What the Hell Did I Just Read

An Excerpt from Fear: Hell’s Parasite by Dr. Albert Marconi

And now, a word about the Apocalypse.

The most fascinating aspect of our end-of-the-world obsession is our insistence that whatever cataclysm we have in mind would, in fact, be the end. The reality is that our history could actually be described as a series of apocalypses: a plague here, a famine there, a worldwide war that arrives with both in tow. What occurs in the aftermath of each is instructive.

Consider, for example, the ancient disaster known as the Toba event. It is theorized that approximately seventy-five thousand years ago, a volcanic eruption nearly wiped out Homo sapiens altogether. It is believed that in the aftermath, the worldwide population of early humans may have withered to just a few thousand breeding pairs—enough to fit into a high school gymnasium. Just seventy-five thousand years later, we live in a civilization in which the population has rebounded a million times over and is on the cusp of landing a spacecraft on Mars.

This is the legacy of humanity and I daresay that not enough of us take time to appreciate it. Our apocalyptic fiction depicts a world in which humans revert to the savagery of the jungle the moment our institutions fall, survivors tearing each other to pieces even as they are dying of plague or stalked by the undead. In our real history, we have been in that situation many times—left without government or law enforcement, none of the modern institutions we take for granted. From each of these scenarios what emerged was not savagery, but cooperation. When the pillars of our culture crumble, we rebuild them.

I once joked to a colleague that a true horror film would begin with a world overrun by the zombies, who find themselves having to fend off a sudden outbreak of the living. Imagine these poor groaning shufflers attempting to wage war against faster, healthier creatures capable of organization and strategy, able to build tools that would appear to be nothing short of magic to their simple, moldering brains (imagine their terror at the prospect of a rifle that can deliver invisible death from far over the horizon, let alone an atomic bomb!).

One almost begins to feel sorry for them. This is why, when asked why there is not greater evidence of creatures such as werewolves or vampires (not that I believe in either), I say the answer is obvious: they are too busy hiding from us!

My point is this: mankind is, and always has been, much greater than the sum of its parts. A lone human may appear to be nothing special if observed, say, blearily standing in line at a convenience store at two in the morning, or spitefully ripping a toy from the hands of a middle-aged woman in the chaos of a Black Friday sale. Yet, the combined efforts of these confused and volatile primates result in gleaming cities and majestic flying carriages. They have split the atom and peered across the universe.

In the blink of an eye, they have acquired the powers of gods.

This, I believe, is the fate of humanity: to colonize the stars over the next thousand years, to set down settlements in our solar system and others. Then, many centuries from now, one of our descendants will be strolling along some marvelous domed paradise on some distant planet and will see a drunken youth in offensive clothing, vomiting in an alley outside a pub. The man will look sidelong at the youth in that shameful state, shake his head, and mutter to himself that humanity is a ridiculous, doomed species, incapable of anything worthwhile.

He will believe it, because the true, wonderful, terrible, fearsome power of humanity is otherwise almost too much to comprehend. I recognize that not all of you share my faith, but you must admit that if gods are real and have observed humanity’s evolution from afar, they must shudder at the possibilities.