It's a step up. Proper prepping - US-style.

I have always dismissed doomsday preppers as extremist scouts, but I'm starting to appreciate their vibe. My extensive knowledge of preppers comes from the all-American scripted TV showpiece of weirdness, National Geographic's Doomsday Preppers. I think Australian preppers are known as survivalists. It sounds different, but suspiciously the same.

My prep plan started at the weekend while I was standing in the long line to get into Bunnings. This hardware mecca is my kind of retail therapy, but since COVID-19 a leisurely trip down the aisles has become, well, fraught.

The first sign things were going COVID-shaped in suburbia was the missing Bunnings' sausage sizzle tent. At least there will be no danger of slipping on an errant onion ring. Remember when that was our only worry?

Good times.

I have a theory that everyone's mental health would improve if we could shut off what is happening in the US.

Thanks to Netflix's Tiger King, the meter that measures how concerned I am about what's going on in the American mind was starting to climb.

To gauge my concern about whether Americans are going to get us all killed at any given time, I use Australia's terror-alert system. Level 1: Not expected. Level 2: Possible. 3: Probable. 4: Expected. 5: Certain.

A few weeks ago, my concern went from Level 2 to 4 when I saw footage of long queues of Americans waiting to buy guns. Another item flying off the shelves in the Unhinged States is recreational marijuana.

Guns and weed. Sorted.

Meanwhile, standing in line at Bunnings, in suburban Newcastle, I was planning my own chilled space. I was thinking about adding a sunny deck to my hacienda. I could surround myself with pot plants (decorative variety) and enjoy the great outdoors.

Then it struck me. Maybe I should be focusing on the great indoors? Suddenly I started thinking like one of the paranoid Americans I had seen on the box. Maybe I should be building a bunker or panic room?

Swatting a fly as I waited at Bunnings, I remembered an apocalyptic story I had read recently about locust swarms in Africa.

It's turned all biblical, but not in a rock'n'roll way. It's more a 'Holy Hell This Isn't Going To End Well' scenario.

Or is it? Locusts are not great if you are trying to guard your only crop from the ravenous insects but, if they hit suburban Australia during a zombie lockdown, maybe you could eat them. Admittedly, it's a gamble as they may be packing pesticide.

I remember vaguely there was a push to get people in the West to think about eating insects. It could become the protein of choice when the world's ballooning population gobbles up all we have in the planetary pantry. Apparently certain critters can be fried, smoked or dried.

The only insect plague I can remember in suburbia was the blanket arrival of bogong moths. I'm not sure if the bogongs have decided to ditch us for another planet, or are facing their own ecological disaster, but they haven't bugged my neck of the Novocastrian woods for years.

I made a note to have a look at the barbecues as I was waved through at Bunnings.

"Right, think survival," I said to myself. "Barbecued bugs."

Like a bona fide prepper, I was on a mission. Bugging out. All was on track until I heeded the call of nature. No, not the Ladies room. The gardening section.

Suddenly doomsday seemed unlikely. Among the pretty, pretty plants, my concern meter returned to Level 1. A wise gnome once said: "Gardening is an exercise in optimism". Sure, greenery attracts insects, but there are enough edibles to share without chomping on each other.

So the bug barbecue went on the back-burner and I buried my concerns with my bunker plans. I was back on track, armed with a new trigger nozzle and an intense focus on destroying a rampant patch of flat weed.

Call me crazy, but it's my version of guns and weed.

deborah.richards@newcastleherald.com.au

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