The End of the World as we Know It?

Apparently Australia is talking about one thing this morning (and no, it’s not that Bill Clinton thinks that our illustrious PM K-Rudd is the smartest world leader) and that thing is this crazy weather we woke up to.

They Sydney skies are blood red and made us re-think that “the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one”.  The War of the World-esque skies were however not from something interesting such as an alien invasion, but from dust. 

I woke up this morning in Queensland to wind so strong it blew down a small tree in my backyard.  Melbourne was shaken by two earthquakes (albeit small ones).  Central New South Wales was bombarded by hail.  Bushfires are ablaze across Queensland. 

Is this the apocalypse, the rapture that Nostradamus predicted? The Second Coming of Christ prophesised throughout the ages?  Well if it is there is bugger all we can do about it apart from have a stiff drink. 

But it got me thinking about a play I performed in during the 1998 Sunshine Coast Drama Festival called “Concrete Walls” (the playwright’s name escapes me) where I played one of four teenagers who survived a nuclear holocaust by accidently being in a bomb shelter. 

My character couldn’t bear it. Survivor’s guilt, boredom and cabin fever caught up on her, so she popped some pills and muttered the immortal lines “I didn’t know dying would be such a painful experience”.  This moving last line caused many a snigger in the audience, but let’s not get off track. 

If the world did head up shit creek, either by nuclear or environmental disaster, freak weather, alien invasion, giant asteroid (where’s Bruce Willis when you need him?) or by God’s fury, would I want to be a survivor?

In disaster movies people are always running to get into the shelters. Why? So you can live underground with the same 50 people for the end of your days? So you can spend the rest of your life eating cans of Baked Beans?  I forget what happened in “Concrete Walls” but what I would choose the pill-popping option. 

What sort of existence is a life without your loved ones, without the comforts of home?  I suppose I could live without technology for awhile, but a life without peanut butter and wine? Thanks, but no thanks! 

So if I do manage to see the end of the world (and something tells me I’ll see lots of nasty stuff in my lifetime) I’ll be sitting on my veranda, a bottle of really really expensive wine on hand and some Valium.  Good night, and good luck.