Pre-Post-Apocalyptic Blues

 Pre-Post-Apocalyptic Blues

Watching the news recently about Putin’s war against Ukraine,I can’t help feeling that we are all fascinated with the idea that the world may come to an end.  

This is nothing new, of course.  If you turn on your TV, you can binge any number of TV series about the end of the world.  It started with Walking Dead (2010) and continues through TV shows like The Last Ship, The Strain, Under the Dome, Extant, The Rain, Daybreak, Z Nation, Black Summer, Falling Skies, and so many, many more.  In fact, in preparing to write this column for the Polish Daily News, I googled “Best Apocalyptic TV series” and found a site that lists and describes the 100 best apocalyptic series.  I’m sure there’s another site that lists the 100 worst apocalyptic series.

And there doesn’t seem to be an end to these shows about the end of the world.  In fact, I’m really looking forward to HBO’s The Plot Against America, about American Alt-Right guys led by pro-Nazi Charles Lindbergh trying to take over the land of the free and the home of the brave in the early 1940s. 

Watching these series, you see the world brought to an end by zombies, vampires, meteors, alien invasions, and diseases like the coronavirus.

And God maybe.

I just started watching Leftovers -- the HBO series about what the world is like after what appears to be the Rapture happens and Jesus comes back to earth to take the really holy to heaven while leaving you and me behind.

It’s not pretty.  God doesn't take prisoners.

 Of course, all of this gets me wondering why this fascination with the end of things?  Is it because the world suddenly feels really old, and when you get to feel really old you start thinking about how things will end?

Or maybe it's because the world has ended -- virtually.  We spend so much time inside our homes watching the World Come to An End on TV that we don't realize that there's a real world still out there, the one outside my window, a world free of zombies and dogs and cars -- and people.

Hmmm.  It suddenly occurred to me that nobody has passed my house in the last 30 minutes or so.  No walkers or runners, no drivers driving cars or trucks.  Nobody.

Has the world ended while I was writing this column?

I better turn on the TV and see if there's anything left.

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A slightly different version of this article appeared originally in the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish Daily in America, founded in 1908