What’s it going to be? We’ve all silently cast our votes in our head for our personal favorite style of world-ender. It seems morbid to dwell on such an idea at first, but it’s really more than just dwelling on death and destruction and horror. It’s about hitting a complete and unexpected overhaul. The sudden and seemingly absolute absence of all restrictions and responsibilities. No more cable bills or car payments or early morning commutes or that weird guy you keep seeing around town who wants to hang out or making pizza rolls at three in the morning. Alright, I guess that last one would actually be a tragic loss, but the point stands. What you’re all about is simply getting to hit reset.
The popular, almost romantic idea amongst college kids these days, is the good old fashioned zombie apocalypse. We like this one because it comes from multiple genres of entertainment. It’s part horror, part thriller, part apocalypse, part psychological thriller. Also, this one seems so much more orientated on personal skill and survivability. Unlike, say, a meteor hitting the earth and blowing up half of China, the zombie situation offers an opportunity for each person to survive on their own merits. Everyone likes to imagine that, as the dead slowly start munching on arm fat of the living, that they would flip some hidden switch in their brain and turn into a sweet amalgamation of Aragorn and John McClain. Swinging around rebar and firing a pistol with action-moviesque accuracy and flare. This version of you, sweet apocalypse, is what everyone hopes for, because they can assume that their survival skills they’ve garnered over the years playing video games and watching old westerns at five in the morning have prepared them aptly.
But that’s your clever trick, because anyone so deeply absorbed in pop culture to romanticize zombie movies probably lacks serious athetlic skill and even more probably lives with at least more than one person, be it other roommates or parents, and thus is the most likely to have their asses finely removed by the shambling horde. And then eaten, of course.
Cosmic world-enders like an alien invasion or meteor striking the earth are only cool because Micheal Bay has drilled into our heads that any such catastrophe would come with cooler explosions than the one time your drunk uncle threw that fuel can from his truck into the family campfire.
The Rapture is really only glorified so that religious types can feel satisfied that some mystical event will provide physical evidence of their piety and will separate them from all those heartless savages that use curse words or don’t understand why Spongebob Squarepants is such a homosexual abomination. Really, though, this is the least frightening apocalypse. It’s suggested by those who so adore its idea that paradise awaits those taken away, but we all know the truth. The really awesome people who don’t form picket lines outside of R-rated films and ban books that use the word penis will simply have generation after generation of parties so intense and excellent that it’ll destroy the world. The real winners will be left behind.
Clever apocalypse.
Sincerely,
Ben
