What Would You Do?

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In most post-apocalyptic stories, there comes a time when one or more of the characters — usually minor ones — opt to take the “easy way out.” Suicide, in other words. This seems only natural. When faced with an uncertain future filled with terror, hunger and the constant possibility of a violent, painful death, suicide seems like a viable option. Except in the stories, it’s not intended to be one. The characters who opt for suicide are not the ones we’re supposed to identify with.

But I do. When I read The Road, the character I most identified with was the wife, who took a gun and walked off into the woods rather than continue to live in the charred cinder that was once her world. In The Passage, a couple waits until their children are old enough to take care of themselves before opting out of their brutal lives spent worrying about vampire invasions every second. And on the season 1 finale of The Walking Dead television series, the characters are given a choice: quick, painless death by explosion or go back into the zombie-infested wasteland with only the things they are carrying. I know what I’d pick.

But then again, I am not a survivalist. I don’t stock up on toilet paper or spend my weekends practicing my crossbow skills. I freely admit that I enjoy the creature comforts of the 21st century. Who knows what any of us would choose to do when thrust into extreme circumstances like that? We haven’t really had to test our ingrained survival instinct.

Or our sense of hope. For that’s what the characters who choose to go on represent: hope. What was left in Pandora’s box after the ills of the world escape. Hope that there is something better ahead — if not for us, then at least for those who come after us — is what motivates us to keep on struggling even in the most extraordinary situations. Hope is what inspires us that no matter how bad things get, we can find a way. Hope is our humanity.

And hope is the essence of what many of these post-apocalyptic stories we tell ourselves are really all about.

What is the Pre-apocalypse?

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You’re probably familiar with the term post-apocalyptic as applied to fiction and movies. Post-apocalyptic stories take place in a world after an apocalyptic event has occurred and civilization has collapsed. But here’s a new one on me: pre-apocalyptic fiction.

The pre-apocalypse would be similar to what I called in my last post “last days” stories. By using the term last days, I expect the story to meet two specific conditions: 1) the characters know that the earth is going to end; and 2) there will be no post-apocalypse. Whatever event is going down, no one is going to survive it. I could only think of two examples — the book On the Beach and the movie Last Night — that fulfill both these conditions and qualify as true “last days” stories, but I haven’t done much research yet and could probably dig up more in this sub-genre.

The pre-apocalypse, according to i09, depicts the time leading up to the apocalyptic disaster, but survival may be possible, or the event itself may still be averted. This is where the conflict comes from. The most obvious example of a pre-apocalypse story is the Terminator series, which keeps posing the question of whether the overthrow of humans by sentient machines is inevitable, or whether the actions of the characters who know what the future will be can actually change that future. Along similar lines is the film Twelve Monkeys, in which a time-traveling Bruce Willis is charged with gathering information about the engineered virus that wiped out most of humanity. Once in the past, he tries to prevent the apocalypse from ever occurring but fails — or perhaps his attempts to avert the disaster are necessary for it to actually take place. Again, the question of whether the future is fated is not comfortably resolved.

I haven’t done a lot of delving into this sub-genre yet. Living in uncertain times, as we do, with so many threats facing us, it’s no wonder that apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction has been so popular lately. Probably, the number of pre-apocalyptic stories will also increase along with our sense that the world is rapidly sliding into the void.

On the other hand, there have probably always been people who felt certain they were living in the last days, that the end was drawing nigh and only they were smart enough to see it. I feel like that myself some mornings when I read the news, especially with our leaders trying so hard to ignore climate change and its possible dire consequences. Yet somehow that great disaster never quite arrives. In my own memory, Y2K — which was supposed to bring about the collapse of a civilization overly dependent on computer technology — was a dud, and I don’t think much of anything is likely to happen on December 21, 2012, except it will probably be warmer than the previous year.

Still, it only takes once.

The Cycle of Collapse

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The “apocalypse” can refer to the end of the natural world, but it usually doesn’t — at least, not in the stories we are constantly telling about it. After the world literally ends, there’s not much left to say, is there? In fact, I can only think of two examples off the top of my head of this kind of “last days” story in fiction, when all life ceases to be: On the Beach by Nevil Shute, in which radioactive fallout from a devastating nuclear war kills all animal life on Earth; and Last Night, a film about the Earth’s last six hours before it is destroyed by either a meteor or the sun going supernova (the movie doesn’t specify). In both cases, the story is about how the characters, who know the end is coming, deal with that knowledge and live out their last days. (There is a whole sub-genre of “dying Earth” stories, as well, but these are typically set far in the future and depict a gradual end, rather than an abrupt one.)

More often, apocalyptic stories assume there will be at least a few survivors.  The apocalyptic event is not “the end of the world,” as the cliche goes, but rather the collapse of human civilization due to some catastrophe. Those who do survive must start all over again from zero. Usually, this struggle for survival is what the story is actually about, and the apocalypse is just the means to getting there.

