If you were ever a Cold War kid, then at some point you\u2019ve thought about what you would do when they drop the Big One \u2014 when the big map from War Games<\/em> lights up, the red phone starts blinking, and mushroom clouds start blooming on the horizon.<\/p>\n If you had a particularly vivid \u2014 or particularly morbid \u2014 imagination, then you may have even concocted several elaborate scenarios for how you might escape and survive The Day After.<\/em> Me too.<\/p>\n But I know it wasn\u2019t just me. I\u2019ve talked to dozens of folks who had daydreams and nightmares that played out this scenario. I\u2019ve heard or read or watched endless variations of these \u201cwhat would you do if \u2026\u201d or \u201cwhat will<\/em> you do when<\/em> \u2026\u201d schemes.*<\/p>\n Yet in all those fearful fantasies from all those conversations, articles, books, TV shows and movies, I don\u2019t ever recall anyone saying: \u201cWell, the very first<\/em> thing I would do is hightail it to a luxury car dealership and buy myself an overpriced, gas-guzzling SUV.\u201d<\/p>\n Until now.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n Last week I was too distracted by the aggressive sexism of these pages to note the jarringly weird interlude that begins at the top of page 8. Armed soldiers of the Antichrist have just whisked away Rayford and Amanda Steele, leaving Buck and Chloe alone on the side of a clogged highway in the middle of World War III. And then, abruptly, this:<\/p>\n \u201cThis reminds me of when we were first married,\u201d Buck said as Chloe snuggled close to him.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you mean \u2018when we were first married\u2019? We\u2019re still newlyweds!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShh!\u201d Buck said quickly. \u201cWhat\u2019re they saying about New York City?\u201d<\/p>\n Chloe turned up the radio. \u201c\u2026 devastating carnage everywhere here in the heart of Manhattan. Bombed-out buildings, emergency vehicles picking their way through debris, Civil Defense workers pleading with people over loudspeakers to stay underground.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Savor that. Look at those first two paragraphs, then at the second two, and admire the awful audacity of trying to place them in the same chapter, let alone right next to each other like that.<\/p>\n Leave aside the logistical difficulties of \u201csnuggling\u201d in a car that doesn\u2019t have bench seats and just try to imagine what Buck could possibly mean when he says this situation reminds him of \u201cwhen we were first married.\u201d It\u2019s been less than an hour since they learned that Bruce, the friend who performed their wedding, is dead. Oh, and by the way, World War III<\/em> has just begun with millions dead as at least three major cities have been destroyed. It might be a time for holding one another close as a shield against the shock, horror and trauma still unfolding around them. But I don\u2019t really think it\u2019s \u201csnuggle\u201d time.<\/p>\n The radio news report is from \u201cthe Cable News\/Global Community News Network,\u201d which is these books\u2019 version of CNN. Notice that CN\/GCNN, at least, is reporting<\/em> on World War III as it happens. Contrast that with Global Community Weekly,<\/em> which is not. This doesn\u2019t seem to bother the man in charge of GCW, who only briefly mentioned needing to get to his office before forgetting all about that. He\u2019s now content to snuggle in traffic and let someone else<\/em> cover this breaking news.<\/p>\n Two things about Jerry Jenkins\u2019 portrayal of CNN here ring true: 1) When a big story breaks, even other journalists turn to them for the initial report; and 2) That initial report is sketchy and uninformative.<\/p>\n The unnamed CN\/GCNN reporter in New York doesn\u2019t so much report on the destruction of that city as shout random phrases about his own efforts to escape it:<\/p>\n Buck heard the panic in the reporter\u2019s voice as he continued. \u201cI\u2019m seeking shelter myself now, probably too late to avoid the effects of radiation. No one knows for certain if the warheads were nuclear, but everyone is being urged to take no risks. Damage estimates will be in the billions of dollars. Life as we know it here may never be the same. There\u2019s devastation as far as the eye can see.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I would guess, then, that if \u201cdamage estimates\u201d are only \u201cin the billions of dollars,\u201d and if there are so many survivors that \u201ceveryone is being urged to take no risks,\u201d and if \u201ctake no risks\u201d remains an imaginable option, then this could not have been a nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n Hard to say, though, since this reporter doesn\u2019t mention any locations, landmarks or people<\/em> in his report. (I\u2019m not sure he even tries<\/em> to answer Who, What, When or Where in that report.) What does<\/em> he focus on? What is the major theme of his perilous effort to report live from the site of a perhaps-nuclear bomb attack? What else?