Crossing the Nation

So this young guy carried a big cross form Texas to DC, on foot. One end of the cross has wheels, but it didn't look comfortable.

Local News Story

Two thoughts:

1) Did he notice how fucking ugly much of the country is as he walked Wal-Mart to McDonald's to Home Depot, to Wal-Mart?

2) The TV station couldn't find any articulate members of the cross carrier's church to interview.

Apocalypse How

As a kid I was terrified of nuclear war. I had nightmares and couldn't stop thinking about it while awake. I don't know how the adults in my life let me watch Threads, a frighteningly gruesome portrayal of the aftermath of an all-out nuclear exchange. The film's imagery probably planted the seeds of the paranoia I felt for years.

I gradually replaced these fears with more mundane anxieties. But I still have an interest in apocalyptic fiction. So when Newt Gingrich made a splash recently on Twitter, I took the bait:

Friend and coauthor bill forstchen notes washington-baltimore blackout mild taste of what an emp (electromagnetic pulse) attack would do

Forstchen's novel "one second after" is an amazingly vivid story of small town's struggles after all electricity has been destroyed by emp  

The novel's scenario is the detonation of three nuclear weapons high over the continental US. There is no blast damage, but the electromagnetic pulse destroys all microcircuitry, knocking out our power grid and all modern electronic devices. Civilization breaks down with the abrupt end to transportation of food and medical supplies. The small town at the center of the story, even with its strong and thoughtful leadership responding to the crisis as good as anyone might, loses upwards of 80% of its population in the year following the attack.

Even when contact with the wider world is reestablished, no one knows who is responsible for the attack. Texas and its neighbors break from the US and Chinese aid workers enter the west US with no indication that they ever plan to leave. I would love to have seen even a little more speculation about what is happening in hotspots through the world as a result of a collapsed America. In the story, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are nuked, but I want to know more. What happens to Israel when its main ally is neutralized? What are China's moves other than its massive, ostensible aid effort?

There are other apocalyptic books of much higher quality than One Second After. Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon is a memorizing and probably realistic chronicle of the effects of a nuclear war on a small community that is not directly hit. The facts of the story are similar to those of One Second After, but the storyteller is plainly better.

I'm also in love with James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand series. Kunstler is a peak oil doomer, but you don't have to accept peak oil for the story to be plausible, since his apocalypse depends also on terrorists nuking Los Angeles and Washington. And in his story, the collapse of our civilization is a vague background that seems barely relevant. In fact, any number of scenarios, including Pat Frank's or William Forstchen's could be that background.

Kunstler tells tales of Union Grove, New York existing as a subsistence farming community some time after the apocalypse. Kunstler paints a very well thought out picture, down to vivid descriptions of his characters' post-apocalypse diet.

In a nutshell, residents of Union Grove live in a world truly made by hand. There are no modern machines and everything is built and maintained using local materials. There is a general sense that technology failed humanity and thus a growing return to mysticism.

I suppose you could pick apart any genre and separate the crap from the quality. Kunstler's contributions are the quality part in this case.

Why Atheists Come to Church

Part I: http://youtu.be/XJv8HcK0awY
Part II: http://youtu.be/e2CgZWq2XvU
Part III: http://youtu.be/oIpXirbzz-0