Which is probably why I’d never heard of it. It’s hard going, especially at first, and though the book is not long, there are not many characters, and the few events take place over about three weeks’ time, it’s taken me about two weeks to finish it. Will Self later wrote a novel called The Book of Dave, also many years post-apocalypse, written in a dialect developed from a depressed London cabbie, and I haven’t managed to finish it yet (though I will). The religion in the book is based on the cabbie’s journal, a brilliant idea. Years before I heard of this book, I thought of writing a post-apocalyptic story in which various groups of survivors have each managed to hold onto or find one book from one section of a bookstore: the diet section. One group, the Atkinsians, are at war with the people on the other side of the hill, who follow the Law of the South Beach. That’s about as far as I got. If anyone reading this would like to write that story, please do; I’d love to read it.

Anyway. The story of Riddley Walker follows a young man, living in a sort of Iron Age Kent, as he puzzles out the meaning of the local religion. This is based on chemistry and physics as well as on the only surviving fragment of pre-disaster writing, a short piece on the legend of Saint Eustace, a medieval painting in Canterbury Cathedral. The Saint Eustace, or Eusa people –

Let me interject here. The made-up dialect is rich in rewards for those inclined to play with language. For example, Eusa could be just a rendering of Eustace, or it could stand for USA, where nuclear weapons were first developed, or it could be a bastardization of Jesus, or it could mean used to, or a number of other interpretations. This is part of what makes the book slow reading.

The Eusa people seem to be feeling their way back to an understanding of nuclear fission, while the secretive dyers and charcoal burners have passed down a recipe in song for making gunpowder. And the whole thing revolves around puppet shows, including Punch and Judy.

It’s mind-bending, but it’s what I call a true story, meaning it’s made up (obviously) but what it’s talking about is fundamental Truth. In the end, it’s a meditation on our place in the universe, and on power and human nature. It’s very similar in that theme to A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter Miller, Jr. (1960). As one of the characters says to Riddley Walker,

“Riddley you know as wel as I do if you put 1 figger on your right han and a nother on your lef the 1 wil go agenst the other some how some time.”

Give a man a stick, he’ll whack another man with it. If he finds a rock, he’ll use that. Human society will always be driven to create bigger and better ways to kill each other. War is in our nature. But is it our nature? Individuals can transcend it, but can we do it as a species?

Remains to be seen. For some reason I’m faintly optimistic, or I suppose I wouldn’t have become a Buddhist. And like all frustrated idealists, I’m cynical as well.

The same character says, shortly before making the above point, “Riddley do you think theres hoap of any thing?” And Riddley replies, “Theres new earf on the barrens all the time.” He’s referring to the soil and growing things slowly, very slowly, encroaching on the blasted plain that surrounds the nuked Canterbury.

Or maybe he’s referring to the slow changes that can transform mankind.

History is thick with cultures and religions that believed in apocalypse, and not just us wacky westerners (google Hopi Prophecy if you’re into that kind of thing). Doesn’t that make it something ingrained in us, perhaps something genetic?

I don’t believe in an apocalypse gene (though I might be persuaded to endorse an apocalypse virus or bacteria). To me, it’s common sense. Many feel that the end is near because the end is near. There have been many ends, many communities and whole civilizations that have been utterly destroyed or so changed as to be unrecognizable. It may not be about to happen, but the possibility is always close by. Plague, natural disasters, nuclear devastation, invasion, genocide. Now that so many of us crowded into cities, with mass food production and nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, the unknown threat of climate change, viruses able to mutate faster than we can keep up with them, the end is no further off than it ever has been.

If there is something biological going on, the rationale for it might be something like this: isn’t it better to be prepared for the worst? Those who trip blithely on, believing that all of this – this culture, this life, whatever it is – will last forever are perhaps doomed not to survive to reproduce, or at least not in such great numbers as those of us who are peering at the sky and stockpiling food and water. Disaster research shows that the people who do best in an emergency situation – a plane crash, an earthquake – are the ones who’ve spent time picturing themselves doing what needs to be done. That’s why I always pay attention during the safety announcement on the airplane; it might not be enough to save me, but ignoring it sure isn’t going to help. Talking and thinking about the apocalypse lets us all practice for disaster.

