There’s been a lot of discussion about nuclear war recently, for some reason. Speaking as someone who spent their entire adolescence laboring under the assumption that they wouldn’t live to see the 21st century, it was nice fooling myself during the subsequent decades into thinking we were out of the woods, with the Doomsday Clock sitting at one point at 17 minutes to midnight following the signing of the START Treaty by Bush I and Gorbachev.
We’re down to 89 seconds now. Good morning!
At the risk of getting all Gen X up in here, I imagine it’s difficult for the youths to understand just how pervasive the dread and certainty of nuclear Armageddon was in the 1970s and ‘80s. I even argued with my mother about it. And while yes, the Boomers did grow up through the Cuban Missile Crisis and “duck and cover,” I still maintain they didn’t experience anything like the pop culture saturation bombing we got during the Reagan Era.
You really couldn’t get away from it. Everything from movies (Miracle Mile, WarGames, The Terminator) to music ("Two Tribes," "I Melt With You," "Let's All Make A Bomb," virtually any punk song), to TV shows (The Day After, Testament, Threads). For the gamers, there were card games, video games (it was always a sobering feeling when that last city bought the farm in Missile Command), tabletop and role-playing games.
Granted, some of the latter (First Strike and The Manhattan Project are a couple I remember) focused more on strategy leading up to a war rather than the mechanics of a war itself, because duh. RPGs, on the other hand, tended to focus on the post-apocalypse. Of those, my favorite was probably Twilight: 2000, which put you in a mixed-unit force in Central Europe following a limited nuclear exchange between the U.S.A. and Soviet Union. Fun! We also played a variant of Star Frontiers set on a planet the Terminators took over, because shut up, that’s why.
To a callow youth, the idea of surviving a nuclear apocalypse was a heady thing indeed. Red Dawn showed us a potential guerilla future more exciting than the realities of Saturday detention (John Bender wouldn’t stand a chance against Jed Eckert). Provided your family were big Second Amendment enthusiasts, you lived near mountains, and had a father who ran a mini-Bass Pro Shops, that is.
And it didn’t even have to be nuclear. Hell, there was a post-apocalyptic *Saturday morning cartoon,* eliciting both consternation (it was a world of "savagery, super-science, and sorcery!") and … other feelings (how you doin', Ariel?) in boys of a certain age.
It takes a special kind of dumb to think you could survive something as cataclysmic as a nuclear war or environmental catastrophe. Teenage boys are that dumb. At least, I was. My friends and I would play Car Wars while watching The Road Warrior, imagining we were non-anti-Semite Max Rockatanskys hurtling through the wasteland in the last of the V8 Interceptors.
Then I grew up. More to the point: then I had kids.
Becoming a parent changes you … I’ll pause to let that breathtaking revelation sink in. Your priorities shift, obviously, and plans for your future must take these new little gremlins into account. More to the point, “Sitting at Ground Zero and drinking a bottle of overproof rum to make sure I catch fire quickly” probably won’t cut it.
If you’ve ever looked into “doomsday prepping,” you know it’s increasingly popular, and it’s a lot. Not that there’s anything wrong with it; we Gulf Coast residents put together our own mini-prepper stashes every year, only we call them “hurricane kits.” Not being caught flatfooted by a disaster or civil unrest is smart, at least up until the point where you’re stockpiling more ammo than food.
And while I get the utility of laying by several weeks/months of supplies, isn’t it kind of wishful thinking when it comes to nuclear war? Consider that the person asking this is someone who lives in the 4th largest city in the country, roughly 25 miles as the crow flies from the 14th largest refinery in the world. Unless I happen to be camping in Big Bend when the shit hits the fan, I’m going out like a Shrinky Dink left in the oven too long.
Because as any sane adult (parent or not) knows, the post-apocalypse ain’t nothin’ to fuck with. Maybe you end up in some Outback oasis after the “‘pockyclips” or in a Mother Abigail scenario and someone gets the power on in a superflu or fallout-free location. Call me a pessimist, but I think we’re more likely looking at Thunderdome or The Road, where – if I’m lucky – my kids are taken in by a benevolent militia family after I’ve died of gangrene.
The idea of protecting your loved ones once Frogtown rises is a daunting one and turns the thought of riding out the End Times into a cost benefit analysis of going all in vs throwing in the towel. Because beyond the practical questions (what sort of End Time are we equipping for? And for how long?), there’s the reality of trying to navigate the possible* savagery of the aftermath.
Having children kind of upended my long-range strategy of hunkering down in my bunker, eating cold Wolf Brand chili from the can, and – if the genny’s still working – finally finishing Skyrim. Because let’s be honest, a doomsday scenario is the only way I make it all the way through that stupid game.
Survival in that environment, at least in the long run, is simultaneously an exhausting and daunting proposition. The good-ish news is, most of my kids** are reaching that age where they’re going to have start making their own plans (and two of them would honestly be pretty capable warlords in their own right), but I’m at the point now where if someone wants to trade for some of my stockpiles of cigarettes and anti-depressants, cool. If not, well, somebody’s got to be the Toadie.
*Or probable. We’ve seen what 40% of this country voted for.
**More on that later, maybe.
***Note to self: start stockpiling cigarettes and anti-depressants.
One post-apocalyptic show I remember was Ark II (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_II). It was trippy.