I thought Alas, Babylon a fantastic book (written during the Cold War) summarising the various stages people would go through in post-nuclear scenario, and the most interesting things I found covered included:
* Need for salt (an uncontaminated salt source)
* Need for maps locating old resources including possibly wells all the sorts of things that have been built over and we’ve little clue about)
* Need to establish martial law (not only with the weapons which, as you point out, will be important to defend scarce resources the cause of most of the world’s conflicts) but also a system for adjudicating disputes, you may need to appoint yourself if others in the neighbourhood descend into chaos
* A central message board – and means of communicating with the rest of the world, obviously – presumably patchy satellite comms and long-range radio would still be going, and while none may be officially manned setting up a radio station post and old-fashioned paper notice board for your local community useful
* A central bartering location – one of the most important things to sort out may be bartering actually, as presumably if the UK population were reduced to 6m (about the population of England in the 1800 Census) and given immigrants wouldn’t be in a hurry to move here if still a chance of infection, you’d be having to swap whatever you needed with your neighbours just as all through history – so finding yourself things the people can’t easily make/find important (alcohol, tobacco, coffee, flour, salt, sugar, seeds)
* A seed bank would be so handy – you’d want to find out the location of the Millenium Seed Bank and get yourself there sharpish – or perhaps protect it, given others might have the same idea…

Most initial supplies may have been raided by scavengers (as in New Orleans), and presumably if actually survived an initial epidemic that would partly be due to not having left your location for a while, so most of the supermarket stuff will have been taken – hunting supplies might be most efficient unless strong enough to raid the homes of the dead while they’re decomposing

Anyway, first blithering thoughts, see Rachel, mustn’t get me started on this sort of thing!
Nic

I thought Alas, Babylon a fantastic book (written during the Cold War) summarising the various stages people would go through in post-nuclear scenario, and the most interesting things I found covered included:
Need for salt (an uncontaminated salt source, finding maps locating old resources including possibly wells all the sorts of things that have been built over and we’ve little clue about)
Need to establish martial law (not only with the weapons which, as you point out, will be important to defend scarce resources the cause of most of the world’s conflicts) but also a system for adjudicating disputes, you may need to appoint yourself if others in the neighbourhood descend into chaos
A central bartering location and message board
The most important thing to sort out is bartering actually, as presumably if the UK population were reduced to 6m (about the population of England in the 1800 Census) and given immigrants wouldn’t be in a hurry to move here if still a chance of infection, you’d be having to swap whatever you needed with your neighbours just as all through history – so finding yourself things the people can’t easily make/find important (alcohol, tobacco, coffee, flour, salt, sugar, seeds)
A seed bank would be so handy – you’d want to find out the location of the Millenium Seed Bank and get yourself there sharpish – or perhaps protect it, given others might have the same idea…

That’s my blitherings for the mo., must get back to this debugging…