Oregon Trail for the P.A.

Even though this is post post-apocalypse month:

http://hatsproductions.com/organtrail.html

Eleven Songs for a Scorched Earth

On days like these, wallowing around my cubicle, I think of the songs that would go incredibly well with a static-y radio, a rocking chair on a porch, a pooch at my side, and a view out onto a nuclear wasteland that debris of civilization blows across the landscape in gusts of wind.

1. Crazy - Willie Nelson:


The song that inspired me to make this post, its presence in GTA: San Andreas basically catapulted my love for this song, which I already loved. Something about absolute chaos set to Willie Nelson's calm and twangy vocals make this a perfect match for letting your eyes glaze over the smoldering remains of all humans built up with such big ambitions.

2. Xzibit - Paparazzi



A straight take from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, this song brings out the anger at everyone ruining the game with their greed and vanity, much as I would think the world would succumb to. Turn this shit up and start whittling away on that porch.

3. Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan



A given when it comes to waiting out huge disasters, whether sitting atop the roof of a house or floating around town on a door, Texas Flood will keep you company.

4. April 26, 1992 - Sublime



I can imagine people would become excellent at looting in the after-world, and why not make it a bit of fun with sweet guitar plucking?

5. Floods - Pantera



For the more volatile of after-worlds, maybe a Terminator-esque one. But God love the raining part of this song at the end, when some raw and terrifying event has passed and you're left in the rain sitting beside some corpse or wreckage.

6. Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset - Modest Mouse



Most all of Modest Mouse's songs have sort of apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, or disorder about them. Isaac Brock's voice and the endlessly repetitive guitar riffs circle round and round as I would imagine going into to a form of happy-go-lucky madness in the after-world.

7. Fade to Black - Metallica



You can't really get more scorched earth than Metallica (the earlier years), and this song epitomizes some deep, dark road you'd be traveling while clutching that flask of black liquor.

8. La Mer. - Charles Trenet



How do you sleep at night in the post-apocalypse when all hell is breaking loose? This song. Over and over. On this note, basically the whole soundtrack to The Butterfly and the Diving Bell would work for life after earth.

9. Life Goes On - 2pac



Look at that title. Listen to those lyrics. Play this when you're trudging out to find food for the day among the rubble. "Pour out some liquor, have a toast for the homies, see we both gotta die, but you chose to go before me"

10. Pay No Mind (Snoozer) - Beck



Beck needed to make this list. He would be an amazing companion in the after-world, probably the most sane out of all of us, just listen to this shit.

11. Passenger - Iggy Pop



The after-world is a world for the restless, forced to be on the move every waking day. This song defines the endless acid-trip trips through some ungodly landscape and spectacles that you'd never be able to talk about from that day on, but that will haunt you from that day on. Singing la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la...

Zombies invade DC, then invade Washington Post

Zombies invade our commute

Five books about zombies

Is There Love After Armageddon?

Earlier in the month I wrote a post about trying to justify the present time as a post-apocalyptic setting. It started out as a way to pretty much avoid the topic, and then it slid into becoming just an extremely depressing train-wreck, which made me want to push it even farther the more I saw myself sliding out of control, because it was funny and/or extremely depressing either of which I thought were reason enough for it to be blogged. Yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that. But here's a post about the actual idea of a future post-apocalypse!

In a way I think some sort of post-apocalyptic setting would be refreshing in the same way it seems refreshing to think of jumping into the Arctic Sea and think of spending the rest of your days there. Basically, it would completely suck to live in a burned down world/one taken over by killer machine-zombie-earwigs/waterworld mostly because you would likely be separated from people you would know and like and love. I mean it would suck eeking your way to food, shelter, and water, but assuming that you were surviving in the after world then the instant you have a second to think, it would probably depress the shit out of you that anyone around you is probably miles away, and if you do find them, they'll try to kill you for food or just out of madness. There's not really any room for those people that pick you up. But maybe you could find some randos to befriend, who you'd probably never even speak to if life was the way it was. I feel like a freakish afterworld would bring a shit ton of people together actually regardless of their apparent differences.