We’ve seen these collapses of civilizations in our history. Examples include the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Indus civilization, the Mayan civilization and the extremely isolated society on Easter Island. This last example serves as a microcosm of societal collapse due to environmental destruction. Over time, the islanders cut down all the trees on Easter Island. This led to soil erosion, making agriculture more difficult, and with no wood, the islanders could not build boats for fishing. The population plummeted: a mini-apocalypse. (For more on this subject, see the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.)

In fiction, one of the most memorable portrayals of civilization collapse is in The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In this case, the civilization is alien, not human. The collapse was always caused by war, brought about by the pressures of overpopulation, and always resulted in total decimation. Survivors rebuilt society, which inevitably led to another collapse. Because the cycle continually repeated itself despite all efforts to prevent it, the aliens became fatalistic and even developed a class of worker whose sole job was to ensure the survival of all knowledge so that civilization could be rebuilt after the next collapse.

The natural world seems to operate on cycles. Day and night, the seasons, the “circle of life,” in which death and decay lead to birth and growth, are all familiar to us. Even the universe itself may be caught in a continual cycle of destruction and rebirth. In human history, we can see how a pattern in how civilizations grow rapidly, reach a zenith, and then either decline or collapse. If an apocalypse does occur, but there are survivors left to start all over again, it seems logical to assume that the cycle would begin again as well, leading to yet another apocalypse. And another. And another. Unless we can find some way to break the cycle, which may mean changing our basic human nature.

Related Articles

• Culture Evolves Slowly, Falls Apart Quickly (wired.com)
• We’ve seen the future and it’s coming to crush us: Pre-apocalyptic stories [Video] (io9.com)
• Understanding The Elements of Collapse (socyberty.com)

Why the Apocalypse?

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Human beings are fascinated by beginnings and endings. Every culture has an origin story to explain how humans came to live on Earth in the first place. And many cultures make apocalyptic predictions about how we’ll go out as a species. In contemporary times, there are enough apocalyptic books and movies to deserve their own genre. Artists and musicians tackle apocalyptic themes as well. Why does the idea of apocalypse — the end of the world as we know it — fascinate us so much?

Rarely do the apocalyptic events in these stories bring about the absolute end, though. Some remnants of humankind usually survive to rebuild. We sometimes forget that we constructed the cultures in which we live, that we made up all the rules that govern our lives. A catastrophic event is an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, to press the restart button. Whoever survives gets the chance to start from zero and rewrite all the rules. And the apocalypse enables us at one fell swoop to solve the massive problems that confront us. Humankind is forced to return to the basics of survival, perhaps making our lives more meaningful — or at least more interesting. It’s an appealing fantasy.

But our fascination with the apocalypse is more than just a fantasy about starting over. I think, at its roots, exploring the possible scenarios for the end of human civilization gives us a way to confront our own mortality. We each face a personal apocalypse. We don’t know when or how it will come, or what — if anything — comes afterward. Just as each of our lives has a beginning and an ending, so it seems that the human race should have one too. Imagining that ending possibly makes it easier to  accept our own endings.

In this blog, I intend to explore the idea of apocalypse from many angles, from the myths and religious perceptions to how the apocalypse is portrayed in art and literature. Like all of these prophets, writers, artists, poets and storytellers who came before me, the idea of the end of everything fascinates me. Because it is not just an end, but often a new beginning.

A Post-apocalyptic Reading List

A Post-apocalyptic Reading List (by me): I’m not saying that these are all the post-apocalyptic novels out there, or even all the ones that I have read, but they are all good ones and a good place to start your reading. Occasionally updated.

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

All About the Apocalypse

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Since I picked up The Stand — which I first read as a pre-teen while home sick from school with a case of the flu (true story) — I have been obsessed with the apocalypse. That is, the fictional apocalypse — I don’t particularly want to experience it for real. If a book has an apocalyptic scenario, I immediately want to read it. I never get tired of authors imagining the ultimate do-over for the human race.

As a result of my obsession, I’ve written quite a few blog posts about the apocalypse in fiction. Here are my collected apocalyptic works:

• What Now? A Post-apocalyptic Reading List – a list of practical guidebooks to the apocalypse. Update: A version of this list was just published on The Huffington Post.
• The Soft Apocalypse — because even when the world is ending, you don’t want to be too inconvenienced.
• Why Write Stories About the Apocalypse? – or, do science fiction writers know something we don’t?

I have also reviewed several post-apocalyptic books. You’ll find all the reviews in the Post-apocalypse category.

I’ve written about the apocalypse quite a bit on my main blog (shannonturlington.com) as well. Here are some of my favorite pieces:

• A Helpful Guide to the Apocalypse – or all the many ways we can go out, with a bang OR a whimper.
• Music for the Post-apocalypse — assuming you can still charge your iPod after the end of civilization.
• The Post-apocalypse Fantasy — or why is it so much fun to imagine the end of the world?
• The Apocalypse Will Not Be in 2012 (Probably) — but it never hurts to be prepared.
• The Boy Scout Motto Is “Be Prepared” for a Reason — and here’s a guide to how to prepare.
• Does Peak Oil Mean a Return to Little House on the Prairie and So What Might Happen When Peak Oil Comes? — in which I speculate about what a likely post-apocalypse scenario might be like.

The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the KingdomFor Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.