End of the World

Ok, so I know I have never posted before...but I honestly forgot about it, just had a million things going on...so be gentle, please. I will try and write some more and actually post on here.

It’s not every day you wake up…

Never thought I’d be around to see it. You know? Only crazy people sit around thinking about the end.

I mean who sits at the breakfast table thinking “What if the world ended in a few hours? What would it be like?” And even if they did, they’d most definitely get it wrong. We had all these books, video games, all forms of media that talked about it…every one of them was wrong. We always thought the world would end in an explosion, a big bang to rival the one that birthed our universe. And of course, anarchy and chaos following it that made the explosion itself seem absolutely trivial.

And then it happened. Of course, there was some time to prepare…we were all ordered to evacuate, and the stubborn few who didn’t, well most of us had installed bomb shelters with generators and pumps. Most places the pumps weren’t necessary but here they are, since we are below sea level.

We also had things to detect when the radiation went away and enough stuff to survive in the bunker until everything had passed.

So on that fateful day I ran to my bunker.

“This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.”

—T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

Truthfully, the end is…quiet. When I emerged there was this…nothing, but it was everywhere. You never realize how much noise there is until the silence descends. And to know that this isn’t just a silence waiting on the edge of dawn to be broken, but the silence that will persist until our species is no more…turns the silence from a welcome friend to your deadliest enemy.

For what purpose was I spared? Surely whatever gods there are chose me for a reason. Not because I am a saint, for I did my fair share of bad things. But then why? As punishment? A living hell to be a precursor to the demon infested wasteland I shall go to on my death?

Perhaps, perhaps I was spared to be a witness. To write of what has happened so that whatever comes next remembers us, remembers how we failed. How we managed to destroy our species and everything we had created.

Perhaps our predecessors will learn from our mistakes.

I need to believe that. Because the fact is, that is all I have left. This need to believe I have some purpose. Mere survival is barely enough with the weight of loneliness I feel. So I’m holding on to this thin thread of…well…

Hope.