Most appearances of the world or society rather, in the post-world show an obscenely bleak picture. This is probably true on the whole, but I almost suspect our immense loneliness and whatever compassion we'd have left at that point might cause us to seek out people after some time regardless of resources. These relationships would probably incredibly unstable because of the conditions, but sofar that people can survive I feel like they would want company at least to travel around the desolate regions with. Granted you'd have your soul-depleted loners and human-turned-animals, but on a one on one basis, if you've established that these people are not out to get you for the most part AND you're not in some sort of Andes-Mountains-people-eating-people-to-stay-alive situation, then I think there might be a chance for companionship in the after-world. If not, uh, you're fucked (I'd opt for becoming an animal-like human).

A Smattering of Post Apocalypse Movies

Top Ten Post-Apocalypse Movies (Not Mine)

Also, this is a pretty awesome list from Wikipedia of Post-Apocalyptic movies (not sure why the list above didn't include Wall-E, c'mon. The list is from a bigger post of dystopian films, which has a lot of cool categories. (1 Governmental/social; 2 Alien controlled dystopias (both governmental and societal); 3 Corporate based dystopias (nongovernmental); 4 Cyberpunk/techno; 5 Post-apocalyptic; 6 Miscellaneous)

Post-apocalyptic
Post-apocalyptic storylines take place in the aftermath of a disaster - typically nuclear holocaust, war, plague - that justifies a civilization's turn towards dystopian like behaviors. Although not a requisite, most post-apocalyptic visions have a man-made cause.

9 (2009)
12 Monkeys (1995)
20 Years After (2008)
2019, After the Fall of New York (1983)
28 Days Later (2002)
28 Weeks Later (2007)
The Bed-Sitting Room (1969)
A Boy and His Dog (1974)
Blindness (2008)
The Blood of Heroes (1989)
The Book of Eli (2010)
Casshern (2004)
Cherry 2000 (1987)
Children of Men (2006)
Cyborg (1989)
Def-Con 4 (1985)
The Day of the Triffids (film) (1962)
Five (1951)
Genesis II (1973)
Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)
I Am Legend (2007)
Le Dernier Combat (1983)
Logan's Run (1976)
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The Noah (1975)
Mad Max (1979) and its sequels The Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
On The Beach (1959) and its remake On the Beach (2000)
Origin: Spirits of the Past (Anime) (2006)
Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
Parasite (1982)
Planet Earth (1974)
The Postman (1997)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Quintet (1979)
Robot Holocaust (1986)
The Road (2009)
Rock & Rule (1983)
Six-String Samurai (1998)
Tank Girl (1995)
Terminator: Salvation (2009)
Testament (1983)
Threads (1984)
Time of the Wolf (2003)
Titan A.E. (2000)
The Ultimate Warrior (1975)
Ultraviolet (2006)
Ultra Warrior (1990)
WALL-E (2008)
Waterworld (1995)
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
Zardoz (1974)

very informative (please include with your zombie readiness kit)

Cross-posted from Yahoo! Movies and several sources on the web.

But for real, guys.

I know you guys think this is hilarious and fun to talk about, but I am compiling my zombipocalypse kit. For the rest of you trying to prepare, I offer some helpful training tips: http://www.zombiecombatclub.com/ (The video especially.)

I don't know how many of you know this about me, but I have a very real fear of zombies. Something about the disease/helplessness/used-to-be-someone-you-knew element, I have never gotten over it, so the "New Hollywood" bullshit zombies are especially irksome to me.

The second biggest problem with the zombiepocalypse world is the issue of trust. (If I have to tell you what the first biggest problem is, we're not friends.) There's all these groups a la The Book of Eli who insist on imposing an out-dated caste-esque system because they were able to grab power/guns/food before others.

