PHOBIAS

Necrophobia is the fear of death and dead things; hence, if you are afraid of zombies you are a sufferer of necrophobia. Obviously you’re not afraid of the dead, otherwise you wouldn’t have bought this book – but you must be afraid of dying or you wouldn’t have bought this book. Technically, that would make you a half a necrophobic – afraid of death but not dead things – a rophobic if you will. But we’ll soon cure that, as you’re not going to die because you bought this book.

Phobias are a serious problem for a lot of people and when we talk about a phobia we don’t just mean you saw a tiny spider and squeaked like a girl and jumped on a chair. A true phobic is paralysed by their particular fear and goes cold at the very thought of it, and sweats and shakes beyond control. These are the kind of phobias that need sorting out before the apocalypse begins as debilitating fear will almost certainly affect how you react in certain situations.

Those with acrophobiawill not be able to secure themselves in buildings with any height. Pathophobics, bacteriophobics, verminophobics and mysophobics will be completely incapable of coping with cities in ruin and the lack of hygiene and order. Hemophobics will find it difficult to do any killing and dendrophobics won’t be able to take cover in a forest. If you believe for one second that your irrational phobia will hinder your survival in any way then you must become cured immediately. No! Not later! Now! Put the book down and deal with your mental problems before it gets you killed. This isn’t something that can take weeks in therapy either. What if the apocalypse were to start tomorrow? You need to be ready! So, if you are afraid of spiders you need to get down to your local pet shop and buy a tarantula. Go on! And don’t come back until you’ve got one…

Got one? Good, we’re going to deal with this problem immediately. There are no small steps to be taken. I want you to take that tarantula out of its carrier bag and put it in your mouth. There we go! You’re cured! Hello? Hello! Oh! You can take it out now. See, that wasn’t too hard, was it? You are now cured of your fear even though you may very well be scarred for life. The fact that you overcame a silly little phobia speaks volumes for your strength of character. At least yours was a serious phobia – some spiders can actually be dangerous! Think of the poor sods who suffer from alektorophobia (chickens) porphyrophobia (the colour purple – the actual colour of purple, not the film) and coulrophobia (fear of clowns). And don’t even get me started on genophobics – who knows what I would have made them put in their mouths.