Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 04/12/24

Welcome to the Apocalypse Edition

As pleasant as the weather has been, April in Texas marks the last gasp of crazy and unpredictable weather; sudden high winds, pounding rain, the odd tornado or two, and a possible cold snap are all part of the fun here. What’s it going to be today? Who knows? The jerking back and forth between dry and warm and cold and wet helped me to catch something that ravaged me for a couple of days. No telling what it was, but I had to stay real close to the bathroom, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

---

The Eclipse

Against my better judgement, I watched the Glorious Celestial Event, with Janice and her co-workers, sitting outside and singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I killed the vibe when I mentioned that it was a vampire love story.

This was not my first eclipse, nor my second or third. I’ve stood outside all of my life, looking for that perfect Ideal Eclipse. I’ve never seen it in person, but plenty of people have. That’s great, it really is, and if you love it and it brings you joy, a renewed sense of awe at the inner workings of the Universe, or you just like staring at the sun, then I hope you had a ball.

I was nonplussed. I’m never in the ideal spot for viewing the Eclipse in its “totality,” a word I’ve come to despise, right along with other overused and misunderstood words like “bespoke” and “trope.” The 3D glasses were nice, but ultimately, it was thirty minutes of fresh air and a cool breeze so I shouldn’t complain. I do however have to marvel at the amount of money people threw at the event in order to have “an experience,” such as the plane ride and the influx of tourists into places like Waco.

If you are one of those people, I sincerely hope you had a good time, despite the eclipse. I think you would have had to make your own fun with this. Good on you. I don’t know that the hew and cry that went up over this was worth the squeeze it took to get that juice.

Some people were evidently really bummed that they weren’t scooped up to join the choir invisible during the temperature drop and momentarily darkening of the skies on Monday. Does that bother any of you? It worries me that the decision-making skills they utilized to get to the place where they are looking up at the sky and saying, “Take me now, Lord” aren’t the most reliable precepts for someone trying to make right here and right now a better experience for all of us. I’ve done a quiet-quit before, for a job I hated. It was very easy to slide out from under it, as I had found a new, better job that suited me. Pizza delivery was not it.

My point is this: I’ve still got skin in the game, here. I don’t want to die. I don’t even want to be raptured. Not yet. I’ve got a lot more living to do. If you’re ready to go, then by all means, opt out of things like running for city council, and holding office, and taking jobs where people expect results from you. If at some point in every discussion over how to get clean water into Detroit, you think to yourself, “This is all academic, anyway; by the time this gets sorted, I’ll be kicking it with Big J, looking down on the poor sinners who didn’t think about securing their future,” I’m going to assume you’re not really in it to help us out. Believe whatever you want to believe, provided it doesn’t spill out over the rest of us, trying to live in a better place right now.

I haven’t looked at what the Flat Earthers are saying, because I don’t want the algorithm to take my curiosity as tacit acceptance for a lifestyle that has all the critical thinking of an Amish splinter group. Someone even posted a meme of all of the raptured Christians bouncing off of the dome that supposedly sits on top of our dinner plate world. Har-de-har-har. These days, I don’t doubt for a second that someone saw that meme and said, “Great, no one got into heaven on Monday. Thanks a lot, Biden!”

I remain fascinated that we live in an age where a person can simply declare things to be true and everyone goes, “Yeah, of course, that’s got to be it. I mean, they have a YouTube channel. They don’t just give those out to anyone.”

---

Fallout: Texas Notes

I find the state of video games in the modern era fascinating, particularly the ones that have managed to stay around for multiple incarnations, such as the aforementioned Fallout series. It’s my favorite Bethesda game—I like it way more than Skyrim—and Fallout 4 is immensely popular, some 9 years after its initial release.

Most of what appeals to me is the Dieselpunk Midcentury design of the game; it looks like a vintage-retro-futurist mashup that feels both comforting and familiar and also new and shiny. There’s nothing else like it out there.

The video game has, of course, spun off various other gaming experiences, up to and including an role-playing game and a companion skirmish wargame that lets you play pitched battles with familiar factions and groups.

I love Post-Apocalyptic stuff; comics, movies, TV shows, video games, books, etc. I’m sure it’s a by-product of growing up doing “disaster drills” where they lined us up in the hallways of the elementary school with our heads down, hugging our knees, all the better to help identify the bodies if we’re piled up in one place. Dark, eh? Well, that’s why we need The Road Warrior; to lighten the mood a bit. Put on some Thundarr the Barbarian cartoons if you’re feeling down about it and contemplate a world with Ookla the Mok in it.

Imagine this, but overlooking the Austin skyline…

Alas, there are not very many people who share my fascination with Pop Culture Apocalypses. More’s the pity, because I’ve been wanting to play a Fallout game set in Texas for over a decade now. I’ve reworked the map in my head a dozen times, being sure to put Amarillo, Texas and the Panex plant at Ground Zero for one of the bombs, because that’s where the disarm nuclear missiles. Hitting that with a Fallout nuke means bonus mutants, amirite? I would name their leader “Strait.”

Instead of Minutemen from Fallout 4, I’d do the Texas Rangers, but I’d map them more on a Brotherhood of Steel vibe, with old tech and a few power suits. One Raider Riot, one Power Suited Ranger. Many of the familiar monsters would be reskinned. Instead of mole rats, I’d make rabid armadillos. Communist bears? Nope. Try Feral pigs. On the coast, no mirelurks. Only giant mutant shrimp, able to climb out of the muck like the cockroaches of the sea that they are. And of course, raider gangs, taking names like the Aggies and the Cowboys. Come on, you know they would...