I wasn't super crazy about that movie in general, but I appreciate its take on an -ism that I have rarely seen portrayed as bringing out the worst in people, rather than the best. I know that wasn't a zombie situation, but in the undead attack, there's always the crazies who live in an old gas station and lure other survivors to them with a phony SOS for the purpose of feeding their zombie dogs in the basement.

Barring those guys, we are led to believe that the people who are still alive are not only capable, but noble (they probably go around snatching children from the drooling maws of the undead (read: Alice)). That's a nice idea, but I'm not convinced that, in the face of not only tragedy and disaster but also decomposing horror, people are going to do that thing where we all rise up to better ourselves and be greater than the sum of our parts.

Cynical? Maybe. But I'm ready.

Semi-Post Apocalyptic Video Game: Red Faction

OH MY GOSH. Red Faction blew me away. The game was set up as a mining colony on Mars where people from Earth would come with the hopes of starting a new life only to find out they would be turned into slaves and worked to death.










First of all, any game with a railgun is always going to be amazing. Though, I would say the best part of Red Faction was the ability to destroy the environment completely. I used to rocket-launch the shit out of rock bridges just as my adversary was crossing them. Needless to say the rocket didn't kill them, instead it was the long plunge into oblivion. I was in love with rocket-launching the shit out of everything. There was also C-4 which was sweet cause you could stick it on people and blow the crap out of them.


My favorite guilty pleasure in that game would be to get the rocket launcher and railgun. I would find a secluded place on the map and use the rocket-launcher to burrow my way into a wall(and youd be surprised how far you could go). Id then take my railgun and just sit there and kill everybody- without fear of retaliation cause I forgot to mention the proximity mines i'd put in the tunnel.


Red Faction wasted a lot of my time while I had a PS2.

Post Apocaplypse Video Games

Half Life 2

Fallout 3

Bioshock

post-apocalyptic rage comic

For more rage comics (not just the post-apocalyptic kind), visit the source.

Pros and Cons: Waterworld

Post-Apocalypse Setting: Waterworld (and Zelda: Windwaker)

The ice caps have melted as the Gore-acles(!) predicted and we find ourselves floating around on scrappily constructed vessels, wary of those with motors and that fateful gasoline liquid that powers them as we pray for wind and sunshine. Various pirates of the sea, not unlike the pirates of the sand from Mad Max, rule the waters with tyrannical might. One Dennis Hopper has an eye patch, a bald head, and a lot of evil facial expressions, but you've got one Kevin Costner with webbed feet, gills behind his ears, and a noble but naive belief that this compelling post-world world you live in is compelling enough to spend a monstrous amount of money on for a film (I don't see what's so bad about it, but then again, I've only really seen the movie in parts with multiple-year increments in between my viewings).

Pro: Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper and the only real woman I remember from the whole movie, who just happens to be a babe, are all entertaining peers in this world.

Con: There's water everywhere. I mean I like swimming as much as the next Joe, but c'mon. I'd be wearing floaties at all times I know that much.

Pro: You can try out your Wave Race 64 jetskiing skills in real life or for a more up to date reference, practice imitating Kenny Powers moves throwing loose women from the back of them as the asshole that he is.

Con: Your hands will be forever pruny.

Pro: You'll become proficient in spearing things.

Con: You'll probably end up imprisoned on Hopper's wildly big tanker and will have to work the engine room until you die.

Pro: Going on underwater looting sessions of the sunken big apple in a large bag of air pulled by Costner.

Con: There's water everywhere.

Pros and Cons of a Given Post-World World: Mad Max Desert Land

To aid in some decision-making when the time comes, I'm gonna try and outline some positives and negatives having to do with a variety of game-over-but-still-going scenarios.

