[tmbchr]™

What’s Your Apocalyptic Fantasy?



Since he’s sort of the “grandmaster” of all things Apocalypse in these parts, I thought I’d ask Ran Prieur for a little bit about how he first got drawn into this realm of thinking. In response, he pointed me out to an excellent item he posted on his site earlier this year, but which I’d forgotten about:

As long as I’ve known that this world could come to an end, I’ve been excited about it. In the 1980’s, when everyone else was afraid of nuclear war, I built elaborate fantasies in which my friends and I would occupy the high school and drive around the empty highways of eastern Washington having adventures.

Everyone said that in a real nuclear war the lucky people would be killed instantly, but I could not accept this because then I would have had to kill myself: To me, having radiation poisoning and half the skin peeling off my body and starving in a nuclear winter sounded like a great deal, in exchange for not having to go to school any more, or mow the lawn or do homework or endure empty social rituals or look forward to the deeper hells of college and employment.

I’m not joking and I wasn’t wrong. I understood what I can only now articulate: that meaninglessness is the only suffering. People in “poor” countries, who are “forced” to spend their time surviving, are suffering much less than people in rich countries who have the “privilege” of sitting all day in office buildings moving data around to maintain their social status. Suicide rates prove it.

The main reason I stick around, through years of dodging cars, reciting my social security number, and not being permitted to autonomously provide my own shelter and food, is that I feel like the meaning of my life, the reason I came into this world, is to experience the collapse of civilization and appreciate the world that follows. I want to ride horses on the ruined freeways, and explore silent cities with trees growing through the pavement, and travel on foot across a continent where all the towns are different and where I might be killed by bandits but I will never be imprisoned by police officers.

I’m not into homesteading for its own sake. Gardening and cabin-building don’t sound especially fun — they’re just better than conventional living, and they’re my best chance of surviving to see the world come back to life. And if it doesn’t, if civilization outlasts me, then I at least want my own little corner of aliveness. I want to have a place where it’s OK to scratch the floor and stain the couch and burn the tabletop, where there aren’t silly doors on the cupboards and I can leave crumbs on the floor and let the grass grow. When I’m 60 years old, I want to shit on a compost pile and drink from a stream and eat peaches off trees, and spend all day playing and watching the clouds.

As far as the roots of his interest, he also pointed out his essay Thinking Through the Fall, although he has tons of other great ones. As to the rest of you, I got some great info regarding how you got into the study of the Apocalypse (if you didn’t answer, feel free to now!). Looking at what Ran wrote though, I thought it would be sort of interesting to ask people: What’s your Apocalypse fantasy? What do you hope would happen after everything changes?







7 Reader Responses

  1. mike Says:
    June 2nd, 2005 at 6:37 pm

    I was saying something very similar to some friends of mine the other day. I was complaining about how I wished zombies were real, or some other such life-threatening circumstances existed. Something like that would force people to band together into small groups for survival, the same way primal man would have done. A real physical threat to our safety would put into perspective the non-importance of things such as career and financial security.

    My main complaint is how isolated we are, as a culture. If you drive down most streets in the USA any given evening, the only sign of life is the eerie blue flickering light of television sets. It’s like we’ve completely forgotten the animal side of being a human, the side that wants to run outside as fast as it can; and, when the day is through, gather with friends and recount tall tales around the campfire. And for some reason I think zombies are the answer.

  2. Brekin Says:
    June 2nd, 2005 at 10:45 pm

    I don’t know, I think what everyone is pining for in their apocalypse “scenario” is what they could have right now if they chose to. You want a more natural, survivalist (subsistence) community based existence, you can have it, and without having the nuclear war either. We still have incredible amounts of choice in our society and if you want to live a more “animal” existence you can have that. Most of the current crop of zombie movies to me seem to play off of living in a shitty part of the city and dealing with drug freaks with communicable diseases. Again pretty easy to fulfill. You want a mad max lifestyle? Enlist and you’ll be in Iraq in a couple of months. Want to inhabit a dead city, move to Detroit.
    “Meaningless is the only suffering?” that sounds like someone who has been sheltered from any real type of suffering. To find meaning I think is a persons own reponsibility, our biggest resonsibility perhaps, kind of scary if it takes massive death and disruption of civilization for someone to find meaning.
    But hey I’m game, my apocalypse scenario? Scientist accidently release a superenzyme that eats petroloem products, in a few weeks all the oil reserves, plastic lawn chairs and tupperware is gone, all the nations of the world are forced to convert to renewable energy, this helps stabalise the globe and after the initial transition the global economy becomes one based on tourism as we all become citizen tourists who spend our time “vacationing”.

  3. Occult Investigator Says:
    June 2nd, 2005 at 10:57 pm

    mike: thats an awesome entry. thanks!

    brekin: yeah those are good points about how you CAN have most of these fantasy lives right now - all you have to do is choose them. i think thats the great thing about ran prieurs site and work, if you look through it - he is making these things happen for himself now, amidst everyone else’s grumbling about how they wish this or that.

    i think really the apocalypse is just a gigantic kick in the pants. and thats what most people need to shake them loose out of complacency and unhappy comfort. i know ive been in places like that in my life. wanting things to change but either not knowing how to start or not having the courage to lose everything and begin again…

    anyway, i think its pretty bold to try and accuse someone of never having suffered. but oh well

    i like your vacationing scenario. that would work quite well with my apocalyptic barbecue scenario.

  4. Andrew Smith Says:
    June 3rd, 2005 at 10:59 am

    My two favorite fantasies about the apocalypse are both “natural”, one from outside the earth and the other from within.

    The outside apocalypse is a meteor striking the earth, like what led to the flood accounts in ALL the middle-eastern holy books, including the account in Genesis.

    The inside apocalypse is Southern California sliding into the sea. Kinda like yesterday at Laguna Beach, except that everything from Baja to San Louis Obisbo setting sail for Seattle.

    But you know, apocalyptic literature in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament are actually allegorical stories explaining in code what happened a generation ago. John’s Revelation is about Rome in the mid-seventies of the first century of the common era. And Daniel’s apocalypse had to do with the collapse of the Macedonian empire.

    maybe we should start writing an allegory about the collapse of the American empire. No, we’re a generation early. Our children’s children will write it out in code so the Chinese can’t figure out what it’s all about.

    Now THERE’S an apocalyptic fantasy for you!

  5. J. Puma Says:
    June 3rd, 2005 at 12:16 pm

    “Our children’s children will write it out in code so the Chinese can’t figure out what it’s all about.

    Now THERE’S an apocalyptic fantasy for you! ”

    Awesome!

  6. Occult Investigator » Apocalypse of the American Empire Says:
    June 3rd, 2005 at 5:19 pm

    […] merican Empire

    A reader named Andrew left a really interesting comment on my apocalypse fantasy post: But you know, apocalyptic literature in th […]

  7. Daniel Says:
    June 4th, 2005 at 10:05 pm

    What Ran wrote sounds pretty cool. Living in nomadic tribes where everyplace has slipped back into the wild. If civilisation collapsed I know I’d be walking around everywhere exploring. It’s almost a more ‘natural’ life than the ’synthetic’ one that we live. Who wants to work 2 thirds of their life in order to live when you can Live off the land?

    I think that the collapse of “High Civilisation” has happened before where man goes back into a harmonic existence with the earth. Then civilisation creeps back in.

    Who hasn’t sat one night with a friend and wonder what they’d do if zombies started walking the earth?



SURROUND YOURSELF WITH STRENGTH.