Crown of Creation

Ever since I was young, and I mean really young, I've been fascinated by nuclear war, mutual assured destruction, fallout, nuclear winter, radiation, missile silos, and all the paraphernalia of the one technology that mankind has to effect his own, complete destruction. I'm the only person I know who thought the last few minutes of WarGames was freakin' hilarious. With all our modern technology, social justice (and injustice), evolution, ability and enlightenment, that we would destroy ourselves in an accident of arrogance, all I could think to do was to laugh. Subsequent times that I watched the movie, the sheer hilarity and tragedy of the situation faded, as I knew that the good guys would win, but the idea that a few big horn sheep butting heads over what their economic systems look like could blow up an entire nonconsenting planet was actually kind of comforting. No matter what problems we have, if we can't solve them, they can just be wiped off the face of the universe. We could take the coward's way out as a species. So no matter how bad you think things are, they could be worse. You won't even have time to hide under your desk. We could turn ourselves into dust in the vacuum of space with just the push of a button, and it would be obvious that all our petty problems were nothing in the scheme of things. As the Merry Minuet says, they're rioting in Africa/They're starving in Spain/There's hurricanes in Florida/and Texas needs rain./The whole world is festering with unhappy souls/the French hate the Germans/the Germans hate the Poles/Italians hate Yugoslavs/South Africans hate the Dutch/and I don't like anybody very much./But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud/for man is endowed with the mushroom shaped cloud/and we know for certain that some lucky day/someone will set the spark off/and we will all be blown away.

There's a second verse, but you get the point. "What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man."

Nevil Shute's novel, On the Beach, is an incredibly touching tale of the entire population of the Southern Hemisphere having to come to terms with their imminent deaths. For them, there would be no quick vaporization. Instead they get the curse (or perhaps grace) of having to wait for the radiation to arrive, knowing that they will die a slow, painful death, down to the last man. I'll spare you the details, but I can name off the effects of various doses of radiation like Jeopardy contestants can name obscure inventors. And I'm okay with that. It makes me feel good.

Nuclear war is one of the most all-reaching, imminent, and evil ways of having your life cut short, before you thought you'd go. It's most evil because it was another person that decided to do it, and they're doing it to everyone. It's not a force of nature, a natural part of life. It's murder. All the things that we don't do because we will have the time to do them later, those are the things that we will regret when the doctor tells us we have two weeks to live, or when they drop the Bomb. The more time you have once your stone has been carved before you will have to lie under it, the harder it will be, unless you have enough time to get ready. As Tim McGraw sang, "I hope someday you have the chance to live like you were dying." It's in the middleground where the heartache and sorrow lies. When you have enough time to regret, but not enough time or energy to address those regrets. Or when you have enough time to get ready to face the firing squad, so to speak, and then you are given some more time. Enough time to build up some more regrets, before your time on this rock is finally revoked. That's where the evil lies. My late aunt had to deal with the first case. The people in Shute's book have to deal with the second. I don't know which is worse.

Don't read this book if you're having a good day. It will ruin your week. But if you're a little down, or more than a little, by all means, enjoy the fact that it could be worse. You could be in Falmouth a year after World War Three.

"And they can't do anything about it?"

"Not a thing. It's just too big a matter for mankind to tackle. We've just got to take it."

"I won't take it," she said vehemently."It's not fair. No one in the Southern Hemisphere ever dropped a bomb, a hydrogen bomb or a cobalt bomb or any other sort of bomb. We had nothing to do with it. Why should we have to die because other countries nine or ten thousand miles away from us wanted to have a war? It's so bloody unfair."

"It's that, all right," he said. "But that's the way it is."

There was a pause, and then she said angrily, "It's not that I'm afraid of dying, Dwight. We've all got to do that sometime. It's all the things I'm going to have to miss...." She turned to him in the starlight. "I'm never going to get outside Australia. All my life I've wanted to see the Rue de Rivoli. I suppose it's the romantic name. It's silly, because I suppose it's just a street like any other street. But that's what I've wanted, and I'm never going to see it. Because there isn't any Paris now, or London, or New York."

Feel better? I do.