Mad Max Post-Apocalypse:
For those who haven't seen these movies, I believe (from my faint memories of these movies at the Nesbit household what seems like thirty years ago) that the world consisted of a lot of really 80's hair-y people riding around on motorcycles, motorized tricycles, four-wheelers, and whatever other number of wheels you can hook up comfortable to a gasoline-powered engine, harrassing whatever creatures they found into giving them their random shit, and searching for what? more gasoline for more driving? water? I kind of forget. But basically if you want to be apart of a motorcycle/four wheeler gang and dress up like the Little Giants, then this afterworld life is probably for you. Let's dish out some pros/cons:

Pro: Mel Gibson's craziness is finally at peace with the just-as-crazy-if-not-more people surrounding him. Society don't give too much a damn about what someone says when they're drunk and being arrested when most problems are solved in a fucking Thunderdome (two men enter, one man leaves - someone call Joe Riedel!).

Con: It's dry as hell. If you need moisturizer in this currently serenely humid earth climate (it's still green and blue from far away, not tan and orange), then this will most definitely suck for you. Also, get yoself some frickin' goggles cuz the sands be a flyin'!

Pro: You get drive around like the biggest game of Road Rash ever made, popping off jumps, firing automatic weaponry that's been mounted on your vehicles, and quenching your thirst for speed day in and day out.

Con: This life will inevitably grow tiresome, and it doesn't appear that these savages will care too much to settle down and write poetry or make music or something deeper. But hey, didn't stop 'em from making a shit ton of sequels!

Post-Apocalypse Now

I don't know why everyone's so quick to assume that the apocalypse is somewhere in the future, when it very well has already happened, and not just once. Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world number 456*. No one ever said it had to be some distinguished war or incredible disaster. What if it was a slow and gradual process that inevitably let our abilities and ambitions and dellusions take over our lives and in a sense, ended the world that once was?

In fact, how many times has a the world ended in some respect for some species or way of life? I feel like with each major technological advancement, we entered a new world while simultaneously ending an old one. But in terms of our present post-apocalyptic world, I'd like to take a look at the what we're facing in a completely new conceptualization of the end of the world.

We no longer occupy ourselves with the space outside our screens, TV, phones, and computers. Our wasteland is paved, out poisonous gases are the heavily monitored and circulated fresh air. We have at least two or three layers separating us at all times from the world that was - screens, earphones, phones, music, emails, text, cubicles, elevators, cars, and other living body bags**. The nutrients we get come from laboratories, our exercise comes from stationary machines, and our thoughts come from fictional characters, who we take for a slightly exaggerated but mostly real reflection of what normal people are. We've created a self-existing existence so we don't have to do shit.

The world has already ended, and we're just waiting out the days in our various online, wired, hooked in purgatories. Days stretch on for miles, and subcultures not possible before have now taken over lingo, habits, and insecurities. Everything's awash with speed, super-saturated images, and constant noise. Innocence is a joke, if not a fetish or a myth. Awkwardness has become mainstream so that we can no longer distinguish discomfort from being cool. We hurtle through space while remaining planted at a computer for 95% of the day waiting to hit a wall somewhere, but all we find is more slippery mediums to slide faster through. Anything that can be built or crafted doesn't merit approval from us until it hits 1 million views, at the minimum. Death doesn't really exist, but then again neither does life.

And the scariest part of the present post apocalyptic world? It is how strange this world would be if everyone didn't always act so damn unfazed by it all.

*This number is a completely arbitrary number

**A little over the top? Perhaps.

post-apocalyptic readiness

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what I would do in worst-case scenarios: chemical, biological, nuclear, and terror attacks; "fire sale" scenarios; burning, looting, rioting in the streets; severe, climate change-fueled weather events; and the like. Some are more realistic than others, but in the words of one of my favorite McDonald's ad campaigns, "Hey, it could happen."

I am not usually a nut about these things, but I do think it makes sense to have a plan. Therefore, I am asking the following rhetorical questions:

1. Who would you most want to be stuck in a crowded, dark, and hot subway car with when the train derails during an earthquake? (Can be anyone, alive or deceased, fictitious or real).

