Public Information Booklet: "What To Do When..." (1976)

Below is one page from "What To Do When...", published in 1976. This government booklet was sent to Scarfolk schools, youth clubs and covens and taught children aged 5-12 the survival skills they would need in the bleak near future. The council took for granted, indeed had budgeted for, a complete social breakdown by the year 1979.

In the event of such a collapse, those in power, including Scarfolk's own mayor, would be housed in secure, luxury bunkers. Despite this, they deemed it "unsportsmanlike to let unprepared citizens perish so quickly. Besides, it wouldn't be at all entertaining for us"*. This referred to the many cameras which, as early as 1974, had been placed around the town to capture the unfolding dystopian drama, not for security reasons but merely for the amusement of the surviving elite - a prescient precursor to reality TV.

Chapters included:

"What To Do When..."
...Your Personality is Erased
...The Truth Doesn't Mean Anything Any More
...A Psychic Dog is Following You
...You Realise You Have Less Trading Value Than A Good Sock

* Excerpt from an internal council memo sent by Mayor Ritter to his most senior staff and his favourite office cactus, 32nd May 1976.

The subject of missing parents is also addressed in this post: "Is your mummy who she says she is?"

"Old Coffins are Death Traps" Public Information Poster (1975)

The recession of the 1970s gave Scarfolk Council no choice but to raise the age of retirement to 95 for men and 92 years, 36 months for women. This meant that when some people died they had not, in the eyes of the state, completed paying their dues to society.

All across Scarfolkshire coffins were exhumed and the cadavers put to work in the community. Fresher examples were dissected by children in biology classes or used in experiments by pharmaceutical and cosmetic firms. Less fresh cadavers served as scarecrows, supply teachers or junior ministers.

All this meant that hundreds of discarded coffins littered Britain's conurbations and countryside. Before long, Scarfolk's runaway children gathered the coffins in their thousands to make shanty-town-styled coffin 'cities' on the outskirts of urban areas. These settlements, which were given names such as 'Gravesend' and 'Bury', were pronounced death traps and a special branch of the police, called the Necropolice, were called in to dismantle the sites. Riots broke out and many police and children alike accidentally died after receiving nasty splinters. Despite this loss of life, thousands of pounds in funeral costs were saved as no new coffins were needed.