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My husband and I just finished reading "The Road." Very interesting, suspenseful and compelling book, although I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. Anyway, my question is: Do you think the doomsday scenario painted in the book is even possible? It is hard for me to imagine any disaster that would seemingly wipe all animal, insect and acquatic life off the face of the Earth. Even if there was a massive nuclear war, couldn't some animal life, at least insects still survive? When the comet or asteroid or whatever it was hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and introduced an ice age (did I get that right?) it didn't completely destroy all life. Surely a very few plants and animals could survive in the cold and sunless conditions described.
What was your assumption about the apocolyptic "event"--nuclear, asteroid or something else? It seems that if it was nuclear, then radiation sickness would be a factor, but that's never mentioned.
Perhaps I am reading too much into this; the author Cormac McCarthy obviously wanted us to focus on the present events and the relationship between the boy and the man, not the questions I'm presenting.
Fascinating, disturbing read. I assumed it was a nuclear event that led to a nuclear winter, not necessarily an ice age. There was no sun, it was cold even as they continued their way south, and there were ashes in the atmosphere. It could really happen, though I am not sure if literally everything would die. Perhaps some plants and such survived, but had already been destroyed by starving people. (It seemed the story started about 6 years after the event). Also, there were some dogs running around.
As for radiation poisoning, the father was sick, often coughing up blood and such, but I always thought radiation poisoning manifested its symptoms in the digestive system. *Shudder*
Just my interpretation.
Sounds like an interesting book... I'll have to check it out!
As for an event large enough to kill off all life the popular belief is an event large enough could do it. Volcanic, meteor impact, nuclear exchange... anything that can kick up enough debris into the air will cause what is commonly referred to as a "nuclear winter" though it doesn't have to be caused by a nuclear exchange. Not only will anything close to the source(s) be instantly killed but anything within a certain proximity will slowly die due to cancer, disease, etc. Anyone that survived would live in a world of reduced rain fall, cooler climate and near perpetual night (depending on the scope of the exchange/impact). Dust and ash will continue to fall for a long time after the event.
If it is big enough the popular assumption is it will kill off enough life to destabilize the food chain, maybe even destroy it. Imagine a few years of almost zero sun light and dropping temperatures. Crops would die as would most other vegetation.
Anyway, it is all theory and there are as many theories that lean one way as there are leaning the other. My opinion is a large enough event of any type would be enough to kill off the human race or at the very least leave something that no longer much resembles it.
I haven't read the book yet but have to soon because I think the movie is probably coming July 4th weekend, if not sooner.
Well "humans" weren't around to get wiped out in the "K-T extinction", but had we been I don't think we'd have made it. I remember reading in another book (can't remember title or author now) about some things that could cause "mass extinctions". Sometimes the History or maybe it's Discovery channel does shows about one that worries me; MEGA volcanos!
Essentially the entire Yellowstone Park area is the remains of a "super volcano" that has erupted about every 600,000 years, and it's been about 600,000 since its last eruption. Last time it went off it dumped ash/soot about 100 feet deep as far east as Indiana. In other words it COVERED the largest grain producing area in one of the most productive areas in the world.
Most tree killing diseases are limited to one, or a few species; dutch elm disease, pine bark beetles etc. But, what if there were something; virus, blight etc that killed ALL SPECIES of trees? No tree, no US.
I think it may have been another "super volcano" that led to a very near extinction of humans, or "pre"-humans. There are some estimates that perhaps as FEW AS 2,000 individuals survived through whatever followed. This is why there is so little DIVERSITY in human DNA.
I think the book might have been "A Short History Of Nearly Everything", by Bill Bryson. It's a science book for those of us who are not nerdy science types. I have it but it's probably downstairs.
Or, it might have been "Collapse", same author as "Guns, Germs and Steel". It outlines what has caused the complete collapse of some civilizations over the millenia.
I have read "Collapse." One interesting thing in "Collapse" is that in some of the collapsing societies, people did resort to canabilism when things got desperate, as did many people in "The Road."
You know, I've just never gotten Cormac Macarthy. I've read a couple of his books, and they're not even good nihilism. Just bleak, foreboding, fetishism of violence without anything redeeming about the things. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite play is Death Of A Salesman.
You know, I've just never gotten Cormac Macarthy. I've read a couple of his books, and they're not even good nihilism. Just bleak, foreboding, fetishism of violence without anything redeeming about the things. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite play is Death Of A Salesman.
Yes, I read "All the Pretty Horses" a while back and wasn't crazy about it. Kind of an artsy style of writing that I don't enjoy too much, and didn't find the subject that interesting. I saw the movie "No Country for Old Men" (didn't read the book) and had a combination of feeling "well done" and "so what?" Somehow, "The Road" worked for me--I found the subject fascinating and the writing somehow worked with the subject. But if people don't like it, I can totally understand that. I even started making fun of the amount of things described as "gray" (gray sky, gray sludge, gray trees, gray rivers....)
no, i think you have a valid point. i read it when it first came out, then re-read it just last week, and found myself being much more critical on the second read regarding the mystery armageddon scenario.
we're supposed to believe that not even a weed or a rat remains a live, but people do?
Probably McCarthy's worst book, but it made his name a household word. I read it, I plodded all the way through it, and then I read "Suttree" to restore my faith in the man whom I believe might literally be the greatest American writer ever.
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