It’s the end of the world and at Russia Beyond the Headlines (RBTH) they ask a sample of Russian writers such as German Sadulaev, Dmitry Bykov, Zakhar Prilepin and even Russian-American Gary Shteyngart about how they would spend their last day of human existence knowing the Mayans were right. The answers are interesting and unfortunately it seems the end of the world arrived slightly before the end of the article for its copy editor, but you get the feeling that their answers would be different if the skies outside their windows were jet black and filled with menacing crows speaking a native South American language and laughing.
Incidentally, if you’ve never seen the Canadian film Last Night, about how a bunch of people in Toronto spend their last day and night before the world’s end, see it. It’s great.
RBTH also has a picture set up called Moscow the day after Doomsday, with pictures of a post-apocalyptic Moscow by Russian 2D/3D computer graphic artist Vladimir Manjukhin, well-known by his nickname mvn78. There’s also a YouTube video clip of the graphics here.
And speaking of death, December 21 is the day in 1940 that F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at 44. If I drop dead today or the black, crow-filled skies outside* really do portend the end of the world and I die without needing to drop dead individually I will be only 55 days and eight non-posthumous published books off Fitzgerald’s final tally. I’m 55 days older and eight books less. Oh well.
* The sky here in Prague really is almost black and there really are lots of crows, at least where I live. They aren’t, however, speaking a native South American language and laughing, though Czechs say that the crows migrate here during the winter from Russia, so maybe that’s why those Russian writers are all so positive about the apocalypse.
Photo – Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin, between 1851 and 1853/wikimedia
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