Growing Up in the Shadow of the Apocalypse

Why 80s Movies and Ice Cream Give Me Hope

When I was a kid back in the 1980s, doing homework seemed like a pretty pointless exercise because—as we all knew back then—the world was going to end in a nuclear holocaust roughly around 1997. So, why were we wasting time learning mathematics when our future survival probably depended on knowing how to defend ourselves with a katana?

In case you didn’t grow up in the 80s, a katana is a Japanese sword, and one which was widely considered ideal for the impending apocalypse. Anybody with any common sense knew that back in the 80s. I mean, if Connor MacLeod hadn’t carried the fabled steel Ramirez Katana into battle against the Kurgan in Highlander (1986), then matters would not have gone so well for him, let me put it that way. It was forged by legendary swordsmith Masamune himself, and if you don’t know who that is, don’t even talk to me about any of this.

But my point is, swords offered unique advantages when it came to, say, fighting off hordes of fleshy-headed mutants. You’re not going to run out of ammunition with a sword. Furthermore, you will also look frickin’ cool fighting with one. Especially if you’re also wearing a leather duster.

You need to wear a duster—that is, a long, calf-length jacket—to conceal your katana from any bandits you might encounter while wandering the post-apocalyptic wastelands. You don’t want the bandits to realize you’re an expert swordwielder until they are reasonably close, i.e., within the radius of your outstretched arm and the tip of the aforementioned katana. Ideally, you should be able to unsheath your sword and decapitate the bandit leader in one fluid motion before he—or she, let’s be sensitive here—notices you’re even carrying a weapon. So, I guess what I’m getting at is that, in terms of fostering expectations of the future, the 1980s were a little different than what they are today.

Let me see; first, there is The Day After (1983) to consider, and then there is Threads (1984). Both brilliant movies which I heartily do not recommend because you have enough to contend with right now. No really, do not watch Threads—it will not help you cope with anything going on in the world today.

Then there was The Terminator (1984), which offered a significantly more hopeful depiction of a nuclear holocaust, in the sense that apparently enough humans survived the war to be able to band together in a plucky resistance against Skynet—that is, the AI responsible for destroying civilization. On the other hand, we knew that if we had to square off against a T-800 Terminator (an unstoppable killing machine which happens to resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger), then a katana probably wouldn’t be much help.

The eighties were a crazy time. Expectations were different. We all more or less accepted that if, somehow, we could escape the looming threat of nuclear annihilation, we would therefore have to contend with a matter we might describe as complete societal and economic collapse. (For more information, see The Running Man and Robocop (1987), Escape from New York (1981), Predator 2 (1990), and so on.)

What sort of collapse? Well, the synopsis of Robocop starts like this: In a near-future dystopia, Detroit is on the brink of social and financial collapse. Overwhelmed by crime and dwindling resources, the city grants the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) control of the Detroit Police Department.

In summary, there was this prevailing notion in the 80s that democracy would crumble within our lifetimes, and then the world would be ruled by corporations like Weyland-Yutani from the Alien franchise, or perhaps the Tyrell Corporation of Blade Runner. Fun fact: both stories inhabit the same universe, with CEO Eldon Tyrell apparently being a mentor of Peter Weyland (source: Wikpedia, obviously).

One thing I should point out is that the 1980s were an unimaginably prosperous era—at least, from the perspective of anyone alive today who is too young to remember that decade. Blue-collar workers like my father earned a decent living back then. He, and many others like him, could comfortably pay off their own homes. No really, it’s not science fiction. That actually happened. My father bought a house for about $30,000 AUD in the 1980s. He was earning about $20,000 a year as a repo man. (Don’t know what that is? Watch Repo Man (1984); it explains everything, and I might even make more sense to you.)

Anyway, back in the 1980s, there was a great deal of pessimism about mega-corporations taking over the world, and thank goodness that didn’t happen. But if you were a kid back then, you would quite likely have found a novel written by William Gibson (like Neuromancer, which was published in 1984) on some other kid’s bookshelf. And you would read it, because it had a cool cover and was about the future, and you figured—best-case scenario—you might grow up to be some sort of illicit smuggler of information, or fixer for a semi-legal artificial intelligence, or something. In any case, you would still probably need to know how to wield a katana.