This interpretation of apocalypse leads me inevitably to that most personal of end times, one’s own death. We’re all going to die. Isn’t that also, in a way, the end of the world? Maybe the more we believe that death, as the end of ego, is a terrible devastation, the more interested we are as a people in the idea of global apocalypse. Doesn’t it feel better to imagine that the world might end with you, or vice versa? Sometimes I just hate the idea of dying simply because I’ll miss the rest of the story. If only the world, the story, and I could all end at the same time.

So many religions portray death as an apocalypse in the biblical sense of a “revelation,” a difficult and painful process succeeded by eternity in paradise, but only if you deserve it. This, of course, has been abused by many people throughout history, as “prophets” claiming insider knowledge of God’s plans have convinced people to follow them in order to be “saved.” This is just an example of man’s propensity to exploit the fears of others for his own advantage. Obviously it works, or there wouldn’t be so many religions based on it – including all the varieties of Christianity.

Perhaps apocalypse myths are humanity’s collective way of contemplating its own death – or its suicide. The way we live now, for example, cannot last. It’s not sustainable. This lifestyle is engendering changes that will bring about an environmental apocalypse for mankind.

This writer equates Christian “prophets” and modern day climate change scientists, as if studying objective evidence that anyone can see if they just look, were just the same as some guy telling you that God spoke to him and gave him the date of the Last Day. It’s just another way to deny the big lifestyle changes that are coming, that are necessary. But maybe we should be taking another look at the original meaning of revelation.

God is coming, and He’s pissed.

We know we’re guilty. I can accept that interpretation. We are guilty. Environmentally guilty, anyway. God is coming, and She’s pissed.

And culturally guilty? Sure. There’s always someone being exploited, or neglected, or abused, and are we doing enough – or indeed, anything – to change or prevent that?

I believe the perpetuation of religions that anticipate apocalypse is cultural, not biological. We yearn for an easier life. Maybe everything will be better after we get through this mess we’re in.

That, to me, is the essence of the apocalypse obsession: The reset. Starting over. To hell with all this, let’s do something else. Surely everyone on earth has felt that way at one time or another.

I know I’ve been fantasizing about The End since I was about thirteen years old, when I first began to apprehend the kind of world I was living in, and the kind of life in front of me. Particularly lately, I’m ready for a big change in my life, and there’s a lot of anxiety about what that’s going to look like. I’d rather do it without the devastation of apocalypse, but one way or another it might not be up to me. I hope that, whatever happens, I can make something good out of it.

The world itself is in dire need of a big change. The whole system needs a major overhaul, and while I’m not eager for massive death and destruction, I also know that major change won’t happen unless it has to. People don’t like change and they won’t do it unless they don’t have a choice. So we basically have to follow our current course of action to its logical conclusion, and I do think that’s what’s happening. It’s not going to be pretty.

And that’s the lesson of apocalypse. It’s the worst-case scenario, the warning. The big or else. It’s the threat that’s always there, and the hope that’s right behind it. The knowledge that we’re really not doing our best, the guilt that goes along with that, and the determination to do better.

When will we ever learn? Maybe the next time around.

They’re depressed because they’ve seen a world that is beautiful, in which every living thing is connected and in harmony, and they’ve been reminded how far they are from living that way.

I went to avatar-forums.com and had a look at the discussion there for myself. And you know what?

I like those people. They’re sweet, and they give me hope. Most of them have realized why they’re sad, why they’re going to see this movie over and over, and it’s not because it’s a beautiful dream. It’s because we have that reality right here on Earth, and we’re fucking it up.

We do live in a beautiful world in which everything is connected. Unfortunately, much of it has been thrown way out of balance by greed. In the film, the Na’vi fight off corporate mining interests with the help of the main character, but our own planet lost that fight a long time ago. If you haven’t noticed lately how much that sucks, it’s because you’re purposefully repressing it. Probably because it’s too depressing to think about.

If you’re suffering from post-Avatar depression, here are some things you can do:

• Get informed. Learn as much as you can about ecology, climate change, water resources, and even chemistry and physics if you can do it. Talk to people about it.
• Vote for ecologically sustainable practices, and vote against unsustainable practices. Act locally – pay attention to what’s going on in your community, and speak up. Call or write to your government representatives.
• Buy local food and products whenever possible. Do what you can in your own life to reduce your energy consumption.
• If you can, consider getting an energy audit for your home, and even installing solar panels or a wind turbine.
• Be kind. Live more simply. Continue to question your values.

