The Apocalypse: As American As Apple Pie

American has a growing love affair with the end of the world. Why this fondness with all things apocalyptical? Novels like "The Road "by Cormac McCarthy and "The Stand" by Stephen King are perennially perched atop a dozen bestseller's List.
Motion picture films like "I Am legend", adapted from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, and "The Postman" by David Brin have earned more than respectable box office returns. But, more important is the growing success of the genre as a whole (films, literature, fine arts, and even heavy metal and gothic sound tracks). Its mushrooming popularity reveals a dark undercurrent of the American psychic, manifesting an obsession with post-apocalyptic visions. Hollywood has already pulled the trigger on several apocalyptic thrillers aimed at teens and pre-teen audiences.
While significant groundwork was laid during the 1920's and 1930's, the real work was done in the aftermath of War World II. Science fiction writers imagined a planet occupied by alien life forms, or wrote of meteor showers leveling cities and bringing civilization to the brink.
Others world-enders pursued a more religious theme, threading the stories with the ultimate triumph of the forces of God over the forces of the ungodly. Christian fiction writers, borrowing from the Old Testament, wrote of end days as prophesied in the Book of the Revelations. However, early religious fiction was limited to a paltry audience of apocalyptic aficionados and religious extremist. Nonetheless, by the start of the new millennium Left Behind, the blockbuster novel by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, took the genre mainstream.
Secular visions of the apocalypse would have to wait a little while longer. American popular culture was beginning to embrace the-end-of-world-has-we-know-it.
Once everyone laughed and pointed at the psycho parading the end-is-coming sign, tolling the bell of Armageddon and preaching salvation. Ironically, now, Hollywood is financing those who would warn of impending disaster, and point to the dark omens. And, they do with digitalized high resolution film and surround sound.
The dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and the Arms Race opened the door to the fear that one day the chickens could someday come home to the roost. The very same fear expressed comically in the classic Dr. Strangelove: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Bomb shelters, fallout drills and the emergence of the survivalist market was testimony to Americans growing apocalyptic dread. Total destruction became a real possibility for millions of Americans. Nowhere is post-apocalyptic American better depicted than in "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank and in "Canticles of Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller.
But, America's growing infatuation with a domestic brand of Armageddon reached its apex with the 9/11 tragedy. The image of New Yorkers fleeing the crashing towers and the toxic clouds of the death was broadcast over and over until the image was emblazoned indelibly in our minds. America's exalted sense of invincibility came crashing down with the WTC, our feeling of security forever buried in the rubble.
However, there may be other reasons for the growing popularity of doom and gloom. American technological and economic achievements helped her to amass great wealth. The American standard of living is admired and envied the world over. In the history of the world, no society has achieved as much, so quickly.
Yet, no one knows more than Americans the price of that progress. While few Americans would trade their way of life for any other, psychologists have long documented the mounting feelings of alienation, acute anxiety and depression among the working masses. Most Americans at some points have felt like interchangeable cogs living a purposeless life in service of corporate American. Thus, no one knows better the crisis of progress.
This may explain America's perverse fascination with eschatological (what if) scenarios. I am Legend; the mega-budget post-apocalyptic film opens with, Will Smith, motoring through a deserted New York City in a red supercharged Mustang convertible. Later he's patiently stalks his prey, only to have it claimed by a family of lions. Man relegated back to just another hunter, just another creature having to kill to survive.
Strangely enough, as terrifying is the idea of being the last human alive is (not counting the mutated creatures wandering the landscape); the scene conveys a certain feeling of liberation. In the absence of both convention and law, there's only the law of nature. The way life was before the rise of civilization.
And, even in The Road, where a dying man and his young son faced spine-numbing cold, starvation, and a desolate and unforgiving countryside, there was a kind of deliverance, a lifting of the veil. I am not suggesting that Americans long for an end to it all. Yet, the growing genre may offer an exhilarating change, an escape, from the routine drudgery of rat race.
Another reason for the genre's growing popularity is the speculative aspect of the post-apocalyptic themes, artist stretching the limits of their imagination in regard to what is or is not possible. One writer wrote: "Apocalypse is one of those realms where the ideological spectrums bends into a circle and the extremes meet".
These thought experiments erase so-called boundaries, suspend ordinary thinking and incited a new consciousness, transcendent and mystical. Post-apocalyptic fiction "tears everything down, and speculates about how human nature will react". It looks at the psychological, sociological, and physical ramification of living in the aftermath of the apocalypse. Where technology is sparse, and man is striped of his machines.
In the end, post-apocalyptic fiction may offer a "self-defeating prophesy". Maybe its only real value is in its warning to the human race. It may be a means of dodging an apocalyptic event, cheating out self-prescribed fate. A reorganization of perspectives, a global paradigm shift, may be just the thing to turn America from it's (what more and more experts are saying is a) self-destructive course. Perhaps, this apocalyptic faith addresses a long forgotten need to return to our place in nature. And, by that I mean man's harmony with his surroundings, and with respect for creation. If we don't, may God help us all.