Of
course, the sticky problem of a worldwide plague is not just that
the bus service starts to get unreliable, but that if you happen to be
the last man on Earth the question of how to fill your days starts to
loom rather large. True, you have to deal with the everyday
problems of staying alive, but with the leavings of an entire
industrial civilisation to pick from that aspect of life can be taken
care of relatively quickly with a bit of effort, but what do you do then
with all that leisure time? Aside from worrying about what
happens if you need a dentist, that is.
Well, you could spend your time reading, watching
old movies, and drinking yourself to death, but that seems a bit
counterproductive. Or you could try to preserve as much of the
old world as you can for future generations, but since you are the
last man alive that seems a bit like hoarding nuts on the deck of the
Titanic for the benefit of any passing transatlantic squirrels.
And
then there is always the rather unsettling possibility that you aren't
exactly the last man on Earth, but that you might be sharing
the ruins of the city with psychotic albino mutants whom the plague
have reduced to the level of technophobic vampires, such as in The
Omega Man (1971). Then you can spend your evenings sitting
in your penthouse that you've converted into a bunker, surrounded by
the remnants of a bygone world, sipping brandy, reading
G. K. Chesterton, and passing the time by taking the odd pot shot with
a machine gun at the fiends gibbering outside your window in the
streets below.
Of course, I do that now, but that's because I'm a
British conservative who regards the Tories as far too left wing for
my tastes.
Of
course, the sticky problem of a worldwide plague is not just that
the bus service starts to get unreliable, but that if you happen to be
the last man on Earth the question of how to fill your days starts to
loom rather large. True, you have to deal with the everyday
problems of staying alive, but with the leavings of an entire
industrial civilisation to pick from that aspect of life can be taken
care of relatively quickly with a bit of effort, but what do you do then
with all that leisure time? Aside from worrying about what
happens if you need a dentist, that is.
And
then there is always the rather unsettling possibility that you aren't
exactly the last man on Earth, but that you might be sharing
the ruins of the city with psychotic albino mutants whom the plague
have reduced to the level of technophobic vampires, such as in The
Omega Man (1971). Then you can spend your evenings sitting
in your penthouse that you've converted into a bunker, surrounded by
the remnants