The Suit-And-Tie Apocalypse
Posted by John Brownlee
A bisected look inside the claustrophobic suit-and-tie apocalypse of the 1950s.
Doomsday starts well enough: the Cleavers are able to deftly dodge the superheated radioactive shockwave with a quick duck-and-cover. From there, Father abandons his half-smoked pipe and half-read newspaper, Mother quickly dries the dishes and puts them back on the shelves, the children put their toys in their toy chests. Then it’s time to trundle off to the lead-lined coffin installed by Acme in the backyard, insured for fifty years of Nuclear Winter security!
The fallout shelter has all the amenities of home, including a top-of-the-line geiger counter, a swank Radiolux with both amplitude and frequency modulation, and, the envy of all their neighbors, a swank retractable periscope, perfect for observing the shambling, mutagenic horrors of the nightmare world outside.
Unfortunately, the Cleavers forgot one absolutely vital amenity for the armageddon lifestyle: a toilet. Thus guaranteeing that a thousand years hence, when the mutated archeologists of some post-apocalyptic civilization finally crack open the Cleavers’ chthonic shelter, all they will find is a feculent septic tank full of sewage, upon which drifts a flotsam made up of a string of pearls, a reeking penny loafer and four human skulls of an excremental, nut-brown patina.
Categories: Duck And Cover, Drawings, 1950s, Apocalypse
Posted at 5:18 pm on February 15, 2008
6 Comments -
Golly- “excremental nut-brown patina” is the perfect description of the swank Corinthian leather inside my minivan!
Comment by morgalla — February 15, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
Ya know, out there, somewhere, there’s gotta be some guy tracking down those suburban Cold War bomb shelters and doing photo essays of them. There has to be. Hell, if someone can get into abandoned Soviet medical facilities, someone’s gotta be able to get into J.R. “Bob” Dobbs’ fallout shelter….
Comment by James — February 15, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
tut tut.
no toilet, indeed.
mom and sis can simply hike up their dresses and squat over the clearly labeled “plumbing”. the accommodations seem small enough that dad and junior could probably hit it from where they are sitting.
Comment by Haux — February 17, 2008 @ 2:39 am
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Pingback by Plockhead. - PLOCKHEAD[DOT]COM — February 17, 2008 @ 1:32 pm
You have to kinda wonder what they’re going to do for food… Unless that’s what the kid is for.
Comment by Marrock — February 17, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
While I commend the creative writing of this article, I critique its substance by pointing out that a shelter with a few months supply of food is a very intelligent piece of insurance to have.
Disasters happen. When one happens in your home town, will you herd to the overstretched government- fighting to the death your brother countrymen to secure basic commodities like food and water?
While this image is comedic in the sense that it seems rather rudimentary, I’d like to point out that by the 50’s, architecture and construction was considered ‘modern’ and any engineer survivalist would take into consideration human waste when making such a diagram.
Comment by Sam — March 22, 2008 @ 2:33 pm