How’s It All Going to End?

(Judging the Apocalypse)

I first developed this assignment in a class where I had students read and study Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. In the novel, a father and his young son travel through a postapocalyptic wasteland toward rumors of some semblance of a remaining civilization, but for the most part none of the markers of society we take for granted remain. The characters are concerned only with the barest necessities for survival.

In the novel, it’s not clear how or why the world has collapsed, and the class enjoyed speculating about the possibilities. At some point in the discussion, a student asked me if I thought the world was going to end (by which the student meant civilization), and I said I thought most definitely.

Another student asked if I thought it might happen in my (or their) lifetimes, and what kind of odds I’d give on us experiencing something like what happens in The Road or any number of other postapocalyptic narratives, like The Hunger Games or Mad Max or The Handmaid’s Tale. Without thinking, I said I honestly thought the odds were pretty good that we’d be done in by one thing or another, if not in my lifetime, in theirs.

Cheery! Who says class can’t be fun?

In this experience, you will first make a binary choice. Do you believe (as I do) that civilization as we know it will end? Or are you hopeful that we’re up to whatever challenges we may face in the future, that humankind will persist forever, potentially even if or when the earth becomes uninhabitable?

Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll create an argument supporting your choice.

If we’re doomed, why? And what is going to precipitate our downfall?

If you’re hopeful, why? And how will humans be able to persist?

And how certain are you of your conclusions, no matter which side of the divide you fall on?

AUDIENCE

The audience is going to be curious, but they may not be wildly enthusiastic when it comes to reading and thinking about the end of the world. It’s an interesting exercise in the abstract, but it also requires us to delve into some potentially scary territory. I never would’ve even thought of the assignment if my students hadn’t goaded me into it, because I don’t actually enjoy spending time contemplating the end of civilization.

But to think through these potential threats and how we might mitigate them is also a valuable service. You’re doing the audience a favor, although they may not recognize or thank you for it.

Your choice of civilization-ending event will dictate your consideration of your audience’s attitudes and knowledge. Some threats are often publicly discussed, while others might be a little more obscure. Some may raise thorny political or cultural dimensions, which may impact receptiveness to your argument. For some topics, audiences will possess a lot of mistaken information that you may have to undo.

At the least, your audience should leave your piece significantly more knowledgeable about the issues on which you choose to write, even if they don’t necessarily end up agreeing with you.

Think through these issues and proceed accordingly.

PROCESS

1. Choose your path.

Will civilization end or will humankind persist? There’s no right or wrong answer to this question on its face, so what you choose will often be a reflection of your own attitudes and worldview. I tend toward pessimism when it comes to considerations of human nature, so I can’t help but think we’re doomed.

Other people have faith in human ingenuity, and believe our big brains and survival instincts will make sure we persist as a species indefinitely.

Your path is up to you.

2. Choose your scenario.

Whether you believe we’re doomed or we will persist, we for sure will face threats to our continuing existence. In fact, we face them this very moment.

End-of-civilization scenarios divide into two broad categories, anthropogenic (man-made), and non-anthropogenic (naturally occurring).

Non-anthropogenic threats include a catastrophic meteor strike, the death of the sun, alien invasion, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and disruption of the Oort cloud. (Look it up.)

Anthropogenic threats are things like population overload, global warfare, environmental disaster, global warming, and artificial intelligence leading to robot takeover, like in The Terminator.

Disease, the “end of men” (collapsing birthrates as portrayed in Children of Men and The Handmaid’s Tale), peak oil, nuclear war, EMP, terrorism, the Rapture—the list of different threats goes on and on.

There are plenty of resources available to study possible civilization-ending events. Be cautious, though. Some of these are going to come from conspiracy theorists and may be interesting reading but not necessarily reliable.

You may see multiple problems on the horizon, but you only have room to pick one possible scenario for analysis and discussion. You’re going to explain either how it’s going to end us or how we’re going to overcome it.

3. Do any necessary additional research.

Choosing your scenario likely required a fair bit of research. Now is a chance to do any additional research you think is necessary before you get rolling on a draft. You’ll probably need to keep researching throughout the process, so don’t delay writing for too long. The writing itself will reveal holes in your argument that will need to be filled by research.

At this stage, you should have enough to get going but likely not enough to get to the end. That’s normal and expected.

4. Analyze the audience needs.

What questions is your audience going to have about your topic? Off the top of my head, they might ask the following:

What is it?

How would it end civilization?

Wait, what do you mean by “end” and “civilization?” (Meaning, what’s going to be left afterward?)

How likely is this scenario?

Is there anything we can do to prevent it? Is there anything we should be doing to prevent it?

I don’t know what order those belong in, and I don’t know that they’re comprehensive, but they’re the kind of questions you should be thinking about.

5. Write.

Write something. Maybe it’s a draft. Maybe it’s an outline. Maybe it’s an illustration or diagram representing what may happen to something specific if your doomsday scenario comes to pass. How much land is inhabitable? What kind of work will people do? What will day-to-day life be like? Write something that helps you think more deeply about your topic and audience.

6. Put it together.

Create a cohesive work of analysis, argument, and discussion that explores the question at the center of this experience.

Do it in a way that engages your audience’s questions and meets their needs. This may take a fair amount of trial and error. Keep the goal in mind and keep shaping until you have something you feel good about.

7. Test it.

What questions do you want to ask your audience to see if you’re hitting the target? Develop them and test them.

8. Revise, edit, polish, title.

What did you learn from your test audience? Are you persuasive? Are you sure you don’t tip over into conspiracy theory territory? Do you have the right amount of intrigue without leaving the audience so frightened they don’t want to read the whole thing?

REFLECT

Are you a survivor? If the apocalypse comes, are you going to do everything you can to keep going? I’m the kind of person who, if there’s word of a nuclear strike and I see a great, glowing light in the distance, you’ll find me sprinting toward it, hoping to be vaporized into ash.

My wife, on the other hand, is a survivor. She’d be like the characters in The Walking Dead and charge into the zombie hoard with a knife in her teeth, swinging a baseball bat.

Where does your attitude come from? I think my mentality was shaped by a 1983 television movie called The Day After. It follows the lives of people in Kansas who have survived an initial nuclear strike by the Soviet Union. The movie is cheap and cheesy by contemporary standards, but it was watched by more than a hundred million people when it first aired. I was thirteen years old, the right age to fully understand the implications of the story but not old enough to process the movie rationally. It gave me nightmares for weeks. I remember firmly deciding I didn’t want to live like that.

In a lot of ways, my attitude was shaped by a rather safe and privileged upbringing. My instinct for survival has never been tested. (Knock on wood.) Sometimes, I view my own attitudes as a kind of character flaw, an affront to what’s supposed to be our basic biological drives. On the other hand, I really, really don’t think I want to stick around for the really bad stuff.

But what about you? Imagine being confronted with living in the midst of your apocalypse. Would you keep fighting to stay alive no matter what? What are your attitudes rooted in?

REMIX

Write a narrative set in your scenario that reflects your argument. You have a setting and situation. Add character and plot, and you have everything you need.