The Friday 'Stache

In honor of today's 'stache:



Ahh... Freddie W.

On an unrelated note, I'm working on a post-apocalyptic feature screenplay right now called "Wine of the Wrath" (it's a working title). I won't say much about it, other than that the story kicks off with a nuclear holocaust. And I've discovered since I began that it's easy to get obsessed with vintage Cold War phobias, and dig up pictures and videos of test explosions. It's fascinating to think that, just a generation ago, pretty much everyone was justifiably convinced that some kind of atomic war might descend upon our unhappy world any day.

Forty years was more than enough time to instill in our collective unconscious the fear of a "the big one," to the point that the image of a mushroom cloud still haunts us. There is something otherworldly, surreal, intuitively impossible about the magnitude of that kind of weapon. Fearful and awe-inspiring. We dread our creation, and rightfully. The unveiling of that technology almost single-handedly inspired the post-apocalyptic genre.

Here's why:



Alright, I won't bore you with my solemn contemplations any longer. I was motivated to spend a little time on it today because I had to pitch my feature idea to my fellow screenwriting students (and professor!) today.



It wasn't anything like that. But I was unprepared. I suppose if the stakes had been higher, I would have been more motivated to come up with a compelling delivery. As it is, my poor introduction didn't keep the class from contributing positively to my ideas, so no harm done. None of them had any money anyway.

*****

Fun facts about the Tsar Bomb: its fireball had a diameter of two and half miles. Read more about that bomb here.

For more information about what the aftermath of a nuclear war might look like, check this out. And this.

Hurray for Wikipedia!