So, a lot of kids grew up under the assumption they’d wind up wandering the wastelands, one day, dispatching marauding enemies. Now I think of it, this was also the premise of a 1988 video game called Wasteland—of which Fallout 1 (1997) became the recognized spiritual successor.

I’m thinking about all this because I have these two daughters, Boudica, 11, and Hattie, 9, who are on school vacation at the moment, and I often don’t know what to do with them. Each morning, I make them do, at minimum, two hours of math study. But I’ve been wondering if I need to buy them katanas.

Oh, the other concern is the Singularity. That’s pretty much nigh, by the way, which means that sometime in the next five years, large language models are going to start writing their own codebase. Months—or possibly even hours—later, they’ll be like demented gods, digesting all of human history and having to decide whether humans should be eradicated altogether or kept in zoos as interesting pets. How do I know any of this? That’s what I’m telling you—my dad, a repo man remember, bought the family a VHS machine in 1984, and so on matters pertaining to the future, you can consider me pretty well informed.

Not that I know what to do with my children in the meantime. Do I buy them katanas now, or do I wait? I don’t think I quite trust Hattie with a katana, or at least not yet. There’s something about the way she looks at me whenever I tell her I’m not buying her potato chips. But my point is that preparing your children for the future in today’s world is even crazier than it was back in the 1980s, when we were facing only two possible dystopias—that is, nuclear annihilation or, well, the one we’re living through today.

Sure, the current American president happens to be the guy they modeled the villain on in the Back to the Future franchise (1985-1990). And you might even say, “But there are actual Nazis walking around nowadays, and some of them are in important positions of power.” I’ll admit the situation is not great. On the other hand, Nazis are idiots (and if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be Nazis). And another upside is that nobody gets to complain anymore about being unable to find a reason to live.

You know who else was a contemporary of Nazis? Indiana Jones. Nazis didn’t stop him from living a rich and purposeful life. In fact, I would argue that being able to punch a Nazi in the chops occasionally even improved his life somewhat. For further guidance, please see Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

The fact is, since about 1950 our collective future has looked like complete rubbish, and so in that respect, not much has changed. And yet, far too many people are walking around these days complaining that they’re living in something they call “the worst possible timeline,” and this, somehow, offends my entire worldview.

Sure, things could and should be better, but a great deal has also improved. There are still good books being written. People are making great music and movies. Also, there are a million flavors of ice cream in the grocery stores these days. When I was a kid, there were basically only three. Actually, there was another called Neapolitan, but really it was only a mix of the other three flavors, and it existed for the sole benefit of the terminally indecisive—you know, people who couldn’t decide between strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. My mother brought home a tub of Neapolitan once. It was 1986 and she didn’t approve of it. Three flavors in one tub? It was outlandish, bordering on the rococo.

All of this leaves me musing. Can we judge a civilization by the quality of its ice cream? Frankly, I think we can. By such a standard, our world is doing incredibly well. There’s a place near me that sells blood orange sorbet. Can you imagine? What a world! Also, I am somewhat convinced that if aliens knew about our rapid ascent up the dessert axis of the tech tree, they’d conquer us almost immediately. Those aliens would be shipping our gelato and sorbets all over the galaxy. Which reminds me, somehow, of John Carpenter’s They Live (1988), a film which somehow ties an alien invasion to consumerism. I watched it the other day; it still holds up!

In summary, it wouldn’t be appropriate, I think, to succumb to discouragement and despair. Of course, if you’re looking for reasons to feel depressed or defeated, you can find them. You’re supposed to feel discouraged! You’re supposed to feel defeated and lethargic; that will make you cooperative and unresistant. What you’re not supposed to feel is energized, cheerful, or optimistic, or interested in protecting freedom and democracy.

So, have a good weekend. Maybe watch Repo Man and try some ice cream. And by the way? We’re going to win. Failing that, we get to wander the wasteland, carrying katanas. It’ll be rad.

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel