Oh, god, not the apocalypse!

[msmcknittington]

As I might have mentioned here and again on my journal, my biggest fear is the apocalypse. Not brimstone and hellfire raining down from the skies, but a dreadful and unalterable change to human life as we know it. Whether that's a nuclear war, as in On the Beach by Neville Shute, or something more biological, like that one Stephen King novel with

Comments

[isabelladangelo]

I could write up a very very long comment in regards to the difference between modern Hollywood's take on humans being the brunt cause of end of the world disasters versus nature. Nature is far far scarier. And yet, they only ever show nature affecting small area... In the Day After Tomorrow it does affect a large area but it's all our fault because we are so evil. Let's ignore that mammoth we mention at the beginning from a previous ice age...or the data that shows the ice age ended in a matter of months...::much grumbling::

[msmcknittington]

I know! Nature is so much scarier than nuclear war. People have absolutely no control over the weather or grizzly bears or whatever.

Another thing that annoyed me about "The Day After Tomorrow" was that the plan to escape the weather was to go to Mexico, and they didn't show Mexico saying, "You want your entire country's population to gate crash Los Estados Unidos de México? Jefe, no."

[troubleagain]

I Am Legend...I watched The Whole Movie. I think I'm scarred for life.

[msmcknittington]

I was uncomfortable being in a different room while it was playing. Those transformed people made scary noises. And the government blew up a bus full of people! Scary!

[rosewalker]

OMG, me too! And ever since we got satellite TV and with it the Discovery channel, it's gotten SO much worse. I had no idea of all the different ways the world could end. I was really distracted at work one day and someone asked me what was going on, and I said, "Did you know there's actually a tiny possibility that the entire crust of the earth could slide and reverse the poles? And don't even get me started on gamma ray bursts..." I mean... who worries about this crap?

That said, I do love disaster/apocalypse movies. LOVE them. I guess as much as it scares me, I'm also deeply intrigued by how life would persevere and what it would be like. Every time something disconcerting happens in the world, I'm 95% worried/concerned and 5% excited. But that 5% is the same part of my brain that truly believes fictional characters are real, so I don't give it too much credit.

[troubleagain]

Two fictional accounts of the end of the world/polar shift for you. One is a Clive Cussler--Atlantis Found--he has another called Polar Shift but I haven't read it. And the other is Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham (wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_a_Sunless_Sea). I loved this one. I read it over and over.

[msmcknittington]

I think I remember you writing about that before. Dude, why do people want to know the specifics of what happens after a cataclysmic event? I mean, we'll all be dead, so why scope out the deets?

If I had to list the ways the world ends that concern me the most, it would go:

1. Large scale natural disaster (Hurricane Katrina around the world!)
2. Nuclear war
3. Something from space crashing into the Earth
4. The sun exploding

Way down on the list is the possibility of alien lifeforms enslaving the inhabitants of Earth. I blame Anne McCaffrey for this. And I love those trashy books.

After I read apocalyptic fiction, I always spend some time thinking up contingency plans should the same thing happen for reals. Like, "Well, my family would probably be OK if aliens invaded, since we don't live near any major population centers, and we could feed ourselves for a while off the land, but my brothers are old enough to serve in the military and . . ." Who does that? I do that. Why do I do that?

[beraht]

Dystopias are one of my favorite genres of movies and literature but I used to get that same sense of utter despair when watching programs about world killing asteroids.

[msmcknittington]

I think what spawns that sense of terror in me is the realization that if the infrastructure in the US failed spontaneously, I'd have, at best, a month before major health problems started springing up.

Oh, diabetes, you just bring a whole boatload of issues with you.

[aikea_guinea]

"That S.M. Stirling series..."

Me: "Mass death by bondage? O_o"

I'm beginning to question my reading abilities.

[msmcknittington]

LOL Danielle, it's the little things that me glad to internet-know you. Like misreading acronyms and having the result be mass death by bondage.