Interview 4

J.R. P.
AGE: 29
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
JR: I don’t think the world is going to end. I think the human species will end. Planet earth is going to shake us off like a bunch of fleas, and start again like it has many times.
KM: The human species will end, but start again?
JR: Not necessarily the human species will start again, but something will start again. Planet earth shook off the dinosaurs and they didn’t do anything to fuck up the ecosystem.
KM: Will this earth shaking be a conscious thing for the humans?
JR: It’s just a metaphor, the earth will just shake us off like fleas. The earth will decide it is done with us and be like, fucking douche bags, shake us off and start again.
KM: Shake us off like fleas is a metaphor for what exactly? Will it be a nuclear holocaust, a pandemic we can’t fight? Everything that anyone fears right now coming to fruition?
JR: Sure.What I am saying is, humanity will end and the planet will not. The planet will be here no matter what. Human beings are going to destroy themselves, and then the planet earth will shake us off like fleas.
KM: How exactly will the human beings destroy themselves?
JR: I guarantee there’s a pandemic and a series of other things. The pandemic will lead to a world war. Some crazy terrorist will unleash a pandemic that will lead all of these countries to fight an invisible ghost and nuke everything, but the rich will survive and others will not.
KM: All of this will be instigated then by a single person unleashing some sort of virus to kill us all?
JR: The best way I can put this is remember at the beginning of World War I when that one dude killed that Arch Duke Ferdinand and then everybody jumped in? One dude is going to fuck it up for everybody.

Interview 3

BRIAN M.
AGE: 33
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE, SOME COLLEGE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
BM: Zombies. There’s so many possibilities. I hope its zombies because they’ll be easier to shoot.
KM: You would like an end that would involve it being easy for you to shoot someone or something?
BM: I would personally find it easier to shoot zombies instead of people. To defend my friends and family against them. In some way too, I don’t know if I necessarily believe in the end of the world itself, but I don’t doubt that there is going to be a reason to go to my cabin and stay there for a while.
KM: What would be one of these reasons to have to go to your cabin for a while?
BM: Financial/infrastructure collapse of the United States. And also it seems that when the U.S. has a cold the world sneezes.
KM: Is this cabin stocked with guns?
BM: No, but my house is. And I’m working on getting a food supply.
KM: For the cabin or for your house?
BM: For the cabin.
KM: Why?
BM: Because as I said before I don’t doubt that there will be a real reason for me to have to stay there.
KM: Why would it be easier to shoot zombies?
BM: Because I know that they are not living people with feelings and emotions and families. They just want brains.
KM: So would their fellow zombies not be considered their family?
BM: No. They are no longer living individuals.
KM: You’re okay with shooting the living dead. Not the living, no?
BM: More so. Yes. In an extreme situation of self-preservation I would hope that I would be able to do whatever necessary.

Interview 2

KRISTEN H.
AGE 23
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do envision the end of the world?
KH: People are going to die before the world ends. We’ll die off. I don’t really have a particular way in which people will die. It’s kind of a misnomer to say the world will end after humans, the world will keep going on.
KM: So you think humans will disappear before the actual physical earth is gone?
KH: I hope its kind of fun and interesting how humans will disappear but it probably won’t be.
KM: What then would be one of those interesting ways in which humanity will die off?
KH: I’m interested in pandemics, nuclear holocaust would be fun too. I hope there’s another species that takes us over, like dinosaurs coming back and eating us all. That’d be interesting.
KM: So on the pandemic end of things your probably really excited about the swine flu.
KH: I don’t think that will necessarily be the one. I wouldn’t say I’m excited about the swine flu, but I think diseases are interesting. I hope though that it’s a virus that we develop ourselves and it comes back to bite us in the ass. With all of the shit people have done we deserve to kill ourselves off by our own inventions, but I don’t know if we’re really smart enough to do that.
KM: As it sounds, you’re most interested in seeing humanity have to deal with their own ‘inventions’ biting them in the ass.
KH: There would be a kind of poetic justice and irony in that. Having all of these discoveries and abilities that make us think we’re better than we really are, and we’re still the same shitty people we were hundreds of years ago. The things that we think make us human would actually be the things that kill us.
KM: Lets go back to the nuclear holocaust that you would find fun. How do see that starting, what do you think would happen to instigate a nuclear war?
KH: I think it will start as an international relations mistake. Big mistake, enough to piss off the wrong person. It would have to be something that would happen suddenly. I like to think that there are enough people in the world that wouldn’t let something like that happen if it were known about. It would be a big social faux pas of sorts. Not necessarily everyone would have to die either though. An apocalypse doesn’t have to mean everyone is gone, it just means a sort of catastrophic change. I also think iphones will spread disease.
KM: How exactly will they do that?
KH: There will be some sort of harmonic created in the phone that will degrade the brain. Something unexpected. We’re trying to fight the swine flu and iphones are destroying people [laughs].

