Covet the safe side

After the devastating terrorist attacks and banking crises that have made this decade so tumultuous, New Zealand seems a safe haven to people like Neil Strauss.

As he relates in his latest book, Emergency, the former New York Times journalist began to look at life "through apocalypse eyes" in the wake of 9/11. Conscious of how his American passport made him a target for numerous disenfranchised groups, he sought out a second nationality.

"New Zealand is my dream citizenship," he says. "I guess it's a lot of people's dream citizenship. I originally looked at applying in 2004 and then the government made it harder in 2006 by upping the residency requirement."

Strauss still harbours ambitions of becoming a Kiwi. He was consequently shocked to discover that it is not always the green, pleasant land it appears to be.

"I have an online book club and a couple of people on my mailing list are from New Zealand," he says.

"They were, like 'we feel the same thing, like something bad is going to happen'. I was thinking 'you're from New Zealand, that's meant to be one of the safest places in the world as far as things go'."

The Los Angeles resident says 9/11 proved a wake-up call. "I belong to a lucky generation who grew up in the 80s and 90s when, on a generational level, there was no catastrophe. Then all of a sudden everything came at once. The book is almost a product of a generational panic attack."

However, he believes that it is the ongoing economic slump that could bring Western society to its knees. "In America, people are worried about their stock portfolios, which seem to be disappearing," he says. "But no matter how hard things get, and I think things will get harder, we're built to survive and we will survive.

"Possibly it will be character-building and community-building because when there's a depression, that's when people get together and uphold community values, such as thriftiness and recycling."

Consequently, Emergency includes advice on how to open a Swiss bank account and live a tax-free existence, alongside tips on how to slaughter a goat or turn a credit card into a sharp knife.

It represents a change of direction for Strauss after his notorious 2005 bestseller The Game, which explored the controversial subculture of pick-up artists.

"In a way, the books are about similar things," he says.

"I only realised after I wrote them that they're about conquering your fears, whether it's the fear of a beautiful woman or some kind of economic collapse, terrorist attack or natural disaster.

"They're taking things that you don't understand and getting to a place where you can."

Given his fear of being caught up in a catastrophe, it seems a strange twist of fate that I met Strauss in London, the day after protesters brought the city's financial district to a standstill during the G20 summit.

"One idea that I cut out of the book was that the people who are the most likely to riot or be violent are not those who have the least and are suffering bad economic conditions.

"It's those who have something to lose. They'll be angry, which is what we're seeing now."

As a staunch critic of George Bush, Strauss wanted to publish Emergency before last year's election "to see if I could tip the scales".

In the end, the book came out last month. But following Barack Obama's victory, is there new hope for his homeland? "It's strange," he says.

"America is a country where just under half the population voted for McCain anyway. Now that Obama is in power, a lot of people think Obama is going to mismanage the country.

"The people who are pro-Obama are happy that someone they agree with is making the decisions and feel that he can undo some of the damage. But we're still suffering from the fallout of the past few years and there are a lot of problems that have come from the financial sector."

Strauss believes Obama is already caught between a rock and a hard place. "He has introduced stimulus packages and bailed out and pumped money into these financial institutions so he can fix the economy.

"So now people are saying 'why are you giving these fat cats more money?' It's like he's already seen the reality of being President."