“All I ever wanted was a single thing worth fighting for.”
- Jake Sully in Avatar

This isn’t about just installing curly lightbulbs and figuring we’ve saved the world. Part of the problem is the lack of ideas, or more accurately, the lack of people talking about the ideas. Look around for more, and come up with some of your own.

We are part of our environment. This isn’t my opinion, it isn’t some hippy-dippy bullshit, it’s reality. If you think it’s not true, please, try living in a vacuum. Be my guest.

Living as if we aren’t part of our environment means that we’re making it so – we’re exiling ourselves right out of existence. Either we do something about it, or we wait to die. And as much as you might hate the sound of it, “doing something about it” means realizing that we are our environment, we are all connected, and the way we live now does not work. Our one hope is to balance the earth in an equation that includes us and everything else.

And that we learn to do this before we get off the planet, and go ruin the rest of the universe.

Writers of articles on post-Avatar depression, and of course most of the comment-section peanut gallery, sneer at these people. It’s a movie, they say. It’s not real. Get over it.

I think it’s the cynics and sneerers that have something they need to get over. They’re so far removed from reality, they can’t even feel what’s missing.

This is all you need to see.

The only reason anyone would go to see a movie like this is for the special effects. Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow – we all know the plot will suck and the science will be dodgy at best, but who cares, right? Let’s blow some shit up!

That’s why 2012, from the same director, is such an enormous disappointment. I could have forgiven their nonsensical explanation for the end of the world – neutrinos from solar flare activity somehow microwave the earth and boil the core – if only they’d given me more of what I paid for: disaster porn.

We do get to see Los Angeles break in half and slide into the ocean, a sight I can never get enough of. The lumps of burning magma from the Yellowstone supervolcano were very well done, I thought, as was the hemisphere-enveloping ash cloud. And I did enjoy watching a battleship named the USS John F. Kennedy slam into the White House, and St. Peter’s Basilica roll over a dense crowd of worshipers.

I can even tolerate one more Eiffel Tower breaking in half, Christ the Redeemer falling off the hill in Rio de Janeiro, and – just barely – the Sistine Chapel ceiling splitting open, the crack running, predictably, right between the almost-touching fingers of God and Adam, a visual so trite that it’s an eye-rolling cliché the instant you see it.

But I cannot forgive having spent over two thirds of a three hour movie watching the actors wince their way through a weak, cringe-inducing story even by disaster film standards. The characters and their conflicts are so shallow, I don’t even want to spend time detailing them here, but the climax of the movie consists of John Cusack’s character getting his family on board a multi-government sponsored ark built atop a mountain in the Himalayas (presumably to appeal to a Chinese audience). Do you want to see a movie about John Cusack trying to get on an ark?

The spectacularly bad writing makes it impossible to overlook the movie’s faults, a problem I had to a lesser extent with Independence Day. No amount of special effects can make up for a writer and director with so little respect for the intelligence of their audience. However much money they’ll make off of fools like me who’ll see a movie like this (at a matinee price) just for the effects, they could have made so much more, and won over a legion of fans, if they’d spent a little bit of time coming up with a decent story and characters with a little depth. I realize that actual insight is beyond their abilities.

To their credit, they hardly mention the Mayan calendar at all, and mostly steer away from any religious or New Age prophecy, though it couldn’t have made the movie any worse. My friend and I agreed that the animals gave far and away the best performances. One has to assume it’s because the animals were not subject to the script or to the director’s instructions. I particularly admired the chicken’s comic timing. But not enough to justify the $6 and three hours I wasted on this trash.

Watch the trailer on YouTube and save your time and money; this isn’t worth seeing on any screen.

Every morning I turn on New York One, the NYC news channel, just to make sure the world is still there. I get online and check Facebook, my favorite blogs, icanhascheezburger.com and the major news headlines. So I heard about the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico early last week, and I felt a little tickle in my throat.

The next day I heard there were a few cases in Texas and California. Slight headache.

And on Friday, I turned on the tv to learn that a bunch of high school students in Queens – some of whom had just been to Mexico – had all gone home with the flu. Like, 75 of them.

I sneezed.

You can’t read this blog, or talk to me for long, without perceiving that I spend a lot of time thinking about the apocalypse. I don’t think I’m obsessed to an unhealthy degree, at least no one’s ever hinted as much to me. I think I’m healthily obsessed. If you think a huge disaster can’t happen where you live, you’re in denial.

