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Apocalyptic visions crowd the bookstores |
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Written by asap/Tim Whitmire
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Thursday, 11 May 2006 |
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The idea first occurred to me after Sept. 11, 2001, but it became fully formed on the night last August when I stood in line at one of the only gas stations in Charlotte that had fuel during the post-Katrina refinery crunch, waiting to fill my car for a planned Labor Day weekend trip to New York.
It has since become something of a guiding principle: Just because nothing has changed radically in my lifetime doesn’t mean that nothing will.
I’m not alone. Since the terror attacks of almost five years ago broke the American lull of the 1990s, there’s been a healthy market for apocalyptic visions.
This, of course, is nothing new. Cassandra prophesied doom to the Trojans if they let that Greek horse in the gate, Malthus anticipated collapse by overpopulation back in 1798 and Hal Lindsey wrote the obituary for “The Late, Great Planet Earth” in a 1970s best seller that introduced many Americans to fundamentalist End Times prophecies.
But the old game of “Apocalypse: Now or Later?” seems to have been given new energy by a host of early 21st century uncertainties, ranging from the “clash of civilizations” to climate change and concerns about peaking oil production.
Here’s a rundown of some literature that’s focused on the topic -- some of my current favorites, plus an old standby.
THE WONK
“Countdown to a Meltdown,” by James Fallows. The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2005.
The Premise: A memo written to a presidential candidate by a campaign manager, dated Jan. 20, 2016, surveys the economic catastrophe that has befallen the United States over the previous 15 years.
How Bad Will It Get? There’s a reason they call economics the dismal science. In Fallows’ 2016, a year of private college costs $83,000, a day in a hospital $1,350, a year in a nursing home $150,000 and a gallon of gas $9.
Who’s The Bad Guy? Let’s just say Fallows isn’t a big fan of W’s. Ever since the Iraq war began, he’s been savaging the White House’s planning and conduct of the conflict in the pages of the Atlantic, where he’s a national correspondent. This article was his chance to give the same treatment to Bush’s economic policies: It’s Fallows’ contention that the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 have pushed federal tax revenues too low for the government to be able to live up to the country’s commitments and obligations. That leads to a spiraling series of economic disasters in which China overtakes and surpasses the U.S. economically and America becomes “a country with a big market -- and with an undereducated work force, a rundown infrastructure, and a shaky currency.”
How’s The Post-Apocalyptic Sex? Economists? Unless stagflation is your idea of a kinky good time, you’re out of luck here.
THE PROPHETS
 The “Left Behind” books. A series of 12 novels and three prequels authored by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye.
The Premise: Jenkins and LaHaye are the successors to Lindsey. Their first book, “Left Behind,” opens with the Rapture, in which millions of Christian believers disappear, signaling the beginning of the Tribulation and the End of Times. Twelve books later we arrive at “Glorious Appearing: The End of Days.”
How Bad Will It Get? Millions of people disappear without warning, World War III breaks out, a worldwide earthquake kills millions more, the sun goes dark and the moon turns red. And that’s just in the first three books.
Who’s The Bad Guy? The heavy in this tale is Nicolae Carpathia, a United Nations secretary-general who uses world upheaval to convert the U.N. into a Global Community and seize dictatorial power over the entire globe. Since The “Left Behind” series is a dramatization of the apocalyptic events some Christians believe are prophesied in the biblical books of Revelation, Isaiah and Ezekiel, it turns out that Carpathia is none other than Satan himself. (What I particularly love about this guy is that he’s from Romania, which is traversed by a mountain range called the Carpathians. So if the Antichrist turns out to be an American, apparently we all need to be on the lookout for a dude named Joe Appalachia.)
How’s The Sex? Well, I have to be honest and say I only skimmed the second book, “Tribulation Force.” (What can I say? I was busy covering my own journalistic apocalypse, the Duke University lacrosse case.) But LaHaye and Jenkins seem to have done some sincere thinking about Tribulation Sex:
“Does the Bible say anything about marriage during this period?” one character asks on page 169. “Not specifically, as far as I can tell. But it doesn’t prohibit it, either,” is the reply from a pastor. “And kids? Would it be prudent for a couple to bring children in this world now?” “I’d have to advise a lot of caution, prayer and soul-searching before considering that.”
