'Apocalypse Man' Teaches Useful End-of-the-World Skills

Apocalypse Man, starring former Marine Rudy Reyes and airing on the History Channel, is the latest example of what might be called "End-of-the-World Chic." Apocalypse Man is a self help show about how to survive when billions aren't.

Rudy Reyes is a telegenic, powerfully built gentleman whom one would certainly want to have on ones side if the Apocalypse actually came. Rudy Reyes is a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, so he's the fellow to have around when the cannibal mutants start to rampage.

Apocalypse Man showed some useful survival techniques, including how to make fire from steel wool, how to find safe houses in abandoned cities, and how to make a short wave radio out of things at hand. The show was suitably set in a blighted part of a city, with lots of rundown buildings.

"End-of-the-World Chic" is nothing new. It's at least as old as the Book of Revelations. The Cold War was replete with stories of nuclear holocaust and the awful things likely to happen afterwards. Y2K, had it not been for the efforts of thousands of computer programmers expanding year fields from two to four, would surely have killed us all. Just this past year, a popular film, 2012, depicted the end of the world because of some European notion of what the Mayan calendar has to say.

Apocalypse Man is not even the first work meant as instruction for what to do when the world ends. But Apocalypse Man is surely the most dramatic. Being taught how to survive in a world where we'll be fighting over cans of cat food and living like folks did when the Visigoths came is a little unnerving, but interesting nevertheless.

Why the sudden revival of End-of-the-World Chic? The combination of economic dislocation and the threat of terrorism do put one in the mind for the End Times, almost as much as the thought of ten thousand nuclear weapons aimed at one used to do. The one good difference between the new end of the world and the old is that at least our hair will not be falling out while we vomit out our digestive systems due to radiation poisonings.

While the cause of what the end of the world might be is being left a little vague, it seems clear that anxiety about its prospect is rising. A popular radio commercial advertises a package of non genetically engineered seeds with which one can plants a "one acre crisis garden." There is nothing about finding that acre, learning agricultural skills, fighting off survivors who want to take your garden, or not starving to death while the plants grow to maturity.

George Friedman, the futurist and strategic analyst, believes that our civilization is like a hormone addled teenager. Either we think we are invincible or else we are convinced that we're going to die. We seem to be in the latter stage of the cycle. So Apocalypse Man gives us a thrilling lesson in how to survive the horrors to come, at least until the funk passes, the balance of political power shifts, and it becomes morning in America again.

Source: Apocalypse Man, History Channel