APOCALYPSE
I was still reconciling our brutality against the animal as a fair trade for my needs. But the truth was that every second of my existence cost something precious, at the expense of something else equally precious. The difference is that in my modern city life, it’s usually concealed from view.
J Wortham • My 10-Day Crash Course on Surviving the Apocalypse
What startled me about the response to disaster was not the virtue, since virtue is often the result of diligence and dutifulness, but the passionate joy that shined out from accounts by people who had barely survived. These people who had lost everything, who were living in rubble or ruins, had found agency, meaning, community, immediacy in their
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Certain disasters stem from many small problems conspiring to cause one very large problem. For want of a nail, the war was lost; for fifteen independently insignificant errors, the jetliner was lost. Subduction-zone earthquakes operate on the opposite principle: one enormous problem causes many other enormous problems. The shaking from the... See more
The Really Big One
There is a vast amount of wishful thinking in science fiction films, some of it touching, some of it depressing. Again and again, one detects the hunger for a “good war,” which poses no moral problems, admits of no moral qualifications. The imagery of science fiction films will satisfy the most bellicose addict of war films, for a lot of the... See more
Susan Sontag • The Imagination of Disaster
“good war” !
Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
In “Sower,” fire represents both finality and a kind of freedom. Its aftermath affords an opportunity to imagine a renewed world, with renewed requirements for survival.
Hanif Abdurraqib • Lessons for the End of the World
a disaster is a lot like a revolution when it comes to disruption and improvisation, to new roles and an unnerving or exhilarating sense that now anything is possible.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Today, a third of all Americans say they spend some part of their household budget on prepping.
My 10-Day Crash Course on Surviving the Apocalypse
We love to talk about the death of this and the fall of that, and to boast that we are there to witness it. We do like to feel special.