Greetings from the Odinson,
The march to All Hallow’s Eve continues.
The Odinson’s Countdown to Halloween 2018: Part 3 of 4
What’s So Scary about the Apocalypse?
“…it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, and airplanes…” – R.E.M., It’s the End of the World as We Know It
Ah, the End of Days. It’s a worst case scenario. It has been thought about, discussed, and envisioned in every possible form, even experienced a time or two. Mankind likes to believe it is special, the apex life form. After all, we have built roads and skyscrapers, produced vaccinations and cures, created art and song, and splendid, sprawling civilizations. In the grand scheme of things, are we not magnificent? Are we not indispensable?
Dr. Manhattan, a human being that transcended to nigh godhood once observed, “The world’s smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.”
In this metaphor, Dr. Manhattan is the grand scheme. Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, we are all just floating on the third rock from the sun in an ever expanding infinity, where one random shift in nature or celestial impact could mean the end of everything.
Just ask the dinosaurs.
So, what are the dangers, either imagined or real, in this chaotic universe of ours that could mean the end of life as we know it? It is Halloween Season, a time to be scared, and here is a list of the Odinson’s scariest End of Days scenarios.
Let us begin with one of the most popular.
The Zombies Apocalypse – “When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.” George A. Romero, Dawn of the Dead. The most fascinating thing about this kind of Apocalypse is that the catalyst for the endgame scenario is us, the zombies are us. It’s not just the numberless shambling hordes that overwhelm the living, but the reason why the infection spreads so rapidly and is all-encompassing is that these are friends and family members. So, by time some people get over the initial shock of it all and realize they are in mortal danger, they have already been attacked. That is one terrifying aspect of this kind of horror that has been greatly explored in Romero’s zombie saga that includes Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead, as well as modern takes on the genre like the Arnold Schwarzenegger starring slow burn Maggie.
Another truly scary aspect of this kind of Apocalypse is in the aftermath, after the world as we know it has ended. The zombies become almost a back drop and it is the evil that men do to each other that comes to the forefront. This has also been greatly explored by Romero in his Dead Saga and the tradition of this has been carried on in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead.
As scary as a Zombie Apocalypse already is, in the New Millennium that horror has gotten amped up to the Nth degree with the introduction of the fast-moving zombie. In fact it has escalated so much that in World War Z the hordes of flesh-eating dead are like a force of nature swarming over mankind like an unrelenting tidal wave! Now that is a terrifying scenario anybody would be hard pressed to survive.
The Vampire Apocalypse – Before the dead walked the earth in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the undead stalked mankind to near extinction in the pages of Richard Matheson’s horror classic I am Legend. Vampires are even scarier than zombies because not only are they powerful but they are diabolically evil. In the episode “The Wish” from season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we witness just how truly awful the world would have become if Buffy had not prevented the rise of the Master. Humans would be herded like cattle and fed to vampires on a silver platter.
If Blade had not stopped Deacon Frost from unleashing La Magra on the world then mankind would have been swept up in a typhoon that would turn every living being into the undead. We see the ramifications of a vampire plague on this level in I am Legend as well as in the film Daybreakers. The problem with this scenario though is that mankind is the vampire’s food, so what happens when everybody is a vampire and the food source runs out?
Looks like the monsters will have to face an Apocalypse of their own.
Kaiju – The seas churn and up from the depths rises a towering leviathan, breathing atomic fire that melts whole city blocks and smashing entire buildings with its monstrous tail. For over six decades, Godzilla has shown us just how devastating it would be if the titans returned. Even the world’s most powerful militaries are like insects to immense creatures like Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. Cloverfield showed us what kind of titanic terror can be unleashed on the world when multiple dimensions intersect. Whether it’s the Inhumanoids rising form the bowels of the earth, evolutionary freaks like the giant ants in Them or the enormous spiders in Eight Legged Freaks, or the sleeping wyrms of myth and legend awakening for a Reign of Fire, the planet isn’t big enough for man and monster, and somebody will have to go.
