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For years, there\u2019s been a game I\u2019ve liked to play with myself: What would I do if the apocalypse were to strike right now? It\u2019s a great game for literally any situation or time of day. Buying groceries, watching a movie, trying to fall asleep at night, going to the bathroom \u2014 you get the idea. In high school, there were several years where my friends and I were convinced that the best plan would be to live in the rafters of our local Costco and subsist off whatever rollover product hadn\u2019t been picked through by the masses in the early hours of looting. Later, after all the pandemic raiding happened and we realized how terrifying Costco would be in a real apocalypse scenario, we decided we would live in the rafters of our high school auditorium instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Silly as it might seem, I still turn to this game often. It\u2019s a great icebreaker, for one \u2014 I always know I\u2019ll be great friends with someone willing to talk about these ridiculous hypotheticals. But even when I\u2019m not talking to other people about it, my mind often finds its way back to this question: What would I do if the world as I know it now fell apart? My answer today, if you\u2019re curious, is to get as far away from other people as physically possible. The reason for this should be pretty obvious, especially when you consider the aforementioned Costco scenario \u2014 the scariest thing about any apocalypse is the people left behind. And this means the scariest place to be is anywhere that people are. Namely, cities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I am far from the only person to come to this conclusion. Just consider how much art has been made over the years exploring this same idea. From more recent hits like \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d TV series to well-worn classics like \u201cThe Walking Dead,\u201d one truth emerges time and again: When the apocalypse strikes, and civilization as we know it falls, the greatest monster to rise from the ashes is our fellow man.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What this means for the concept of metropolis is interesting, particularly when we consider that \u2014 at least as far as the average person is concerned \u2014 cities are often viewed as the <\/em>symbol of our humanity. Perhaps even more often, they\u2019re used as proof of and the argument for <\/em>that humanity. Cities are what separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Look, we say, pointing: Look at what we have made! If we can take the earth and turn it into a skyscraper, doesn\u2019t that mean we\u2019re special? Doesn\u2019t that mean we\u2019re better than all the other beasts? Can a dog<\/a> direct traffic? Can a pig<\/a> operate a crane? Can a chimp<\/a> take my order at McDonald\u2019s?<\/p>\n