Generally speaking, shops are designed to cater to a specific audience. Clothes shops have their own market, food shops appeal to different socioeconomic groups and you can supposedly tell a lot about a girl from where she buys her underwear.

There’s a few shops out there, though, that defy classification altogether, and I like to think of these as “apocalypse shops”. The kind of place that stocks boxes of slug pellets next to boxes of gummy sweets; dodgy knock-off cereal next to laundry baskets; dog food next to binbags. These places are fascinating, simply because you can find pretty much anything you can think of without too much difficulty.

One shop back in Southampton fell under this umbrella. It was the kind of place where you could get everything you’d need to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. There was dried, tinned food; gardening implements and seeds; blankets and camping equipment; all manner of other things. Of course, the value of the shop depends entirely upon its ability to withstand the apocalypse process.

If anything, apocalypse shops are the closest we get to the RPG concept of the “item shop”, where you can buy everything from potions to weaponry. Guns and banjos. Broccoli and toilet paper. Condoms and boiled sweets.

I highly recommend going out to find your local apocalypse shop as soon as you possibly can. Because after all, you never know when you might need its services.