THE MISANTHROPES
 “The Long Emergency,” by James Howard Kunstler (2006), and “Our Final Hour,” by Martin Rees (2004).
The Premise: If you thought trench warfare, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Idi Amin and 25 World Series titles for the New York Yankees made the 20th century a downer, wait till you see what’s next.
How Bad Will It Get? Kunstler predicts a sharp slide into what he calls the “Long Emergency” once we pass the peak of global oil production and we begin to run out of the oil that has fueled a century of explosive economic growth. Absent a car culture, sprawling suburbs become the new slums. The American Southwest and Mountain West are uninhabitable. Painting with the broadest brush imaginable, Kunstler predicts “delusional thinking,  dangerous politics and possibly mayhem” in the South, due to the “latent encoded behavior” of a “cracker culture” that glorifies guns, country music and the military. “Our desperate problems with oil and gas will effectively shut down the growth of our industrial economies, and with that our expectations for economic progress, as we have known it,” Kunstler predicts. Of course, that sounds pretty good next to Rees’s forecast: “I think the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present century.”
Who’s The Bad Guy? This dynamic duo is into collective guilt. Neither has much good to say about mankind or what we have done with our planet and our technological blessings. Kunstler believes our exploitation of fossil fuels have allowed us to temporarily exceed the planet’s Malthusian carrying capacity and that we’re due for a brutal and deadly comeuppance in the decades. Rees sees us speeding blithely into a future in which our own accelerating technology will put us at risk of disaster from any number of directions -- a biological accident, nuclear destruction, greenhouse warming, even a high-energy physics experiment gone wrong.
How’s The Sex? Leave it to wet-blanket Kunstler to make Long Emergency Sex a bummer: “AIDS ought to be particularly worrisome, because even when people have lost everything, they still have sex. That may be all people will have, and it will get them in a lot of trouble.” For God’s sake, Jim! These people are going to have to find a way to survive without commercial air travel, overnight Amazon.com deliveries and a Starbucks on every corner -- cut them some slack!
THE MASTER
 “The Stand,” by Stephen King (1978). (Yes, he has a new book that also touches on the apocalyptic -- “Cell,” a thriller about people who become violent because of a signal that comes over their cell phones. Sorry, haven’t read that one yet.)
The Premise: King’s self-described “long tale of dark Christianity” posits an apocalypse delivered by an out-of-control virus, unleashed by accident from a U.S. government lab. The American survivors divide into two camps: dark and light; good and evil; Boulder, Colo., and Las Vegas, natch. Then it’s a fight to the finish, punctuated with a mushroom cloud. In a long career of best sellers, it’s one of King’s most over-the-top narratives, yet it remains one of his most compelling and satisfying reads.
How Bad Will It Get? There’s a harrowing hike out of Manhattan through a Lincoln Tunnel clogged by the dead -- a classic King horror set-piece. And there’s death by the millions, rendered in unflinching King style: “On Main Street, dogs and soldiers lay dead together in the gutter. In Randy’s Sooperette a man in pj’s lay draped over the meat counter, his arms hanging down. One of the dogs now lying in the gutter had been at this man’s face before losing its appetite. Cats did not catch the flu, and dozens of them wove in and out of the twilit stillness like smoky shades.”
Who’s The Bad Guy? King’s version of Satan is Randall Flagg, the “dark man” who becomes commander of the legions of evil who gather in Las Vegas for the final showdown. “The was a Boy Scout knapsack on his back, old and battered. There was a dark hilarity in his face, and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think -- and you would be right. It was the face of a hatefully happy man, a face that radiated horrible handsome warmth, a face to make waterglasses shatter in the hands of tired truck-stop waitresses, to make small children crash their trikes into board fences and then run wailing to their mommies with stake-shaped splinters sticking out of their knees.”
How’s The Sex? Well, it’s King -- so there’s plenty of it over the course of 1,100-plus pages: good, bad and supernatural. In a memorably horrific encounter with Flagg near the end of the book, one character’s hair is turned snow-white.
asap contributor Tim Whitmire is an AP correspondent based in Charlotte, N.C.
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