<\/em><\/p>\n All major transportation centers have been closed if not destroyed. Huge traffic jams have snarled the Lincoln Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, and every major artery out of New York City. What has been known as the capital of the world looks like the set of a disaster movie. Now back to the Cable News\/Global Community News Network in Atlanta.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Triboro, as that name suggests, is not<\/em> an \u201cartery out of New York City.\u201d (At first it seemed strange to me that so many people would be trying to flee to Queens, but then I realized that there are a lot of car rental places out by LaGuardia and \u2014 as we\u2019re about to learn \u2014 in the world of Left Behind, one\u2019s first concern following a nuclear attack should be to return one\u2019s rental car.)<\/p>\n Having a reporter describe the devastation of a real-life bomb blast as \u201clike the set of a disaster movie\u201d could be a good device in a satirical novel skewering the ineptitude of broadcast journalists or lampooning the abstraction of our mediated culture. But this not-CNN reporter uses this phrase because Jerry Jenkins thought it was a sufficient, meaningful and vivid description. (Apprentice level courses still only $1,000 at the Christian Writer\u2019s Guild!<\/a>)<\/p>\n Here is where we get a page of Chloe whining and fretting indecisively while Buck ponders his own manly resourcefulness and perceives the powerful-yet-unused engine of his car as a metonymy for his manhood. And then:<\/p>\n Suddenly an explosion rocked their car and nearly lifted it off its tires. Buck wouldn\u2019t have been surprised had the windows blown in around them. Chloe shrieked and buried her head in Buck\u2019s chest. Buck scanned the horizon for what might have caused the concussion. Several cars around them quickly pulled off the road. In the rearview mirror Buck saw a mushroom cloud slowly rise and assumed it was in the neighborhood of O\u2019Hare International Airport, several miles away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I don\u2019t know for certain if that mushroom cloud is nuclear, but I would urge everyone to take no risks. (If that was a nuclear bomb, and it merely \u201crocked their car,\u201d then I\u2019ll assume that Nicolae Carpathia is just stretching his legs in the early going of World War III by using up all the little nukes the Global Community confiscated from places like the former nations of Pakistan and North Korea before he moves on to the big ones confiscated from the former nations of the U.S. and Russia.)<\/p>\n Buck\u2019s response is his idea of the manliest thing that a man\u2019s man can do:<\/p>\n Buck looked quickly behind him and out both side windows. As soon as the car ahead gave him room, he whipped the wheel left and punched the accelerator. Chloe gasped as the car jumped the curb and went down through a culvert and up the other side. Buck drove on a parkway and passed long lines of creeping vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing, Buck?\u201d Chloe said, bracing herself on the dashboard.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing, babe, but I know one thing I\u2019m not doing: I\u2019m not poking along in a traffic jam while the world goes to hell.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In every town in America, there\u2019s a road with a douchebag lane. It might be the shoulder of a highway, or the stretch of left lane after the third sign warning \u201cleft lane ends 500 feet.\u201d Or it might be a \u201cright turn only\u201d lane at a busy stoplight.<\/p>\n The d-bag lane wasn\u2019t intended<\/em> to be the d-bag lane. It was intended to be the shoulder, or a right-turn only lane, and it is still, occasionally, used for those intended purposes. But more often it\u2019s used by d-bags. Hence the name. Thus while everyone else is merging in an orderly manner on the highway, or while all the rest of the cars going straight at the light wait their turn in the proper lane, the d-bags use their designated lane to speed past all those other suckers and cut to the front.<\/p>\n Like all line-jumpers, the drivers who use the d-bag lane seem to think this is an ingeniously clever<\/em> ploy. They seem to imagine that everyone else waiting their turn in traffic or in any other such line is only doing so because they<\/em> weren\u2019t clever enough to come up with the idea of running to the front and cutting everyone else off. They seem to imagine that the rest of the people in the line, seeing them pull this d-bag move, are kicking themselves and thinking, \u201cWow, he just went all the way to the front without waiting! Why didn\u2019t I<\/em> think of that?