Well, that was that. It was over.
You prepare yourself for these things –like the first astronauts shot to Mars, ready to spend 3 months in each one confined space with no breaks– but its never quite as easy as you’d think.

I unlatched the shelter’s heavy door and heaved it out into the sunlight. The gritty, glassy dust of 90 days’ worth of nuclear winter shivered off it as it opened. It glittered like pixie dust in the diffused, gray light.

“Well shit.”

I leaned against the doorframe and lit a USA Gold, decrementing a count in my head, proportionate to the number of smokes boxed up in the bunker; 599 left.

The end of the world’s a funny thing. You plan for it- you buy a CostCo membership and max out some credit cards, you buy a sturdy .308 and a few safaris’ worth of ammo, and you turn your backyard into a bomb shelter. Oh, and you get called a crackpot.
But in the end, the crackpot’s the one enjoying a lungful of nicotine on a not-so-bright morning–watching the houses of the naysayers crumble to dust