The Suit-And-Tie Apocalypse

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.