POST-APOCALYPTIC DAYDREAMS

It was a different time: kids (I was one) watched Saturday morning cartoons like Thundarr the Barbarian, in which three solidly-constructed, single-minded heroes wandered through the remains of ruined North America on mutant horses, punching their path through hordes of irradiated rat-men with laser guns. By 1981, I had already seen Mad Max 2 (under its US-market title, of course), and snippets of drive-in fare like Damnation Alley and the live-action Filmation show Ark II, which both included Wasteland Winnebagos armed with steel plating, science labs, and rough polyester upholstery.

CONTEXT IS KING

Because I fully expected bombs to start dropping any old day. Even though the Cold War had peaked several decades prior, you'd still see things like The Day After popping up on prime-time TV, alongside reports on 60 Minutes about the effect of radioactive fallout on the human body ("...it won't be pretty," I still rememember that line from Mike Wallace or Harry Reasoner). Just outside my sphere of awareness, punk bands were writing tunes like "Nuclear-Destroyed Civilization" or "Waiting for the Bomb Blast," presented in fatalistic and inevitable terms. What were the kids of my generation (10 in 1980) gonna do except play in the rubble and hope we could find an untouched warehouse stocked with Lucky Charms (once the dust had settled)?