English

Last Man on Earth: Apocalyptic Folklore, Civil Defense and Terrorism

"The Zone is a very complex maze of traps. As soon as humans appear, everything begins to change." -Stalker (1979) Since the development of the Atom Bomb, humanity has been obsessed with it's own demise; and apparently hastened it through plans allegedly designed to mitigate such an occurance. It is however questionable whether such motives were genuine, in the context of key planner's fascinations with eugenic cleansing. They are seen today in the Water-Energy Nexus agenda, and previously in Civil Defense planning. The collective narcissistic pathologies of fascist societies seen in the Nazi's a decade prior to the emergence of this genre of literature and film may play a contributing role in the terror zeitgeist, which followed. The War of the Worlds broadcast was the first study regarding the use of mass-communication technologies to spread fear & terror; the components of which are the foundation of Psychological Warfare techniques used today. These themes aren't limited to the United States but also seen in Russian epics such as Roadside Picnic (The Stalker.) Concerns about the impact civil defense planning programs would have on mental health were widely discussed in the 1950

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