Interview 1

AMANDA P.
OCCUPATION: SERVER
AGE: 23
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
AP: One of two ways. The first being my fathers way, the world will just explode and nobody is going to expect it. The second would be the world would become too overpopulated and we would run out of the necessary resources. It would be over the course of time that the world’s population would be depleted.
KM: So basically people wouldn’t have the resources necessary to survive?
AP: Yeah. I really don’t think it’s going to be a big scientific thing or social level of expectation, it will just happen of the course of time.
KM: Would this be a process that people are socially conscious of?
AP: I think it is a conscious thing for people now. With the population of the world being higher than expected right now, it will only increase. Our level of natural resources and everyday things needed to survive are depleting already. At least the resources we’ve become accustomed to. Like technology and the standard of life people have become accustomed to cannot be sustained at the rate we are going.
KM: It would be more of a peak of everything and then a total decline?
AP: Yeah.
KM: You don’t see any big apocalyptic or catastrophic event?
AP: No, I don’t think it’s realistic.
KM: Once this decline starts do you think people will lose it?
AP: To an extent. I think even today people see the potential of it, and, you know, if something doesn’t change people aren’t going to survive. Generations from now won’t survive, because they won’t have anything to survive off of.
KM: What do you think will be the first thing to go?
AP: Probably our transportation abilities and trade and everything that keeps the world as it is running. Countries and specific groups of people are going to stick together and horde their resources. And then the United States is fucked.
KM: Do you see this leading to some sort of end times world war over these resources?
AP: Potentially, but even then, when it gets to that point there wouldn’t be enough resources to sustain a war.

how do you envision the end of the world? (2009)

KATIE M.
AGE: 22
OCCUPATION: SERVER/ GRADUATE STUDENT
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE, PURSUING M.A.

The format of this project was designed originally so that I wouldn’t have to come close to any sort of conclusions as to how I feel about the end of the world, let alone how I believe it will happen. However, in interviewing others and trying to circumvent my having to think actively about it I have found myself doing just the opposite. I cannot stop in at a coffee shop without surveying the clientele as I wait in line and in my head try to pinpoint how each individual would answer my initial question How do you envision the end of the world? Of course in my brain there is a very superficial judgment that comes from their appearance that leads me to believe how I think they would answer. This judgement is entirely false. As I have found that even my own mother, father, and brother, the three individuals that I have interviewed and know best blew me away with their answers. I can’t say entirely how I thought they would answer, but I sure as hell was not expecting the answers that I received.
Having a photograph of the interviewee is particularly important because it attaches the thoughts and ideas that are expressed in the interview to an image. Providing this visual I feel adds more weight to the answers.
The most interesting part of this entire process has been how open people are to talking about how they envision the world ending. No one ever got worked up while answering questions. Not one person was thrown off or depressed while searching their minds for answers to my questions. If the interviews had been recorded you could have voiced over two people comparing what is on their grocery list for the week—the interviewees spoke in an entirely normal tone while being asked about how they think the world will end.
End. End.
There is a quote that I had fallen in love with last summer while reading The Bloodstone Papers by Glen Duncan (Jenine, I have a hysterical story about running into him at a bookstore in London, where I reacted much in the same way as you did when David waltzed into the classroom). I hadn’t thought of it in months, and while I was posting the interviews it suddenly popped into my head, and find that it applies beautifully to how I view the apocalypse.

Every beginning is fraudulent,
every middle arbitrary,
every ending an illusion.
It’s the ending part that bothers me most.
These days I don’t even like the sound of the word.
Ending.