If our destiny is cyber-attacks and empty shelves at the Co-op, here’s what we should do next | Hugh Muir

With threats afar and local, the need to stash essentials is obvious. If anyone can source jerk chicken in a tin, do let me knowI have seen the future. It was one morning last week – at the Co-op. Shelves that once groaned now had nothing much on them. Sad signs where the baked beans and tinned tuna once lived reduced to a study in impotence. Following a cyber-attack more than two weeks ago that decimated its supply systems, the supermarket has struggled to recover. We would like to sell you stuff, but our cupboard is empty, the shelves say, as yours must now be.Surveying the emptiness, I turned to the stocky stranger beside me who was reaching into the pastry cupboard with the plastic tongs. “This is what it will be like when the bomb drops,” I said. He smiled, nodded, and grabbed another croissant. He’s smart. If this is what is coming, what a simple cyber-attack can wreak – nothing to do with Enola Gay or the Peaky Blinders bloke as Oppenheimer – two croissants a day will seem an ambitious diet. Are you prepping yet? I haven’t been. Things are bleak and the world seems as tinderbox dangerous as it has been in my lifetime, but I have yet to fill the apocalypse preparatory bag, as so many have, and as an increasing number of governments say we should all be doing. Continue reading...

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