\u201d<\/p>\n I always assumed that none of the people in that line, or in any<\/em> line, ever, was actually thinking that. But apparently Jerry Jenkins was. Apparently one day he saw some d-bag race past a line of cars in the right-turn-only lane and thought to himself, \u201cThat guy is so cool!<\/em> Someday I\u2019m going to have the hero of my novel do that so that readers will see just how awesomely clever he is!\u201d<\/p>\n One difference between the usual scenario of d-bags using their designated lane and what Buck is doing here is that usually there isn\u2019t a mushroom cloud rising just a few short miles away. It seems unlikely that Buck would be the only driver to decide to get creative after seeing that.<\/em><\/p>\n Buck was waved at, pointed at, and hollered at by traffic cops, and he was honked at and obscenely gestured at by other motorists.<\/p>\n He was not deterred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Because, you see, everyone\u2019s<\/em> car was just rocked by the blast of a perhaps-nuclear bomb and everyone<\/em> sees the mushroom cloud, but only Buck Williams thinks about trying to get away. So there\u2019s no mass panic, no other cars trying to cut across medians or swerve onto the shoulder. No pile-ups and collisions as thousands of drivers simultaneously slam on the gas thinking \u201cHoly crap! A mushroom cloud!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Nope, only Buck.<\/p>\n I think that sentence \u2014 \u201cHe was not deterred\u201d \u2014 does a good job of getting inside the head of the kind of person who utilizes the d-bag lane. All those people waving, pointing, hollering and honking may perceive him, rightly, as a colossal douchebag, but he perceives himself<\/em> as brave, resolute, resourceful and \u201cundeterred.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d Chloe insisted.<\/p>\n \u201cI need a new car,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething tells me it\u2019s going to be our only chance to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n With that last question, I think, Chloe speaks for all of us.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t you see, Chlo\u2019?\u201d he said. \u201cThis war has just broken out. It\u2019s not going to end soon. It\u2019s going to be impossible to drive a normal vehicle anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo what\u2019re you gonna do, buy a tank?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t so conspicuous, I just might.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I would not. An M1 Abrams tank gets about 0.6 miles to the gallon, and even though we\u2019re only about an hour into World War III at this point in the story, I\u2019m guessing that gasoline is already difficult, if not impossible, to purchase even paying 10 times yesterday\u2019s prices. Plus a tank only has a maximum speed of about 45 mph.<\/p>\n Come the apocalypse, I\u2019d go with a motorcycle. Much better fuel economy, much easier to navigate around traffic jams and checkpoints.<\/p>\n Better yet, in this particular form of apocalypse, I\u2019d go with a horse. By that I also mean that I\u2019d make a beeline for the kind of place where a horse makes more sense than a car. \u201cFlee to the mountains\u201d Jesus advised in the one place where LaHaye-style End Times enthusiasts believe he directly addressed their obsession. Seems like good advice in this scenario.<\/p>\n Buck drives \u201cbetween tennis courts and across soccer and football fields\u201d and we get a couple more paragraphs about the geography of suburban Chicago (\u201cwrite what you know\u201d):<\/p>\n He wanted to wind up on Northwest Highway, where a series of car dealerships comprised a ghetto of commercialism.<\/p>\n A last sweeping turn led Buck out of the subdivision, and he saw what his favorite traffic reporter always said was \u201cheavy, slow, stop-and-go\u201d traffic all along Northwest Highway. He was in a mood and a groove, so he just kept going.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As with the instance quoted earlier, in which Buck refers to Chloe as \u201cbabe,\u201d I\u2019m reminded here that there are some words that some people just shouldn\u2019t try to use. Buck Williams should not say \u201cbabe,\u201d ever. And Jerry Jenkins should probably avoid the word \u201cgroove.\u201d Also: \u201cghetto.\u201d<\/p>\n Pulling around angry drivers, he rode along a soft shoulder for more than a mile until he came upon those car dealerships.<\/p>\n \u201cBingo!\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Imagine you work at a car dealership on the Northwest Highway near Chicago.<\/p>\n It\u2019s kind of a slow morning. Business has picked up over the last few months after the auto market cratered in the aftermath of the Event. But today there\u2019s not much happening.