Apocalypse tourism for the psyche

Stranded in the remotest hinterlands of Edinburgh, cut and torn by the razor edged winds, blinded by the unforgiving glare of the snow, I trudged back to my little cabin through that hell in order to broadcast this final message to a dying world. I write in the hope that at least one person may receive this message, one soul who will know of my final demise...this is my last will and testament:

Some selfish bastards have snaffled all the bread and spuds from the local Scot-Mid - we're AAALL DOOOOOMED!

Thankfully, for the moment at least, the collapse of the social/economic infrastructure of western society is still someway off (maybe the day after tomorrow), although there is a more serious note underlying my levity. As soon as the first heavy snows and rains descend, and the first power cut terminates your link to the global village, the selfish gene is expressed (yeah, I'd like a peep at Richard Dawkins freezer at times like this). From then on its open season for the darkest recesses of the human imagination - choose your narrative.


I remember reading 'The Stand' by Stephen King around Christmas time '82-'83 and was immediately gripped by the delicious warm bath of post-apocalyptic dystopia. I think now though, on reflection, this was one of the many literary/cinematic stepping stones that reinforced my addiction to the societal breakdown genre.

It began in childhood, being exposed to all those sci-fi movies in the 70's.
The wild hippie land of 'Sanctuary' in the movie Logan's Run, was so much more appealing than the domed city where anyone over thirty gets bumped off or has to go on the run. Charlton Heston's 'Omega Man' barricaded with his personal armoury in his apartment, taking pot shots at the virally contaminated denizens of a futuristic LA, was dark and bleak but totally thrilling to a young kid in rural England (The Will Smith remake just didn't hit the spot for me).

Re-runs of particular episodes of the Twilight Zone from the late '50's soaking into my still soft and virginal neuron's no doubt sedimented and seeded my (and many others) unconscious propensity for this type of stuff at an early age. Here's a particular favourite:



Other literature on this theme that has enriched my interest have been, virtually anything by J.G. Ballard, Christopher Priest's 1973 Fugue for a Darkening Island and the more recent Cormack McCarthy's The Road. Toss in a heavy pinch of Hollywood futuristic disaster movies, with a twist of the very British 24/28 Days later zombie flick, and you have a veritable banquet fit for armchair anarchists everywhere - plus the occasional dyed in the wool misanthropist.(Just remembered, I think I can include Planet of the apes in the pantheon too).

I guess there's something very primitive that this kind of stuff taps into. It tickles the synapses somewhere in the more primitive parts of the human brain. Its like men and bonfires: man with big stick stands legs apart in the back garden, poking at at his little pyre, protecting his kin and keeping the predatory hedgehogs and next doors Sabre-toothed tabby at bay.

Man and/or woman alone in the world, starting afresh, Adam and Eve, the Alpha and Omega point for the human race, if you can meet with triumph and disaster then yours is the earth and everything in it, and - which is more - you'll be a man, my son! (Or daughter).
This God-like status that you may unintentionally find yourself in - the ability to remake your life, survive outside the conventional societal/governmental structures that you have been born into - fascinates as much as it terrifies me, which goes for a lot of other folks considering the success of the genre for the past few decades in book and film.



As I wrote in another post about my interest as a boy in the Second World War after being exposed to my grandfathers war magazines - it was less the militaristic aspect that affected me, than the breakdown of 'normality', strange sci-fi landscapes and floating populations and tribes that were created by the conflict. The artist Francis Bacon wrote about his youth during the London Blitz, describing how the chilling proximity of sudden possible extinction every moment, enabled a freedom and authenticity that was almost intoxicating.

But, I suppose like most other people, I enjoy a touch of apocalypse/post-apocalypse tourism from the safety of the armchair now and then, an opportunity to travel, even if only in the imagination, away from the rigidity and banality of most of what constitutes modern life.
I think its healthy to ask 'What if?' on a regular basis, in fact I think it should be a duty to imagine starting the world off again, contemplating how different it all could be, how different we could think and behave, testing our Darwinian adaptive skills in a Ray Mears kind of way.
For the moment though, I hope the gritters are out tonight and the Scot-Mid has stocked up for the morrow.

I thought of starting off a blog group to narrate a story on this theme: a group of voices/blogs chronicling their everyday experiences of survival both nationally and internationally in a fictional, freshly apocalypsed Ballardian world. We'd better get a move on anyway, according to the Mayan Codices we've only got a year to go.