1970s blockbuster that portrayed the destruction of Los Angeles, though preferably not by drowning in a cavernous stormwater drain just before the closing credits roll.

Living on the Boulivot Heights, the Jack Russells and I are ideally placed to ride out a tsunami, though we would be even better situated if fellow Heights dwellers had not sold their speedboat. However, as they know a bloke with a few jet-skis, those darned annoying modern-day nuisances of waterborne boy racers present hope in case we are marooned until the seas recede.

I am also fortunate to share the Heights with neighbours who run cars on old chip fat, which bodes well in case the oil-producing nations decide to turn off the supply of fuel. I don’t mind the trusty Clio emitting the smell of cod and chips as long as it gets me around in an emergency.

Alien invasion could present more of a problem, although as in true Hollywood fashion, I am confident that a hero would emerge to save the planet, unless some over-hyped flu virus gets in first to wipe out the angry little green men. Hide those supplies of Tamiflu just in case, I say.

Hopefully, should the Gulf Stream catastrophically reverse its course in the blink of an eye and plunge the northern hemisphere into a devastating Ice Age, the Arctic reach will stop just short of the Isle of Wight.

Whatever the disaster, I have the DVD to ride it out. Or do I? As the population of this little Island has grown and the economy has come to depend on outside labour, I have often wondered what would happen if Jersey faced a repeat scenario of 1940. As the German Blitzkrieg rolled ever closer to the adjacent French coast and invasion became an inevitable consequence, British citizens (my father’s family included) and Jersey folk fearful of occupation chose to flee to the relative safety of the UK.

Although travel links now are far superior, in the unlikely situation that Europe descended into open warfare, would there be enough boats and planes to evacuate everyone who wanted to go?

Or what would happen if a nearby French nuclear power station melted down, sending a lethal radioactive cloud in our direction?

It’s all food for thought in a disaster-obsessed society that gets its entertainment from movies about total life elimination scenarios.

Apparently, our undoing could be much closer to home – in the lack of sufficient domestic provisions to enable the average household to exist without ever-stocked supermarket shelves.

As the winter storms before and over Christmas reminded us, we are as dependent on our lifeline freight routes as a baby is on its parents.
There was a wonderfully prophetic episode of the 70s sitcom The Good Life, when Harrod’s forgot to deliver Margot and Gerry’s ‘Christmas in a van’, which should be a salutary lesson for Islanders who prefer to exist on imported foodstuffs than growing their own or buying local. The episode should be broadcast daily as a public information warning with a hidden message.
In the end, Margot and Gerry spent their best-ever Christmas with their self-sufficient neighbours, the Goods, eating home-grown and home-reared produce, pulling home-made crackers and getting legless on Tom’s pea pod wine.
Joking aside, a community such as ours, surrounded by water, which imports 90 per cent of its food, is heading for trouble. As long as the lorries roll off the ferry every night packed with the essentials of life – and more than a crate or two of food-mile-guzzling foods from all over the globe – then no one is any wiser to our precarious situation.

Yet all it takes is one of those disaster scenarios and we are up the supermarket aisle with an empty trolley.

Even proponents of buying locally grown, fresh and seasonal produce such as yours truly will be in trouble, because as things currently stand, we don’t produce anywhere near enough to sustain the whole population.

So now, if we didn’t have enough to worry about what with economies in meltdown, predictions of a double-dip recession and parting fat-cat bankers from their obscene bonuses, we have to practise food security.

This doesn’t mean resorting to armed combat in the aisles as shoppers fight for the three-for-two offers, but laying in essential food supplies just in case local stocks run low for whatever reason.

All it takes is a hint of a food shortage or reduced supplies and Islanders will race to the nearest supermarket to panic-buy as if it were Christmas.

We are now being advised by the States’ emergency planning office to prepare for the worst-case scenario by squirrelling away supplies of bottled water, dried food and tinned goods to last for a week. With life fraught with so many potential dangers, the mind boggles at what qualifications are required to fill a post in an emergency planning office – no doubt everything from nuclear physics to foraging the hedgerows for edibles!

How’s about something much simpler: a director of getting things into proportion to head a department of common sense?