DO

Get the Met office daily reports, we all love to complain about the weather forecast always being wrong but it is the best meteorological service in the world, right on our door step.

Wear clean dry clothing to minimise skin exposure especially areas of low fat insulation such as the face, neck and ankles. Several loose items of clothing are better than one thick layer. Tight clothing limits blood flow to the extremities it also decreases the volume of air trapped between the layers, reducing its insulating value.

Look out for signs of hypothermia and frostbite; white and grayish-yellow numb extremities, slurred speech, and in late hypothermia the person stops shivering.

Watch the day after tomorrow, it may not exactly be meteorologically accurate but I am sure there are a few good tips somewhere in the Hollywood epic.

Establish a warm dry shelter with a sustainable food supply, start digging that bunker now. Get some bunker design tips from the movie ‘Blast from the Past’.

Get the ginger gene into your family line quicker than a whippet after a hare, their ability to convert the low sunlight to vitamin D is second to none.

At some point you are going to have to push your gastronomy boundaries, always carry herbs and spicy to flavour those lichen soups and rat kebabs.

Build an army of snowmen, if this will be the last impression of our era it might as well be thousands of intricate individually styled ‘men of snow’ for future archaeologists to ponder for generations.

DON’T

Fight of a pack of wolves to get vital medical supplies, the wolves and the exercise will lead to your demise. Overheating results in sweating, the dampness decreases the insulation quality of clothing and cools your body.

Rub frostbitten extremities or warm them on a naked flame, this can cause more damage or burn the numb digit. Instead gently warm it with body heat (under your armpits or between your legs are warmest) or luke-warm water.

Max Hemmings