2. You are in DC walking on the National Mall near the WWII memorial when you hear a massive explosion, shaking the ground violently. You turn around to see a giant ball of fire and smoke rising from the Capitol dome. What do you do next?

3. The City of New York has just ordered a mandatory evacuation of all five boroughs due to a projected category 5 hurricane, which will make landfall in 36 hours. You have decided to hunker down and wait out the storm in your midtown apartment. You take the shopping cart you stole from ShopRite to go pick up supplies, amidst streets jam packed with cars and frantic city residents. What do you fill the cart with?


My initial responses are as follows, though I reserve the right to edit later:

1. Casey Ryback from the Under Seige series. SEAL commando turned chef with top training in special-weapons and counter-terrorism. Not only would he be able to engineer our way out of the subway car to safety, but he could protect the citizens from mal-intended foes and probably prepare food for the group if we were stranded for many days and able to catch rats or other rodents in the tunnels.

2. I would immediately sprint north up 17th, stopping by the White House to see if there was any activity of note, then directly toward GW's campus on H street, knowing that the university has its own police force and highly developed disaster readiness plans. If I had time, and depending on the severity of the attack, I would proceed to my house up in Mount Pleasant (about 2 miles north of the National Mall) load up my backpack with water, flashlights, and powerbars. If it was best to leave my house , I would get on my bike and listen for the advice of federal officials over radio.

3. I would put a change of clothes, a blanket and a flashlight in the cart before I left, just in case I wasn't able to make it back. I would probably go to the local bodega, not a supermarket, to load up on a few gallons of water, canned soup, and other non-perishables. I would also try to get in touch with close friends to see if they wanted to combine forces and stay in the same house/apartment, especially if they are better prepared than I am. Gotta mooch where it's wise.

That's all I've got for now. I don't really know what the "right" thing to do is during these types of situations, but I think that's the point. We don't really think about getting sprayed until the shit actually hits the fan.

My next planned post: The Bicycle: Is there a better form post-apocalyptic transportation?

wordsmithery: post-apocalypticism

I invent -isms quite often. For example, "sextism" can refer to the preference for, or more broadly the practice of, engaging in sexual communication via text message; refers to the partiality of an individual (a "sextist") to engage in sexting. For those uninitiated, "sexting" itself is a portmanteau; for more information please see my post on the subject. Now, on to the meat of this post:

I am a lifelong lover of stories, movies, games, and adventures the realm of the post-apocalypse. Please note that my love of all things post-apocalyptic extends to the sub-genres doomsday, mega natural disaster, and dystopia. This covers a broad range, but for the purpose of this post, I am merely referring to the post-apocalyptic category.

While apocalypticism is a well-known subset of religious belief, the area of post-apocalypticism is much less discussed and dwelt upon. While there is a massive body of cultural work in the area, the -ism itself deserves more respect. Below is the treatise of a self-declared post-apocalypticist.

I used to think that survival after the end of the world was such a romantic concept - the idea of man against nature or machine or alien or plague, but always, simultaneously (and most importantly) against himself. But then I figured it out. I believe the revelation came as I was reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. As horrible as some of these post-world worlds are, I see them not as hellish scenarios, but as fantasies. I see them as escapes from a reality that is complicated by meaningless detail and an existence which is increasingly distracted. I tend to think that our priorities are screwed up 95 percent of the time. How often do we place money over friendship, image over knowledge, having more things over having meaningful experiences. But in the post-apocalyptic world, it's all about naked, obvious truths. What really matters comes to the forefront. Good over evil. Survival. Use everything efficiently. Coexist with what is left of nature. Money is value-less. Love triumphs. Sure there aren't any comforts, and you're constantly paranoid about impending attack from roving thieves or zombies, but I am still, to a degree, envious of the characters whom I read about, watch, and play as.

There's plenty more to be said on this subject. In fact, I am using this post to formally propose to the powers that be that "post-apocalypse" be the theme of October. Perfect as we head into the fall season and Halloween. Daniel and Edward, I am looking to you for validation here.