Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
When I first heard this poem in junior high or high school I thought it was a simple poem about an end of the world scenario. In college I was informed it was an comparison of passion and hatred. The poem does outright mention desire and hate, so I guess that makes sense. Part of me wishes I could hold onto the end of the world scenario, though.
There is something I find morbidly attractive about going through disaster scenarios. I think that I am not alone, because a large percentage of sci-fi and action films get most of their attraction from disaster portrayals. It is my understanding that even the Left Behind series caters to this desire. Not only that, a lot of the programming on the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and other "educational" channels appeal to that part of me that wants to imagine the scope of large disasters.
The following are just some of the ways that I have heard that could end civilization (or damage it significantly) as we know it from some TV documentary.
- Supervolcano: To hear the documentaries tell it, you're a goner if you live anywhere within a few hundred miles of Yellowstone National Park. If the supervolcano that is there erupts, it could kill millions or billions and affect the world climate for years.
- Mega Tsunami: When the volcano in La Palma in the Canary Islands colapses, it's lights out for every city on the east coast from New York to Miami to Rio de Janeiro.
- Asteroid: A relatively small rock hitting Earth could doom us all either from actually being hit, or being scorched by debris heating up the atmosphere, or being frozen by a sort of nuclear winter, or the famine that will likely also result.
4 comments:
From the very little bit of cable TV that I saw this summer, it was all disaster shows on the science channesl.
You are the target audience!
The Tsunami scenarios were riviting.
There is no hope, we are all going to die.
I have been getting my share of the Science channel with feeding the baby around the clock. I saw some of the Tsunami program last night.
I've never been a huge fan of "The End of the World" storylines. I'll watch them and for some of them be interested and relatively entertained... but I'm not a huge fan.
Maybe I am a more of a stereotypical girl in this respect. Forget the action and the special effects unless there is a good storyline that tells me about people and their relationships with one another.
I've been thinking I needed to revisit some of the end times scenarios in Revelation/Daniel etal, based on current events in Israel. That's one that comes around fairly regularly it seems.
I've always preferred the really fast and it's over end of the world scenarios if I'm personally to be involved. Loud boom bright light and it's over. THat would make a boring, short movie though.
The song you allude to is one of my favorites and I always seem to hear it when a big life event is happening and it reminds me that while my current perspective is changing (ending), I feel fine. Sort of a secular it is well with my soul moment.
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