Apocalypse chow: food for the end of the world

If the world ends on Friday, what food and drink would you want in your survival kit?

A shop in the Siberian town of Tomsk has recently started selling what they call "apocalypse kits" - a package stocked with the items they suggest you might need for the impending Mayan-predicted armageddon on the 21st of this month. Including vodka, sardines and buckwheat however, the Siberian kit reads more like a hermit's shopping list than a collection of the provisions necessary to survive the end of the world.

The obvious choice of rations when preparing for such an event are those with long shelf lives: canned goods, staples such as wheat, rice and corn, and preservative-laden pseudo food like Twinkies (who despite theirsupposed ability to survive a nuclear attack are struggling for their own survival). Spam, whose success and legacy is built upon its perfect positioning as a food of any rationing era, is often top of people's lists. But despite countless attempts to jazz up the gelatinous, hammy slab (such as the spam fritters in Joanna Fuertes-Knight of the Girl Eats Food web series' apocalyptic dinner for one), there's little that can mask the flavour and texture of food which has been sat in a tin for weeks, months or years.

That said, a 4lb can of roasted veal (an interesting choice of meat to tin) taken by Sir William Edward Parry on his 1820s voyage to the Northwest Passage was opened and analysed over 100 years later and was