<\/p>\n And then World War III starts. New York, London and Washington are all destroyed and there\u2019s even been an airstrike at an old military base not far from where you are. After that you get almost no<\/em> foot-traffic at all in the dealership. So you and your co-workers are just sitting around watching the scenes of devastation unfolding on the television as \u201cthe Cable News\/Global Community News Network in Atlanta\u201d breathlessly fails to provide any coherent details of what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n Then the walls shake and the CN\/GCNN anchor reports:<\/p>\n \u201cThis from Chicago: Our news base there has been taken out by a huge blast. No word yet on whether this was an attack by militia forces or a Global Community retaliatory strike. We have so many reports of warfare, bloodshed, devastation, and death in so many major cities around the globe that it will be impossible for us to keep up with all of it. \u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You don\u2019t hear the rest of the broadcast, though, because this d-bag pulls up in a Lincoln and says he wants to buy a car.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the annoying thing about trying to follow a breaking news story when you\u2019re at work. It seems like some customer always<\/em> interrupts you just before you get to hear what the deal is with that mushroom cloud you see out the window.<\/p>\n \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n * I\u2019ve never seen any studies on this, exploring the potential or actual effect<\/em> of growing up with a constant background fear\/expectation of nuclear annihilation. It seems odd not to think it would have some<\/em> effect. I\u2019ve no idea how such a thing might be measured, but it seems to me that two generations raised with the prolonged anxiety that their future may consist of only mushroom clouds might have something to do with how those generations think and plan for the future. Maybe some small contributing factor in our inability to come to grips with the long-term implications of climate change, or our failure to think long-term when it comes to maintaining and upgrading the national infrastructure. Perhaps this even contributes to the notorious failure of boomers and Gen X-ers to save for retirement (although the biggest factor there, I think, is that these generations were taught that income rises over time \u2014 which hasn\u2019t been true since the oldest boomers were kids).<\/p>\n This question of anxiety and fear of a futureless world, and how such views affect one\u2019s ability to plan for the long-term also seem pertinent with regard to the followers of apocalyptic \u201cBible prophecy\u201d teachers like Tim LaHaye. It seems to me that if it\u2019s 1995, and you\u2019re reading Left Behind<\/em> and believing every word it says about how Jesus is coming back very, very, very soon, then you probably don\u2019t much care that your city\u2019s water mains were built 90 years ago and were originally intended to be replaced after 50 years. They\u2019ve made it this far, you probably think, so they should last until Jesus comes back, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n P.S. <\/strong>The title of this post comes from a terrific Daniel Amos song spoofing prosperity gospel preachers. Here\u2019s how it sounded on the 1983 album Doppelg\u00e4nger<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and here\u2019s how it sounds these days<\/a> from the still-out-there-working band.<\/p>\n I mention this here because I love that song, and because it\u2019s yet another reminder to myself to see if I can\u2019t someday get around to that big post exploring how early Jesus rockers like DA moved past the End Times-obsessed themes of Left Behind to a more sustainable form of faith.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist, pp. 8-12 If you were ever a Cold War kid, then at some point you\u2019ve thought about what you would do when they drop the Big One \u2014 when the big map from War Games lights up, the red phone starts blinking, and mushroom clouds start blooming on the horizon. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-8206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-left-behind","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2012\/06\/Manhattan.png\")
<\/a>The reporter doesn\u2019t say \u201cas far as the eye can see\u201d from where,<\/em> but since he seems to be somewhere in Manhattan, I\u2019m going to make a bold guess that these bombs were not<\/em> nuclear. The map to the right comes courtesy of Carlos Labs\u2019 \u201cGround Zero\u201d app<\/a>. It shows the heat effects of a single 1958-era nuclear bomb (like the one Slim Pickens rode in Dr. Strangelove)<\/em> striking midtown Manhattan. This is only<\/em> the heat effects \u2014 not the blast radius or the radiation effects. That big dark green circle would be on fire. Anyone in the next three concentric circles would suffer third, second or first-degree burns, respectively.<\/p>\n