by Douglas Lindsay, with Dr Ian Shackleton, senior lecturer at the Glasgow School of Politics and Football

History will relate that there was little the No campaign did not try (bar common sense, optimism and presenting a vision.)

Fear and bullying; negativity magnified by misanthropy; Big Gordon Brown making the worst comeback tour since the zombified corpse of Michael Jackson failed to sell out Blackpool Pier; promises and threats thrown around like a co-dependent lover; the Prime Minister blubbing like a small child while insisting that he's as Scottish as Rod Stewart.

All this, and Ed Miliband stroking a dead cat and promising Scotland that he's going to be very upset if they vote Yes. Very upset indeed.

And yet, it comes to this. The polls are only going one way, the silent majority that the No campaign have talked about for so long have disappeared into the lost borderlands where Rory Stewart walks alone, and suddenly it looks like Better Together, through incompetence, ignorance and stupidity, will manage what the Nazis failed to do.

It is believed that David Cameron spent last night sitting in a bunker beneath Downing Street considering his options. As advisers came and went, some talked of Cameron losing his temper and shouting uncontrollably.

'He's lost the plot,' said one insider. 'He refuses to believe the No campaign has ground to a halt and is being driven back on every front.'

The Prime Minister is understood to be considering several options, including:

• screaming loudly while slamming his fist on to a map

• offering Alex Salmond half of Berkshire

• giving Scotland to Russia in return for peace on the Eastern Front

• feeding the CIA intelligence that Islamic terrorists have taken control of Edinburgh, then sitting back and watching the ensuing bunfight on CNN

• resigning, and hitting the brothels of Thailand for three self-destructive months of alcohol and cheap sex.

On a grey Monday morning in Glasgow, I stand in the 98th floor office of political analyst Dr Ian Shackleton of the Glasgow School of Politics and Football in the magnificent new Jim Sillars Memorial Tower in the heart of the city's revenge district.

There is a stillness abroad, all the more noticeable following the riotous and colourful weekend of campaigning that engulfed the city.

The mood seems subdued, not just in this room, towering over the great conurbation, with a view out over the flat lands of Renfrewshire to the western isles and Bermuda in the far distance, but across the whole of the country.

Independence is coming and many are wondering: will the great unstoppable wave of freedom be a flood of opium to a wounded soldier, or will it be a plague of the undead, leaving death, despair and the rotting corpse of false optimism in its wake?

'There's change afoot,' says Dr Shackleton, breaking a long silence. 'But people don't like change, not really. They talk about it, they dream about it, but when it comes to it, when the norm is threatened, they don't really like it. But it's happening now, and there's nothing they can do to stop it.'

'What about all those people marching on the BBC armed with torches and pitchforks?' I ask. 'They seem to want change.'

Shackleton seems vaguely curious, as if he hadn't realised that the city is besieged by mobs of angry villagers, looking to chase Nick Robinson back down the M74.

'If there's a Yes vote on Thursday, the Union will unravel quickly,' he says, warming to his theme. 'Some say that March 2016 is optimistic in timescale. In reality, Scotland will be independent before Christmas. The markets won't wait. No one will wait. The entire edifice of the United Kingdom will start to collapse, and it will only be saved by Scotland withdrawing immediately.'

There has been much talk in recent days of Capital Flight, although it was later revealed to have been a story about a new budget airline flying between Vienna, Edinburgh, Oslo and Madrid. Nevertheless, there's a nervousness in the air that you can taste.

'The No campaign misjudged the Scottish people,' says Shackleton. 'Westminster, these politicians, they believe everyone thinks like them. That's why they get so much wrong. That's why they've screwed up the Middle East, that's why they'll end up at war with Russia. And I don't know whose mind it is you change by employing pompous twattery, but it's certainly not the Scots.'

There has been much discussion about whether a close vote, either way, would lead to war, ethnic cleansing and terror. Dr Shackleton, however, thinks it's far more likely to lead to an outbreak of lawyers.

A recent FoI request revealed that both the Holyrood and Westminster governments had a full scrotum of lawyers going over every aspect of the other's campaign, in the hope of finding abuses of electoral law to use in litigation to annul the result. Jim Sillars's threat to "annihilate with extreme prejudice every f*cker that votes No" is just the kind of thing that will play into the lawyers' hands.

'The lawyers are coming,' says Shackleton. 'If there's a Yes vote, Friday will be a day of celebration, and Saturday will be the day that papers are filed to rescind the result.'

And then?

'And then Salmond acts quickly, spouting his well-rehearsed schtick about the sovereign will of the Scottish people, and declares independence. Whatever happens, it's going to be ugly.'

Political commentators, analysts, sources and crazy people on the Internet, are convinced that Thursday, regardless of the result, will only be the beginning.

'Even if there's a No vote,' says Shackleton, 'the walls have come crumbling down. It's the old planning application analogy. If you want to fight a housing development, people like No keep having to win over and over again. The guys who want to build the houses only have to win once.

'So maybe it won't be Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon who win Scotland's independence, but it will be their bastard child, multiplied by Mel Gibson.'

I ask Dr Shackleton if he has any advice for those people yet to make up their minds. He turns to the other side of his office, and stares off into the grey distance, where the pounding of Russian heavy artillery meets the mournful ululation of the gulls over the Mount Vernon landfill site.

'Follow your stomach,' he says. 'Deep fry your vote and eat it with chips.'

Shortly afterwards I leave his office and walk slowly down 98 flights of stairs out into the grim Glaswegian morning, stuck forever in the historic present.