After the Apocalypse

The old man kept a slow but steady pace down the gravel road. It was getting on in the day and he needed to start thinking about shelter for the night. 

Bill, the dog trotted about 10 yards ahead as the vanguard. 

A small dust cloud rose behind them marking their progress. 

The old man thought about that.

...

Hello my survivor friends,

How is the apocalypse treating you? Happy Easter! I figure rabbits will probably survive the apocalypse, right? Cockroaches and rabbits. 

There’s a zombie online multiplayer game I play called Dead Frontier, yes, I’m all in on the apocalypse, and for the easter event you get to kill zombie bunnies. 

Reminds me of Monty Python – “It’s just a Bunny Rabbit!” – You kids who don’t know what I’m talking about go stream Monty Python and the Holy Grail and you can thank me later.

Did you like today’s cliff-hanger? Maybe it was more of a pit-hanger. 

Good news we at about 3500 downloads.  We have new listeners in Minsk Belarus, Dhaka Bangladesh and Portoviejo Ecuador. All places I’ve yet to visit. I have been at Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal, but that’s another story. 

Send me an email if you are listening form one of these far-flung places. Love to get your feedback.

cyktrussell@gmail.com

I need a favor from all you great people, whether Belarusian, Bangladeshi or Ecuadorian. Go into whatever podcast app you’re using and leave a review. Just a quick note. That’s what drives the algorithms. And we all love algorithms. 

If you’re feeling super motivated tell a few friends. If we, you and I and Dmytri from Belarus can grow this tribe I can accelerate to weekly episodes and I’d really like to do that.  

If you are just beside yourself with enthusiasm you can throw some  Belarusian rubles, some Bangladeshi taka or some Ecuadorian dollars – because, yeah, Ecuador switched their currency to the US dollar – and you can do that at my Patreon page patreon.com/aftertheapocalypse.

I listened to a couple interesting SciFi stories recently. I like these short SciFi stories because they have that one really interesting idea that makes you say ‘Huh’.

One is a story called Things by Peter Clark - Have you ever seen a movie called The Thing? It was released in 1982 starring Kurt Russell (no relation) and directed by John Carpenter, based on a book by John Campbell from 1938. 

Now you might be thinking, ‘gee all of those names sound familiar’ and you’d be right. John Carpenter the prolific director who brought you the Halloween moves, as well as some other B-movie SciFi classics like Escape from New York, also with Kurt Russell in 1981, just a year before The Thing, and one of my personal favorites, They Live with professional wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. 

And of course John Campbell, who wrote the original story, was one of those giants of the golden age of Science Fiction, both as a writer and the editor of Analog.

I know, I know, I keep doing this to you, but trust me all of these factors come together to make The Thing a great sort of SciFi-Grindhouse mashup with lots of practical horror effects. The links to all of this stuff is in the notes and don’t get me started on Adrienne Barbeau! 

Any of these movies would be a good streaming choice for SciFi lovers on a Friday night in the apocalypse. 

The critics hated Carpenter’s version of The Thing at the time. No one knew what to do with a horror – SciFi mashup, but I liked it.

There was an original version in 1951 called The Thing from Another World, which I have seen and was pretty good for it’s time. 

Anyhoo – to make a long, complicated, meandering story short - the Peter Clark story I listened to on a bike ride reimagines that movie from the alien’s point of view. 

If you have seen the movie this story, especially as read by Kat from Clarkesworld, is just an awesome fun-house mirror read of the same story from a different angle I really enjoyed it. 

That’s it my survivor friends, this is Chris your lead survivor wishing you a happy Easter and as always…

Keep on Surviving!