Apt-get segmentation faulting

I was doing an apt-get update preparatory to patching my ssh again on my Debian Linux box. It read all the packages from all the sites in my sources file, but then, when it got to the point where it reads packages from the package list, it seg-faulted...and it seg-faulted every time thereafter when I tried to apt-get update, upgrade, or install a package, as soon as it started reading the package list.

I tried dpkg uninstalling apt and apt-utils, downloading them from the web, and reinstalling them, but it didn't do any good. dpkg can list all the packages with no problem, but apt isn't having any of it.

I'm pretty sure that my Linux installation is fundamentally broken and I plan to reinstall Linux from scratch the first chance I get, but I'm trying to limp along until I can get a new, bigger hard drive to replace my smaller one and have plenty of space to back up important files. So can anyone advise me how to fix this segmentation fault problem?