OK, so here’s the deal. Whatever you do, don’t panic; they may be able to sense it and who knows what they’ll do. It may be dark out here, but you’re going to have to think about bright, safe places — it may calm them down. And tell them firmly to back off. Don’t let them boss you around. Finally, if none of that is working, you’re going to have to open a can of whoop-ass, so you’d better go for the eyes and use whatever weapons you have.

That, my friends, is the best advice I’ve heard for escaping from an alien abduction. Laugh if you will now, you’ll thank me for that little tidbit when you are sitting cheek-to-probe with E.T. It’s a wild world out there. Sometimes life is a little harder than finding someone old enough to buy you a case of beer or having to walk across the room because you lost the remote.

Luckily, someone has your back. With a flurry of media, the creators of the “Worst Case Scenario” series have taken us by storm with survival tips from the edge — be it in the middle of the desert or in a golf course sand trap.

It might be an exploitation of our short attention span and our love for violence — actually, I’m certain it is.

But I don’t care. Personally, I think it’s the coolest thing since duct tape. My first memory of the books isn’t the best one, though.

I remember the first time I picked up one of these books, “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.” I was in the gift store of the Detroit airport. They wouldn’t let us take a pen on board a plane because we might be able to shoot someone with it, but they placed a friendly reminder of how to: A. break down a door and B. land a plane should someone accidentally find their way to the cockpit. It’s all in the same manual and right next to the airplane entrances. Freaking brilliant logic here.

I know you are wondering, though. Kicking the lock area is more effective than slamming your body against the door. Even better, if you have a screwdriver and something to pound with, use it to wedge the pins out of the hinges. That’ll show your roommate for locking you out of your dorm room while you were in the shower.

And even better, if reading the manual is a bit too much work, you can see it on television, too.

These tips, which are also available online at www.worstcase scenarios.com and in a calendar, a board game and a TBS TV show, might be funny, but who knows when you’ll need them.

That’s the novelty of it. You could be reading out of some stupid history book, but instead, you are enlightening yourself on the most expedient way to kick a great white shark’s butt, err, cloaca (go for the eyes). And you thought books weren’t cool.

There are still some unanswered questions I’ve had after flipping through just about the entire series of these books. How do I win a fight against a koala? How do I know if my milk is too far past the expiration date to drink? What should my friend use to clean up after he pees on the living room carpet? (You’d have to ask him to get the story on that one.)

My questions aren’t too pressing, though. The knowledge I’ve already gained will keep me out of trouble. If I were on the dating scene, I’d feel much more secure nowadays, as I can now discern someone’s gender before it’s too late (and without doing it the hard way). And I know how to fend off a ghost, too (just talk to it, then ask it to leave, of course).

It’s the little things like this that make you a survivor, not who dissed whom on “The Real World” or what the anatomy of a dead pig is — that is unless you are planning on killing it, gutting it, eating it and making it into a hat.

The important stuff can be learned from one of these trendy, clich‚d but still very entertaining guides to staying afloat. So put down your art history book, your calculator and your “Moby Dick.” They may come in handy someday, but only if you know how to treat a severed limb while fixing your space shuttle on re-entry into the atmosphere. Go get ’em, MacGyver.

Jeff Mitchell

is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale. He is the arts

and entertainment editor

of the Daily.