As soon as I heard that the swine flu had already arrived in New York City, I went out and bought some more canned food and bottled water. They say you should have 2 weeks’ supply of everything, in case you have to hole up in your apartment until the pandemic is over. That includes medication, batteries, anything you might need that you might not be able to get, if you’re quarantined, taking care of someone who’s sick, or if stores are closed. Here is a good page on individual and family readiness from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Get Pandemic Ready is a good collection of advice, too.

On my way home with my supplies, a woman was walking in front of me, carrying her baby, who faced me over her shoulder. And coughed. Wetly.

I stopped dead in my tracks, until whatever bad guys might’ve been in the air had time to settle and dissipate. Sheesh. I felt achey and feverish for the rest of the day.

I must say I’m impressed with how the city is handling this, making sure we all understand what this is and what we can do. Everyone is firmly on the “concerned, not freaking the hell out” page, taking this seriously but not fanning the flames of hysteria, at least not as far as I’ve seen (I don’t watch FOX). I feel for the people of Mexico, who are feeling the worst of this, and I don’t blame them one bit. The most likely origin of this swine flu is the (American-owned) factory farms that have been built all over Mexico in the last few years, where, with fewer regulations to protect them, pigs are raised in confined and unsanitary circumstances, and the human workers don’t have it much better. David Kirby called for CDC and USDA officials to take a close look in this excellent article. I’ve heard that the factory farm near “Patient Zero,” a five year old who’s fine, has tested negative for this strain, but we’ll see what develops.

We’re as well-prepared as we can be at this point. I don’t believe we’re equipped to handle an outbreak on the level of the 1918 pandemic, but I don’t think you can have this many people in the world and be prepared to handle almost all of them getting sick, and a substantial portion of them dying. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out. Probably, it’s not that bad, and this whole thing will soon be forgotten, until it’s time to do a “this year in the news” feature.

Meanwhile, please take normal precautions:

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them. Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.

Don’t I sound calm? I am. Really. I’ve only sneezed once today.

Take care, everyone.

Like I'm really gonna get out of here alive. (But what if I do?)

Living in New York definitely brings home the idea of the impending apocalypse. Any subway at rush hour reminds me that disaster is just one panic away. We handle ourselves well here when disaster happens, and I’m glad to be in the city, but obviously 8 million people can’t just carry on as usual if there’s no electricity, or an epidemic, or a “dirty” bomb, or catastrophic economic collapse. I probably won’t survive such an eventuality, but in case I do, I want to be ready. I have extra water stored, and some stockpiled food. And I have a “go” bag.

It’s a comfortable backpack, built for a woman’s frame, which, for once, actually fits me. I could carry it for a long time if I had to. I have first aid stuff in there. A flashlight. Warm socks. Every so often, when I’m in a drugstore, I’ll buy something for my “go” bag: antihistamine, bandages , anti-diarrhea medicine. And if I’m ordering something from Amazon, I might include an inexpensive item from my survival list: 100′ of paracord, a firestarter, a basic compass, all for less than $10. On the slightly more costly side, I bought a sleeping bag recently, and I’ve got my eye on a portable solar/self-powered radio, a tent, and a wicked survival knife.

Of course, I can use these things for camping if civilization continues. But if it doesn’t, it’s all in one place so I can grab it and go. I can add some bottled water, food, more clothes if I have time, and then join the crowds of people who will no doubt be streaming out of the city some day.

I can see it so clearly. I don’t know what the disaster will be, and I don’t like to speculate much on specifics. I fervently hope it’s not as bad as I fear it will be.

I’ve considered including some things that will comfort me, like my favorite book. Survival lists often recommend a deck of cards, for people suffering withdrawal from TV and the internet. I’ll probably bring a few of my notebooks. What else would you want to save from your life, if you could only bring what you can carry yourself? Photos? Do you have your photos on a disk, do you know where that disk is, could you grab it while sirens are going off?

Am I bumming you out? Thinking about this stuff makes me feel better, actually. Denying that it could ever happen is foolish. Obviously it can happen. Would you rather be prepared, or unprepared?

What I need now is a “go” bag that will hold my cats. AbsurdBeats and I were discussing this the other night.

I’ve read books about survivalism, like The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. One thing disaster and survival experts definitely recommend is to visualize yourself doing something positive. That way your mind has some suggestions to make if it ever does happen.

