It's the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine.

(OK, the REM song isn't really about the literal end of the world, nor about the extinction of humanity.  But it's a good song.)

Imagining the world if most of humanity was destroyed is an interesting way to pass the time.  Imagine you were the only one left alive in a 200 square mile radius.  What would you do?  Leave? Stay?  And if you couldn't leave for some reason, what would you do? Where would you live--which house--your current one or the nicest one in the area?  What would you spend the day doing?  What would you eat and drink?  Now a lot depends on why the rest of humanity was gone, obviously, and what still works (do you still have electricity in the short run, for example.)  It's an interesting puzzle.

This sort of thing is a staple of science fiction type things.  In some cases the world is populated by roving bands of semi-humans from which our narrator must hide (see, for example, McCarthy's The Road (not even close to his best book, though) or the movie The Omega Man (with Charlton Heston) (or its remake I Am Legend (with Will Smith)).  Those scenarios present an extra element of challenge, so you can consider them advanced work in daydreaming about the end of the world.

Stewart's Earth Abides, a 1947 pioneer in this genre, imagines a more benign world--almost everybody is dead.  Our hero, Ish, slowly gathers some people around him and they have kids and then they have kids, so there is the start of a new age.  But, the older age slowly decays.  On the whole, the book was OK--I am not sure why it has such iconic status in the science fiction world--it wasn't phenomenal or anything.  There are way too many parts in the book which just seem ridiculous.  For example, in the end of the world scenario, one of my first thoughts is how to make sure you will have food and water.  In this book, the municipal water supply still works, so Ish just ignores it.  Twenty-two years later, the reservoir runs dry, and the community faces a huge crisis--where are they going to get water?  Think about that--for 22 years, people are using tap water coming from a nearby reservoir they have never visited being pumped through pipes about which they have never thought.  Is that even possible?  Seriously, could anyone go over two decades without once thinking about the water supply?  Similarly, right after the disaster when almost all of humanity dies, Ish drives across the country to see what is up.  I get that; it makes sense to see if there are places where lots of people survived.  But, he starts in Berkeley, and  never goes to, believe it or not, San Francisco or Los Angeles.  He drives south in California, but rather then drive over to LA, he decides to cut across the desert.  Does that make any sense at all?  I cannot think of any reason to do that; it serves no point in the plot--nothing would have changed in the book if he had gone into LA.  He then visits a few big cities, but before driving down the Eastern seaboard, he decides to go back to Berkeley.   Why?  Again, I have no idea.

So, the book is littered with some silly bits.  But, on the whole, it wasn't a painful read--more of a lazy way to ruminate about the end of the world.  Now, if all of humanity is wiped out, I'll be more prepared--for example, I won't forget to bring a chainsaw when I drive across the country.