No food, no water, and a lone Abba record: my day out at Channel 4’s hellish new reality show

‘I found no water, no source of heat, no tin of pilchards’ … our writer on the set of Apocalypse. Photograph: Matthew Salacuse/C4

I have no shame confessing that I’d be a crap companion during the apocalypse. My practical skills are limited, I’d be a right Debbie Downer and I don’t respond well to sharing food. Still, last November, two survival experts spent a morning making a valiant effort to prepare me for Armageddon deep in the rural Indiana countryside.

I had ventured to the US midwest to see the making of Apocalypse, an ambitious new Channel 4 reality series: an eight-parter following 16 people attempting to sustain themselves after an unexplained catastrophe from which only they appear to have survived.