Standing for something

For the last few years, off and on, I've been fascinated by a Stephen King novel, "The Stand." If you haven't read it, I'll try a quick plot summary. A secret lab in the southwestern U.S. accidentally releases a superflu virus that kills 99.6% of Americans over about two weeks (and later the world population too). The survivors all begin having similar dreams at night, either of a dark faceless man (guess who he is) or of an old black woman. Gradually, the survivors band together and travel west to either Las Vegas (guess who's taken up residence there--thanks for the heavy symbolism, Stephen) or to Boulder, Colorado. The followers of the dark man are plotting to kill off all of the Boulderites and then something big and dramatic happens and a bunch more people die. Happy ending still follows.

They made the book into a miniseries a few years ago, starring Rob Lowe, Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald (gotta have Molly Ringwald), and few other lesser stars. I caught part of Part 3 the other night on some channel or other, which compelled me to get the book out again and reread parts of it.

Greg sighs when he sees me reading it again and frankly, I can't exactly explain why it so captures my attention. I think it's just thinking about what it would be like if you were one of maybe two people (in a town my town's size) to survive such a plague. All of your family members would be dead. Depending on when your family caught the flu, you might have to bury them. The plague also kills dogs and horses, but not cats, so I guess you'd still have companionship. The electricity would go out eventually, but there's lots of camping gear available and you could certainly pick and choose which house to live in. Scavenging for food would be easy and I guess no one is going to complain if you chop down your neighbor's tree for firewood. I don't know how you would handle the bodies everywhere, but if you got past that, then what? How would you live the rest of your life? How would you keep from going crazy.

A lot of the flu survivors committed suicide, but many of the Boulderites got busy clearing the roads, burying the bodies, learning how to be farmers, and fixing the power plant. Reestablishing civilization. But "civilization" and technology is how we got the superflu in the first place--oooo, deep.