Be prepared for the quirky side of festival

AUTHOR and adventurer Robert Twigger is convinced that people are getting too downhearted about Armageddon and will be running a series of Wigtown Book Festival events to promote a more “can do” attitude.

Robert is perfect for the job having crossed remote parts of Canada in a canoe made of bark, searched for real-life zombies in Haiti, studied martial arts with the Tokyo riot police, crossed the Western Desert pulling a hand-made trolley and helped capture the world’s largest snake.

His own expertise and research will be supplemented by a different special guest each day – each of them an author who has written about issues of annihilation.

Robert said: “It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but we know it’s coming soon. And you have to be ready for anything and everything.

“If it’s not another pandemic, a nuclear war or world-wide flooding due to climate change then it may be that the machines take over, we all descend into madness or there’s a good old-fashioned plague of zombies.

“But that’s no reason to get dispirited, I’ve spoken to survivalists and many others about how to get through it all and have lots of handy hints.

“I’ll also be asking a series of special guests to shed light on the big questions like what they would take into the bunker to keep them feeling chipper.”

Meanwhile, Robert has shared his top end of the world tips:

• Always keep a pair of clean underpants – vital to filter contaminated water

• Have two exits to your bunker – to confuse zombies.

• Keep rice in airtight bags – it can last 100 years like that.

• Unfriend big eaters – they’ll gobble up your precious supplies in no time.