The End?

I’m not sure if it’s because of the current financial crisis, global warming, terrorism, or the recent emergence of bizarre animal flu strains, but what’s up with all the apocalyptic themed movies and books lately? 

I loved Cormack McCarthy’s book The Road, but whose idea was it to make a movie of it?  Some things are better left to the imagination.  Then there’s 2012, another movie about the world coming to an end through a series of natural disasters.

I’m currently reading Stephen King’s Under the Dome. I’ve just begun it, but I’m starting to think that even though it’s not a natural disaster, a giant dome enclosing a small town and cutting it off from the rest of world with no way to escape feels pretty Armageddon-like.

All of which has gotten me thinking about our little family and how we might survive the end of days. 

For the basic needs of food, water, and shelter, I’d be inclined to stay in our neighborhood and work together with our neighbors—they’re not only nice, but practically speaking, they’d be good in an apocalypse. One guy’s a contractor, another a tinkerer, the guy next door is a sizeable man, maybe too fatty to eat, (but we could use his fat for something), another family seems the kind that might keep stores of food (unlike me, my chance of survival probably isn’t good mainly because I don’t have a Costco membership). Also, there are dogs in the neighborhood, we could eat them.  One lady has a parrot. One guy protects his backyard using barbed wire. It seems like he has experience keeping out the masses.

When society breaks down, the observation I’ve made is—all of my anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-gun sentiments, left-leaning political correctness aside—the truth is…you need to be armed.  Things always boil down to people using catastrophe as an excuse to turn into some kind of  zombie-like monster with the sole intention of raping, pillaging, killing, and eating you. People in La Jolla seem nice, I admit.  The lovely people who work at Warwick’s Books and Gifts, the cute girls at Lululemon boutique, the nerdy folks at the local library, the blue-hairs at Casa de Manana, the parents at my son’s school—everyone appears pleasant and kind…but wait till these same yoga-loving, sports enjoying, book-reading, walk-by-the-sea kinda’ people get hungry. You just know all the pleasantries would fall away. The equation would turn simple: eat or be eaten.

One group I’d be concerned about would be the Wind N Sea surfer dudes. They don’t care about anything more than catching the perfect wave. Killing and eating me wouldn’t bother them at all.  I’m sure those guys would take me over to El Pescador, grill me up like a fish taco, put a little salsa and cabbage on me, and not think one more thing about it, dude.

Truthfully, I’d hope that in an apocalypse people would help each other and humanity be different than ususal.   But since I know that most people can hardly deal with being cut off in traffic, can’t comfortably have a disagreement about ideologies or religions, and generally hate people who don’t agree with them or who look different from them, I’m not gonna’ hold my breath.

When I asked my son what he thought we’d need in an apocalype, other than food and water, without pause he said “girls”.  He also said that I wouldn’t last in a catastrophe because I snack too much and would therefore eat all of food. 

I’d like to hope that I’d be a kind of leather-clad,  fully strapped Mad Max meets gangsta’ rapper and Terminator badass action heroine.  I would protect myself and my family, shooting with precision and  killing anyone that tried to hurt us.

Who knows… it could happen?