Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What if the Survivors of an Apocalypse Thought Comic Strips Were Important Historical Documents?

There's an episode of the original Star-Trek, where Kirk finds himself temporarily stranded on a world inhabited by two factions: the Kohms and the Yangs.  They're mortal enemies, but not really sure why; the reasons predate their history.  They don't really care either. Kirk's been hanging out with the Yangs, and they keep saying "E Plebnista" over and over, which makes no sense to anyone.

Eventually, he winds up back at their cave, and they show him this big piece of paper that is apparently a big deal to them.  Then Kirk is like "Uh, what?  This is the Declaration of Independence... Jesus Christ you guys.  It's not 'E Plebnista', it's 'We the People'".  Then he reads the whole thing to them, and everyone gets really excited.  Spock teleports in, and explains that this is a parallel world to our own, that wasn't able to avoid a nuclear war that we did, and then some stuff happens that I don't remember

The point is, this document and phrase passed through a post-apocalyptic game of "Telephone".  I guess if the Yangs (i.e. the Yankees) held onto any single piece of paper, that one sort of makes sense.  What if they had grabbed a different paper or book by mistake though?  What if they grabbed the comics?

Here's the game:  apocalypse or whatever happens, a few generations pass.  People can still read, but they mistake a comic strip for a historical document, and take it really, really seriously. They do their best to interpret the strips, and learn from the mistakes of their predecessors, but of course, they get it pretty wrong.  What kind of nonsense would become their doctrine?

Coming soon:
What if the Survivors of an Apocalypse Thought "Red Meat" Was an Important Historical Document?
and
What if the Survivors of an Apocalypse Thought "The Family Circus" Was an Important Historical Document?

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