So this bird flu thing Is it ghoulish to say that I'm a little excited about it? I recall being morbidly fascinated with the SARS threat a few years ago, but SARS was different. SARS killed babies, old people and sick people. If I had contracted SARS I stood a reasonable chance of survival, being that I was in my early twenties and had no pre-existing medical conditions (alcoholism?).

Bird Flu is more like roulette. Some people are genetically predisposed to having worse reactions to influenza than others. No amounts of steamed vegetables, iron supplements and cardio regimes will make up for the fact that your genes will decide whether this virus rapidly turns the top layers of your lungs to goo or not. There is a quiet peace in this realisation. You can approach the threat with the same detachment a seasoned gambler exhibits when playing the house. You might catch it, you might not. It might kill you, it might not. It's all odds. Once the ball is rolling, it's out of your hands. That's where the excitement comes from.

With SARS, you were obliged to be concerned because the virus was targeting our most vulnerable sections of society. Bird flu is like some perverse global lottery. My grandmother and I may both get it and I might be the only one to die. (This is likely anyway, as I don't think anything can kill my grandmother. She'll be getting some garlic and a wooden stake for Christmas. I have this theory I need to test.)

So what can you do if you can't keep yourself fit and healthy and simply hope to 'fight it off?'

Oh yes, I'm one of those people that has started preparing. I haven't haemorrhaged my life savingsinto stockpiling Tamiflu because it is total bollocks and the good people at Roche must be laughing all the way to the bank. They can't make this product quick enough. Pre-orders in the millions are rolling in from all over the world. It's twenty first century snakeoil. I'm not paying hundreds of dollars for a treatment to a virus that doesn't even exist yet. I'm happy with my magic beans, thank you very much.

What I have done is started preparations for infrastructure failure. Granted, this makes me sound like a deranged Christian cult figure amassing automatic weapons in a bunker in Utah, but it is actually the sanest safeguard currently available.

Last week, here in New Zealand, the government released its three stage plan to deal with a potential pandemic.It estimates that once the virus is spreading through the population beyond the first isolated clusters, a New Zealand pandemic will last around eight weeks, witha 40% infection rate and ten thousand potential deaths in the worst week. As it gets worse, the government will close schools, ban people meeting in public and encourage those who can to work from home. (I've always wanted these things to happen anyway.)

Do you see how the gambling analogy is apt? A 40% infectionrate means my odds are a little better than one in two once the croupier starts dealing the deck. Then it seems simply a matter of knowing when to play your hand, just as Kenny Rogers said it would be.

The way I figure it, I stand the best chance if I've got survival supplies that can see me last ten days without leaving the apartment, and I simply have to time when those ten days are going to be the most effective at preventing someone from infecting me. If it's too early, then I'll be back at work in time for someone to infect me, if it's too late, then I'll die alone in my crappy apartment.

Living in Auckland, we are supposed to have enough supplies on hand to last seventy two hours on our own anyway, as this city is built around and on more than forty volcanic cones. (Who makes these civic planning decisions, anyway?) So, under the guise of being a good Aucklander, I've started collecting a couple of cans of survival food a week and storing them under my sink. Tomorrow I'mgoing to look at the expiry dates on those big ten litre water bottles to see if they're worth my while just yet. I'm aiming for a survival kit that won't expire till midway through next summer. I don't think I'm quite at the stage of buying candles yet, because that's when you know you're really serious about your survival kit. I might wear a disguise when I get around to buying surgical masks. Either that or get riotously drunk beforehand because, honestly, I'd rather get recognised buying hardcore pornography. The shame factor is a real concern in preparing a survival kit. Spreading my stockpiling over a couple of months serves the dual purpose of not looking crazy in front of the supermarket checkout chick while simultaneously allowing me to continue spending the vast majority of my money on alcohol, cigarettes and pub lunches.

See, a real nutter would be able to survive up to a year without leaving his bunker, but I'm just too curious for that so I'm aiming for ten days, fourteen tops. It's possibly my obsession with zombie movies, but I want to see what the world looks like in apocalypse mode, with people arming themselves and wearing masks to go and forage for supplies at the supermarket or gas station. Like any other annoying zombie film aficionado, I figure I've watched more than enough people do the wrong thing in these situations for me to be able to know what the right thing to do is. I will be absolutely indignant when the power is cut off after everyone gets too sick to maintain civic infrastructure, because I won't be able to watch what's happening on CNN.

And yet I may not get my chance. Not because the virus can't spread between humans yet, because it is the job of a virus to mutate. This will ultimately happen. I may not get my chance because New Zealand is probably one of the best places in the world to ride out a global pandemic. We aren't on the migratory path of any 'at risk' bird species. All our stupid birds either can't fly at all or migrate to Antarctica. Which means there's basically no chance for it to mutate into a human virus here. And we only have three international airports, one of which is only classed as international because it receives flights from Australia. So, international shipping notwithstanding, we're in an exceptionally good position to close our borders for a stint once the virus mutates and decides to see the world. Plus we can feed ourselves. New Zealand is all about the farming. We won't be going hungry anytime soon, though we might end up phasing chicken off our menus, especially if it's the fancy imported kind.

So I've gotten to the end of this column and I want to bring it back to my original question, is it ghoulish of me to be excited about bird flu?

No. And I'll tell you why. The real threats to our species and our planet; like dwindling fish stocks, melting polar ice caps, the end of global oil supplies and the rapid spread of HIV across the planet; the issues that will ultimately mark the twenty first century as the worst in the two million year history of the human race I can't stop any of these. But I can do something about this disease that doesn't exist yet. I can put cans of food under my kitchen sink, I can buy surgical masks and feel What? Better? Hopeful?

I can feel that maybe everything isn't already doomed That we still have a say in how we collectively shape our destiny That the worst case scenario isn't a foregone conclusion. The prospect of a 40% infection rate is strangely uplifting. I think that's what I mean by excitement. That's the appeal of bird flu. This is the first global scare in a long time that isn't guaranteed bad news for everyone. There's a way out if you're prepared. That's the attraction of Tamiflu. Suddenly there is this pill that you can buy that may protect you from what's coming, suddenly there is this seven day course of hope, a pill to reduce the symptoms of the twenty first century. Buy this and the bad things won't get you. But centuries are not something we can inoculate ourselves against, it's too exclusive a solution. Centuries, it would seem, are something you ride out, like pandemics. Because even if the pills get you past the bird flu, you will still gingerly step out of the makeshift hospital, squinting into the sunlight of the modern day And the burden of finding the real solutions, of solving the essential problems, the ones you wouldn't look at before This will fall to you. Ladies and gentlemen, stock up your cans.

Gordon White lives in Auckland where he drinks heavily and works for the New Zealand Herald. There is a volcano at the end of his street. He mentions this often.