The Endgame

Newsletter #47 - Will the wind blow?

Toronto, November 16, 2023

Will the wind blow?

The end is nigh.

If the end really is nigh, we better start getting ready, although how you prepare for something cataclysmic, other than repenting for your sins, is hard to say. And how final will the end be? When it comes, will the wind blow so mighty as to lay low the mountains of the earth?

Will we join the choir invisible, or will we, still living, have to hit The Road, foraging for food and dodging cannibals?

Remember the Y2K scare of the late 1990s? In those days—long, long, ago—most computer programs represented four-digit years with the final two digits. That meant that computing machines could not distinguish between 1900 and 2000. Experts predicted a computer apocalypse at midnight on December 31, 1999. Planes would drop out of the sky. The banking system would collapse. Supply chains would fail. Fearful people stocked bunkers and basements with Spam and bottled water. Others decided it would be better to be dead than to subsist in such a way.

The Y2K scare was, of course, a misconception. Nothing happened. My family spent a pleasant December 31, 1999 evening on a beach in Nova Scotia drinking mulled wine and watching fireworks set off by people on the other side of the estuary to welcome the new millenium. Others began the horrible task of eating through their hoarded tins of Spam.

So far the new millenium hasn’t worked out too well. Maybe, now, at last, this time for real, the end is nigh. We can’t be certain whether it will be brought about by nuclear war, climate collapse, the re-election of Donald Trump, the rise of artificial intelligence, a new virus, a ghastly mix of all of these things, or some horror yet to be revealed.

How to get ready? One website reports that in 2022 Americans spent over $11 billion on emergency preparedness. So-called “preppers” are stockpiling water and food (special emphasis on freeze-dried), and are buying (“buy or die”) wind-up flashlights and radios, water purifiers, nuclear survival kits, sleeping bags, wool blankets, hazmat suits (they come in both children and adult sizes), gas masks, medical supplies (bandages, gauze, adhesive tape, antiseptic wipes, tweezers, medical gloves, pain relievers), firearms (counsels one website, “you don’t have to choose just one or two guns. You can invest in an entire arsenal of firepower if you’d like.”), etc., etc. How to pass the time as you hunker down? I didn’t find one doomsday preparedness checklist that suggested bringing a book or two to the bunker, or perhaps a Scrabble set.

If you’re a super-wealthy prepper the options are different. After all, as always, there are bunkers, and there are bunkers. In Kansas, for example, there is something called the Survival Condo, built into the shell of an Atlas Missile Silo, offering “deluxe living quarters on par with high-end apartments across the world. Plus, there's a pool, climbing wall and cinema, so you'll never be bored.” There’s lots of billionaire bunkers to choose from. Take a look at some of the bunker real estate listings and pick what suits your fancy. Life lesson: no matter the circumstances, you can’t escape the real estate market.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion (The White Album, 1979). Telling stories is how we try to make sense of our experience. Personal stories have to be constantly rewritten as circumstances change and things happen. What is the story that makes sense of doomsday preparedness? How do we write a story that anticipates and explains the end of everything? We cannot.

Some comments on Newsletter #46 (Animal update)

One reader sent me a copy of a post on X: “Toronto police urge drivers to be cautious after turkey takes a stroll in North York.” What is the turkey thinking, the reader asked?

Another regretted that I hadn’t mentioned, in my account of Fiona the sheep, that wool socks are the best socks you can wear, by far.

This comment was posted on Substack: “Years ago our friends lived on Great Island - except through the winter. They had a few cats. One year they were leaving and, as usual rounded them up to take along with them. They searched high and low but one cat was not to be found. Finally, with great regret, they left. When they returned, a few months later, there she was. She had a huge thick coat of fur - looked almost like a baby bear - but she had survived.”

Finally, my severest critic (not quite), a constant commentator on The Endgame, wrote: “Take a course at Ryerson, get lost.”