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I've always been fascinated with the end of the world. Call it morbid curiosity. Call bad taste. I can't explain it--it just all seems so interesting to me. Perhaps because it makes for a great story. It's not something I wanna see (mainly due to not wanting to die) but it's certainly something that entertains me. And it's not the way to world ends. There's no drama in cities getting blown up or asteroids colliding with the earth. What I find fascinating is the Aftermath.

I thoroughly enjoyed books like "The Stand" and "Alas, Babylon" because those books told the struggle of mankind when society collapsed. I'm just drawn to it. "Twelve Monkeys," "The Road Warrior" and "Dawn of the Dead" are all movies appeal to my darker side. Hell, one afternoon I even found myself intrigued by Kevin Costner�s �The Postman.�

I like to hear about the isolation, the devastation--the destruction. The empty streets. The lost civilizations. The survivors. It's creepy, but I swear--there's just something about that makes for a good story.

CBS has a new show this fall called "Jericho." It's the story about some podunk town in middle America and its survivors after a nuclear attack on the United States. The folks of Jericho are safe from the nuclear blast and (probably) the radiation. This show is about the Aftermath. How the town survives with the world coming to an end.

To be honest, it's an awful show--the character's backgrounds are classic clich�s and the conflicts are typical and expected. Let's put it this way: anyone who's seen their share of Armageddon movies could come up with the storyline.

And yet, I'm intrigued.

Even though I'm captivated by the apocalypse, I find it hard to believe in this day we would engage in full-scale nuclear war--perhaps that plot woulda been more believable 20 years ago. The idea of countries shooting nuclear weapons at each other just seems so stupid--who really wins that battle? Sure there are nut jobs with weapons left over from the Cold War and the threat of one being detonated in a metropolitan city is real. But on a large scale with entire countries being wiped out--it seems so foolish. The only people hell-bent on that kinda destruction are the extremists flying planes into buildings--not actual governments. I know North Korea has their bombs and some of the countries in the Middle East are trying to develop atomic weapons, but I'd like to think we're smarter than that as a species.

"A bomb is a weapon of peace."

It was the theory behind the arms race of the Cold War and glorified in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." It's crazy logic, but I get it. I'd like to think humans have the intelligence to not use them--or at least not have the balls to strike first.

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2006