THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

 

I recently bought THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT; A book written by various authors that takes place during the aftermath of the world pandemic in Stephen King’s THE STAND.

 After the first couple of short stories, I decided to go back and reread THE STAND before completing THE END OF THE WORLD…

It has been years since I first read THE STAND, and I am so much older.  The story is still graphic, and grabs you from the start, but the under story, the story not written, the story that comes to my mind is how beautiful and natural this world would be without humans. 

In Alaska they kill the wolves to protect the moose so people can kill the moose. 

 

When I arrived in Maine in 1962 the state was not a major tourist attraction.   There was a Maine culture that was unique.   One third of the state was unpopulated – wilderness.   I ran the Allagash River, and for ten days never saw another human being. 

The population of Maine is growing.  Today, Maine is a popular tourist attraction and a cheap and safe place for retirement.   The old ‘Maine culture’ is pretty much gone. 

There are fifteen-hundred miles of snowmobile trails crisscrossing the most remote and once pristine regions of the state. 

 

The days are gone when you would walk silently through the newly fallen snow on wooden snowshoes, hear the chickadees in the trees, see a porcupine eating tree bark, and surprise deer out of its bed.

 

Now people, wearing crash helmets, ride snowmobiles at breakneck speed, screaming through the wilderness trails like Hell’s Angels on a cross-country run, seeing nothing on their way to the next lodge with steaks and a hot tub and a bar.   

The Allagash River now has guides and trips and tourists experiencing the wilderness that is no longer there. 

Earth's human population is increasing exponentially.   Resources are becoming scarce… 

 

Picture a world without humans.  Clean water.  Clean air…

  

the Ol'Buzzard

 

It is not an asteroid, a super volcano, or climate change that will bring an end to the most destructive super predator to walk the earth;

NOT THIS ONE

THIS ONE

 it is the thousands of nuclear weapons in the hands of individual despots, religious fanatics, and outright idiots

   We dodged the warheads with four years of Donald Trump having access to the launch codes

But not to worry, the government has a plan to preserve the human race.

the Ol'Buzzard

SURVIVING ARMAGEDDON - BE PREPARED

ZOMBIE ATTACK MAY BE IMMINENT!

Yesterday my wife and I drove to Augusta to renew my driver’s license; we ate lunch at the Great Wall Chinese Buffet and afterward went to our favorite store - Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

After checking out all the books on sale I perused the magazine section.  There was an obvious trend in both books and magazines for the sale, of ‘survivalist’ genera.  

The survival mentality is nothing new; this following has been around since the fifties and sixties when movies about Martian attacks and nuclear attacks encouraged a fantasy of survival after the end of civilization. 

Today, motivated by movies like The Walking Dead, there is a larger following then ever, and this is reflected at the book stores and magazine stands. 

Survivalist groups seem to be a spin-off of the militia movement, or vice versa.   The idea of putting on your cammies, grabbing your Bushmaster M-15 and heading for your ‘bug out shelter’ feeds the fantasies of Mad Max wanna-bees.    

Survivalist picture themselves in military attire, fighting off the looters and saving the young beautiful women (sorry – never the older or fat women) who will be forever dependent on them and reward them with sex and respect. 

There are corporations that feed this fantasy with books, magazines, equipment and internet sights.    In survivalist internet stores and catalogues you can purchase everything from freeze dried food to water packets with a twenty year shelf life, to weapons, to techno-equipment and even buckets to defecate in.

The magazine I looked at was full of high tech survival equipment: watches, cell phones, GPS, flashlights - most of it requiring batteries (manufacturers obviously aren’t planning on a long term survival situation.) 

People who live these fantasies find solace and acceptance in the company of other like-minded role players.   They are not alone, for they fall into the same category as UFO probees, big foot hunters, militiamen and ghost busters…  

It must be like living in the brain of Michele Bachmann: a Neverland of conspiracies and paranoia where Captain Hook rules the oceans, crocodiles tick like alarm clocks and civilization is defended by the few, the brave, the prepared – in their bug out bunkers.

the Ol’Buzzard