Whoops, Apocalypse! You’ve Been Def Conned
Cannibal aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy aren’t coming to eat you. Lord Humungus won’t kill you, either: a cinema perspective
As we wait for the Will Smith/Micheal B. Jordan sequel to I Am Legend regarding military scientist Robert Neville’s war against the “Dark Seekers,” let’s take a moment — before the real apocalypse comes — to ready ourselves; let’s straighten our radiated post-apoc spice racks that flavor the cinematic pasta pots cooking an “End of the World” stew — with fresh ingredients.
Hopefully, sometime in late 2025 to early 2026, we will learn if Will Smith and company left these 20 old spices and herbs, aka de rigueur apoc screenwriting plot-points, on the shelf, where:
1. All the nuclear-infected survivors develop a penchant for punk-rock fashions. Safety pins — never around when you need one — are suddenly, bountiful fashion accessories.
2. All the survivors turn into crazed, cackling psychopaths that form rapist gangs and cannibal cults.
3. Brainless zombies don’t form a better fighting force than the humans with brains and weapons (well, even the human brains are questionable).
4. Women always seem to not only find cosmetics, but the make-up stays on in the hottest and dirtiest, war-ravaged environments.
5. No one worries about sickness or infections from diseases. Yes, no one worries about scurvy: just cannibals, zombies, and cannibal-zombies.
Man can not live by human flesh alone and eschew Vitamin C. So, enjoy chompin’ down on your meat with those painful teeth rotted by gingivitis, apoc warrior. And you’re not getting any pudding — even after eating your meat.
6. Everyone worries only about being eaten by zombies or killed by the aforementioned rapist gangs and cannibal cults that want their water or gas.
7. Speaking of gas . . . cars are more important than food, clothes, or medicine.
8. All the cars are from the 1970s . . . operating well past their warranties.
9. The liquid chemical of gasoline defies physics for as much as 50 years and never evaporates or turns into shellac that encrusts the tanks and containers that hold the liquid . . . it’s always available and flows like water. Don’t search the rubble of a Lowe’s or Home Depot for an automotive siphon: you’ll suck-up nothing.
10. You suffer from a shortage of water and fuel, yet . . . you never run out of bullets — or sticks of dynamite, grenades or rocket launchers. Where did all the throwing stars suddenly come from; the samurai swords?
11. Everyone craves water and fuel, yet no one looks for a hidden bounty of hygiene products or drugs for preexisting, pre-apocalypse medical conditions. Forget water and gas: where’s my cranberry urinary tract health pills.
12. Even in the absence of dental hygiene products . . . everyone has perfect teeth and gums. Who’s hoarding the Crest Whitening strips?
13. After running through sewers, deserts, and rubble, etc., men and women hop into the first burnt-out car or rat-infested hovel to have sex — body odors be damned (this too, occurs in Italian and Spanish horror films: only with water-filled catacombs, cob-webbed tombs and crypts). And speaking of body maintenance: Where did they find the stash of finger and toe nail clippers to maintain their hands and feet?
14. There are no ugly women suffering from nuclear fallout hair loss in the apocalypse. Only well-endowed women with perfectly coifed hair survive.
A not-so-well balanced diet in the apocalypse turns into xanthelasma. When is the last time any actors in end-of-the-world flicks had their hands look like this? Oh, that’s right: they have nicely-clipped finger nails in the apocalypse.
15. There are always hoards of healthy and lean, muscular jocks.
16. The rest are fat slobs — even though there’s no more junk food. A world without Cool Ranch Doritos? I’d rather be dead, anyway.
17. No one is wasted down to skin and bones. And they’re still healthy enough to kick ass at a moment’s notice — malnourished stomachs be damned because the world will never be without bullies.
18. In the absence of vitamins and minerals, man lives scurvy-free on their all-meat and non-vegetable and fruit-free diets.
19. No one farms crops. They only cultivate gasoline. Or pump water. For god sake: grow food, breed fish.
20. No one worries about all the unmanned and unstable power plants and refinement factories that will melt down and explode and kill everyone — long before the zombies or alien cannibals come for dinner.
Know your Def-Cons
So, when the radiated fecal matter finally hits the fans, and you’re livin’ large like Max Rockatansky, trying to be a bad-ass: don’t say you’re “taking this baby up to Def Con 6,” as you’ll only end up looking like, well, that lower abdominal appendage that fell off by way of your radiation sickness.
If I hear one more cable television chef toss spices into pots, declaring “it’s a Def Con 6, baby,” I will Lord Humungus them myself (looking at you, Guy Fieri). Yeah, CNN’s Dana Bash is a hottie, but when a journalist of her stature drops a “Def Con 5” regarding the latest, volatile happenings on the political front. . . .
TV celebrities, news reporters, and sitcom writers: please stop. Take a remedial science class.
A Def Con 1 means “imminent war” . . . as in the you-know-what has hit the you-know-what and our big blue marble is about to be burnt to a cinder — ruled by the leather-studded, metal-hockey masked Humungus.
A Def Con 4 . . . pfft! It’s a picnic in the park. Eat your hotdog and enjoy your potato salad and go win that potato sack race. Run off and have your first sexual experience under that big oak tree; scarf that rum-soaked watermelon with glee.
You got that, you little apoc-rats? Def Con 1 is bad and a Def Con 5 is good, as in: “peacetime normal.”
So, what does the non-existent Def Con 6 that everyone misuses, mean? The Earth is so chill: crime and murder no longer exist; we’re skipping through fields, picking dandelions and chasing rainbows . . . unlike this poor, leather-dustered soul.
An Aliens’ Apocalypse? Nope.
There will never be an alien invasion-induced apocalypse. Please, stop worrying. The flamingo-legged aliens with long, spindly arms and three fingers aren’t coming to get you, Earthling.
Why?
Well, there is no “Galactic Empire” with “Death Stars” and space armadas coming to kill the Earthlings. Like Earth, intelligent life on other planets will have a sociopolitical and economic system. Now think of the cost of doing war: the cost to construct, fuel and staff those invading star fleets — with tall, frail insect-aliens comprised of three-fingered hands and flamingo-jointed legs, no less.
And where is the logic in traveling across the galaxy to engage in hand-to-hand and aerial combat with the planet you want to invade? If the alien society is technologically advanced to the point where it can build planet-sized space stations and fleets of star cruisers, then why not exhibit fiscal logic when utilizing your money and resources? They’re advanced “intelligent life,” right? If Adolph Hitler was able to develop a millions-killing “weapon of mass destruction” that could fit in a glass medical vile — Messerschmitt production and Wernher von Braun’s Nazi Rocket Program would have ended on the spot.
So, design a global-killer bio-weapon. Send one ship and drop the engineered germ into Earth’s atmosphere, kill the humans in one fell swoop, then land, strip mine the planet of its natural resources — and leave without suffering any financial loses. The point of strip mining is profit, right? Why blow the profit margin with a costly war, Grand Moff Tarkin?
In closing: Aerial battles in the darkness of space — with space planes void of any retrorockets, instead engaging flaps and ailerons and doing barrel rolls in the airless vacuum of space simply will not work. So, good luck going into battle against the Cylons with a fleet of clumsy, retro-firing Apollo space capsules — it’s a battle man will not win, Jeff Goldblum laptop-uploaded viruses into motherships be damned.
So, fear not the apocalyptic raiders from the stars. Man will kill themselves off long before Darth Vader comes to party. . . .