I hope it doesn’t. But if it does, I want to be ready. What about you? Do you have a “go” bag?

The basic plot is that the countries of the northern hemisphere have engaged in all-out nuclear war, a war lasting about a month. Between the nuclear blasts and subsequent radiation sickness, everyone in Russia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America are dead. The story takes place in Australia, where the eerily calm survivors – there were no bombs for them – are waiting as the radiation creeps southward. Our heroes are an American submarine commander, stranded by the war in southern waters, his Australian liaison, the liaison’s wife, and a female friend of theirs who befriends the submarine commander. We wait and watch with them until the end. (Spoilers ahead.)

I think I should have read it twenty years ago. Back then, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, before the rise of terrorism world-wide, with the memory of the cold war still fresh in my mind, this story might have been more compelling, at least compelling enough to override the faults of the writing. As it was, well… it wasn’t terrible. I finished it, in fact I read the entire second half in one go, mostly so I could find out if there was some gruesome or amazing ending that would make this book as brilliant as I had been assured it was.

No such luck. Shute’s not a lyrical writer, for one thing. His central characters are decently sketched, but no more than that, and secondary characters are stick figures. And, he’s a man of his times. His times being 1957 (the book purports to take place in 1963), this means women are secretaries or mothers, there are no black or Asian people (in Australia?), and everybody smokes, so if that kind of thing irritates you, you are warned. He’s also rather old-womanish about sex, sickness, and death, which to my 21st century eyes was odd in a book about the end of the world. This fussiness might explain his charming fantasy that, with the entire country given three months to live, most people would simply carry on with what they had been doing before.

I suppose a lot of people would, if they could, once past the initial shock. The young couple, the liaison and his wife, plan their garden right up until the end, which is rather sweet. A doctor removes a tumor from a woman, giving her “a few more years.” The submarine commander maintains Navy discipline.

Most people continue going to work, so that, conveniently, the electricity, phones, public transit, and “food supplies” are uninterrupted, until everyone starts to get sick. I wondered if Shute genuinely believed that would happen, or if he simply didn’t have any idea how everything fits together in a modern country, and how it would break down, for example, once there was no more gas. That’s a shame, because one thing I love about apocalyptic novels is seeing how the author imagines it all coming apart. I would also imagine that billionaires would still be trying to make money right up to the end. There would be crime, looting, riots, and general panic. Someone would surely be trying to evacuate, or find a cure for radiation sickness, or praying for rescue from God or aliens. What would be happening over in South Africa, with apartheid? That civilization would collapse seems to me to be self-evident, though I could believe that small pockets could still exist, of people simply carrying on. But in a city the size of Melbourne? In every city everywhere, all the people would just lie quietly down in bed to die?

The 1950s were an innocent time, in many ways.

I felt like Shute was trying to shock his readers by making us think of the possibility of the world ending in three months’ time, or by showing us how callous people might be about death, toward the end, or by making every one of his characters commit suicide. I grew up in a very different world from him. None of that was the least bit disturbing to me. His whole apocalypse was really rather tame. I don’t believe that everyone would accept the news in the same way, and it made for a less interesting story.

I might watch the movie, just for the character of Moira, and her interactions with Dwight, the submarine commander. Played by Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck, that should be fun. But I’m in no rush.

The strongest thing about the novel is the anti-nuclear war message, which was apparently controversial in 1957. But I absorbed the anti-nuke message in puberty. Maybe it was there in part because of this book, in which case, I tip my hat to it.

As to wondering what I would do with three months to live – been there, done that. I’ve been imagining the end of the world since I was a kid.

The conflict in Israel is heating up again. A suicide bomber in Iraq just killed a group of people who had gathered to discuss reconciliation. In Afghanistan recently, men on motorcycles threw acid on girls for attending school.

Honey bees are disappearing around the world. Factory farm methods are promoting desertification. With three quarters of the world’s food coming from only eight different plant species, the world is more vulnerable to catastrophic famine than ever before.

Solar activity is rising. The Yellowstone supervolcano is in “high-threat” for a massive eruption. The earth’s magnetic field is fractured, and may be preparing for reversal.

Arctic sea ice is at a record low. The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica is eroding rapidly.

Our species is long overdue for a devastating flu pandemic.

I’m learning how to make bread.