Carry a stout stick. I recommend carrying a stick even if you don't need it for support. Sticks are good for hitting and prodding people who have ann… - Vernon Coleman

[From full-page advertisements placed by Coleman for his book Oil Apocalypse] This isn't a script for a horror movie [...] The lorry that collects your rubbish won't be running. Streetlights won't burn. Hospitals will have to close . . . There won't be any more television programmes. You won't be able to charge your mobile telephone. Within a generation, five out of six people on the planet will be dead. I'll repeat, five out of six people on the planet will be dead.

[Editors had asked him to tone down his columns] I shout at them. They shout at me. I resign and stamp my feet. I'm terrible — probably the most difficult columnist in Britain to deal with.

You must prepare yourself for a different world. A world in which the rich ride horses, the middle classes use bicycles and the poor walk. If you are planning for the long-term - and in this scenario, five years is long-term - don't buy a house that relies on you having petrol for your car. You want a house in a town with a small garden where you can grow vegetables, and you want to be relatively close to railways, hospitals, shops, and libraries. The government shutting down local post offices is an enormously stupid thing to do.