Unique challenges would be people trying to restart oil production in the state, along with trying to figure out how to grow food and raise livestock. I’d also drop some raiders and factions that mirror a megachurch, a university (or a scientific enclave at NASA, at the edge of the new coastline), and the Secessionists. Oh, some Flat-Earthers, too. Texas is chock-full of crazy.

The I-35 Corridor would be the new coastline, with everything to the East either uninhabitable or irradiated (or both). Houston and Galveston would be essentially wiped out. Abilene would be the gateway to the wasteland, and there’s a rumored corridor that lets people allegedly navigate through it to the Free City of El Paso, the new official gateway to Mexico and (rumor has it) an escape from the radiation (whether or not this is accurate is part of the game). There is a group of mercenaries called the Coyotes who will get you safely to El Paso, if the price is right.

To the west is a wild frontier, best tamed with guns and steel. Giant rattlesnakes, wild horses, two-headed vultures, mutants, super mutants, feral ghouls, and any other craziness I can cram into the game. It’s funny, but it wouldn’t be all that hard to work up. My only issue (aside from the perennial time question) is figuring out how I want to play it. I find Modiphius’ 2d20 system a little too fiddly for me. I want something simple and brutal, easy to use, hard to break. West End Games’ d6 engine would be great for this. So would Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing system.

This idea goes in the hopper of “things I’ll probably never get around to,” which is already full to bursting, but with the series out and trending, the urge to play the game—hell, to just run around in destroyed Boston—is overpowering.

Later this year, someone is making a licensed Planet of the Apes rpg that purports to use the delightfully easy d6 system. I’m assuming I can play as an Ape or as a Human, but come on...really? If I can’t run down stinking animals on horseback with a net and a rifle, I’m not interested.

Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

---

Note: we have abandoned any pretense of objectivity regarding this review, for reasons that should be patently obvious, but nevertheless are acknowledged.

Fallout (Amazon Prime)

Vault dweller Lucy leaves the security and safety of Vault 33 to go find her father in the wasteland, taken by raiders. The Brotherhood of Steel is after an escaped Enclave scientist and his dog. A non-feral ghoul decides to take a bounty hunting job. None of this sounds particularly thrilling except that it’s happening in 2295 in the Fallout Universe, made famous by several best-selling video games and for the millions of people who have played them, this series is a must-see.

Yep. That’s Fallout, all right.

The best thing about the Fallout games is that they are made by adults, for adults. Lest you think this is not so, just give a listen to the music that permeates Fallout 4. Take a gander at the midcentury-cum-atomic-age design that is the aesthetic for the game series. The advertising artwork. Scrapping settlements (you know, cleaning up the place?) and building stuff. All of it, it’s stuff that would appeal to grown-ups beyond the need to shoot things in a game, which is where, I’m sure, that people under the age of 35 jump onto the bandwagon and also depart.

I don’t ironically love the Fallout universe. I love it fundamentally. It’s everything I want in one place: post-apocalyptic snark, midcentury design, vintage jazz and blues music, a really good dog, power armor...is that enough or should I keep going? I live in The North Texas APOCALYPSE BUNKER, for Pete’s sake! You work it out.

Oh, Amazon, you had me at End-of-the-World Boyd Crowder.

For those of you who don’t feel as I do, and are wondering earnestly how this will fit into your weekend watching schedule, my advice is this: Try the first two episodes. I think it’s a near-perfect introduction to the Fallout Cinematic Universe (hah!), and bonus, you get to start off with Walton Goggins, at his most Goggins-esque. It’s not until he Ghouls up that he turns into End-of-the-World Boyd Crowder, though. Seriously, there is no other living actor who can say “Goddam” as authentically as him, with the sibilant “T” breaking into both words like a gymnast hitting the springboard to mount a vaulting horse. It’s a masterclass deep cut in profanity.  

How’s the series? Well, as someone who bought the art book for Fallout 4 to admire all of the design and concept art, it’s nearly porn. I mean, the aesthetics of the game have been duplicated down to the smallest detail—the last time I saw this thorough of a conversion to screen was the Harry Potter movies. When you see the power armor, you’ll instantly recognize it as the T-60 model and it opens and closes exactly like in the game. It’s all there, and then some.

Not Dogmeat, but still Dog.

As a television series, I can say with some satisfaction that the show throws several curve balls that keep this from being a straight-to-screen scrape and dump, like so many other video game movies. This is an original story, told using very familiar set pieces, that doesn’t quite play by the rules. The world of Fallout is brutal, and the show makes that very clear. There’s some laugh-out-loud funny bits, too; things they probably couldn’t get away with in a video game, but are no problem in an R-rated show with a penchant for graphic, follow-the-bullet-critical-hit violence of a nearly cartoon nature, like how sometimes people blow up real good in the game? Yeah, they got that, too.

Granted, it’s no Nuka-Girl, but points for the effort.

We here at the N.T.A.B. give Fallout our highest possible recommendation, and we also advise you to take copious notes, because forewarned is forearmed. The show is full of survival tricks, like always keeping a stim pack handy, and never drink the irradiated water. As training videos go, it’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L.! Oh, and keep an eye out for the tiny Justified cast reunion.  

I really want a pip-boy, now.

Mark Finn is one of the most opinionated and influential experts on Robert E. Howard in the state of Texas. He’s an author out of largesse rather than as a vocation and writes stories because he can’t play the guitar. He loves gorillas, values a well-placed conversational movie quote, and treasures the picaresque in literature. Annoyed with people’s misunderstanding of popular culture, he took it upon himself to buy a movie theater so he could lord it over every film student on the Internet. He likes to say, “If three people tell you you’re drunk, go lie down.”