Thirteen Ways Inside My Apocalyptic Heart
When I was a teenager, I went canoeing in a remote Canadian national park with nine other high school students and two counselors. After three straight days of rain, far from any road or phone, we huddled under a tarp and wondered if the rest of society had suddenly fallen into chaos. We were making campfire biscuits, and as we held the sticks clumped with Bisquik dough over the fire, we wondered aloud, “How would we survive?” The light took on an eerie quality, green and glowing, like the canopy above us. We’d make tools! We’d hunt bear and moose! We’d develop a system of order! We’d sing The Cure all day long! This is stranger than I thought / Six different ways inside my heart… Because no matter what, we’d have each other. Eventually the sky changed, and we were back in our canoes, on to the next campsite, and then back to the van and pizza. But everything looked different after that—temporary and glorious.
All to say, everyone should, at some point in their lives, imagine life after the collapse. Of course, many have. You can readily find lists of post-apocalyptic books and films, but other works have also addressed the end times or something akin to them. Here are not six, but 13 ways inside my apocalyptic heart, across many genres.
“Garden of Earthly Delights” — painting (right-hand panel) by , late 15th/early 16th century I’ve always loved this wonderfully trippy painting for its -esque nature. You can stand for hours and look at it—in