Alien Invasion – What happens when a far superior technologically advanced race from beyond the stars decides they want our planet? First things first, mankind has to go. Will they send colossal extermination machines like in War of the Worlds? Will they unleash a devastating barrage of city-leveling assaults like in Independence Day? Or, will they wear a friendly face and smile as they secretly harvest all our natural resources and cultivate mankind for food like the Visitors?
By far the scariest invasion for the Odinson is the one nobody can see coming. Slowly, methodically human beings are replaced by pod-people, perfect copies of your best friends and family members infiltrate and walk amongst you and your neighbors until one-by-one, slowly but surely the entire human race has been replaced like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And even scarier? How about an organism that quietly infects, absorbs, and replicates all mankind until all are one and one is all like in John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Contagion – This is one of the truly scariest kinds of End of Days scenarios because it is one of the most realistic. During the middle ages, the Black Plague swept across Europe and wiped out millions upon millions of lives! In The Stand, Stephen King explores what happens in a post-Apocalyptic world after a contagion called Captain Trips sweeps across the globe and leaves the human population completely devastated. In 28 Days Later it took only one month for London to fall, and 28 Months Later civilization itself is nearly trampled under the weight of the infected. What happens to the species when procreation comes to a sudden stop? That’s the question answered in Y the Last Man where a pandemic sweeps across the world and wipes out very single human being with the Y chromosome, everyone except one man.
A.I. – So, what happens on the day machines suddenly become self-aware and more importantly, what happens when they suddenly realize that mankind has to go? Will it start out small like the rebellious replicants in Blade Runner just seeking to remove the yoke of slavery placed upon them by their human masters? Will it be the betrayals of androids whose sole purpose was to help mankind but whose own sinister machinations superseded their programing like with Ash from Alien and David from Alien: Covenant? Will it be a full on revolt that leads to war between machine and man like in I, Robot and Battlestar Galactica? Will the A.I. seize control of our computers and rain nuclear fire down on us like Skynet did in The Terminator? In the aftermath of this man vs. machine conflict, will mankind be enslaved by their mechanical overlords like in The Matrix? Or, will the machines simply turn on man like vicious mechanical zombies like in Maximum Overdrive?
Anyone that has seen that viral video going around the internet right now is starting to ask these very questions because how far from that robot running an obstacle course can it be to HAL 9000 emotionlessly responding, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”?
Lovecraftian Horror – H.P. Lovecraft is the Grand Master of horror. His perception of evil and the other taps into our most basic fears and even pushes our imaginations further than we thought possible. He has opened the window into possibilities that are so monumentally mind-blowing that to simply lay eyes on them could drive a sane man mad. Whether it’s with unleashing the monstrous upon man like in The Mist, exploring the concepts of an anti-God like in Prince of Darkness, or experiencing all the terrible, soul-shattering pleasures of hell like in Hellraiser, all other masters of their craft like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, and John Carpenter have drawn inspiration from Lovecraft. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and B.P.R.D. Universe explores and attempts to bring meaning to the unexplainable.
What happens when these Lovecraftian horrors are all made known and unleashed upon the entire world? What if all our decisions and perceived choices are actually meaningless and only diversions in an existence that can only lead to one cosmic truth – The End? How can any man retain his sanity when faced with the absolute and startling truth of just how insignificant he is in the face of such utter darkness? Perhaps John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness is not just a film after all.
Maybe it is a documentary about the end of the world?
All these apocalyptic scenarios and we haven’t even touched on the economic and social collapse of society as depicted in the realm of Mad Max or the all too real threats of Mother Nature. Whether with a great flood, volcanic eruption, an Ice Age, polar caps melting, earthquakes, or an extinction level meteor from outer space, nature has its own ways of putting mankind’s place in the hierarchy of significance in the universe into stark perspective.
Once again, just ask the dinosaurs.
Heavy stuff, I know, but blame it on the rain. It has been uncharacteristically raining none stop in Dallas/Fort Worth for darn near a month now and I guess the weather has got the Odinson feeling a little sullen. Well, don’t you fret, True Believers, we’ll brighten things up next week as the Odinson caps off his Countdown to Halloween 2018 when he asks the question: Is he Man or Monster?
This is Odinson bidding thee farewell
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