So I went to see I Am Legend tonight.  I really really liked it, but hooooooooooly crap, it was intense.  I highly recommend it.  The scenes of a deserted New York are incredibly haunting, and Will Smith does a great job of a guy trying to keep it together while suffering alone and bearing an incredible burden.

One of the issues I’ve always had is that my morbid fascination with post-apocalyptic stories will hang out with my imagination, and the two of them will have a great time running amok with each other.  And the problem is, with this type of doomsday scenario (unlike some of the others like dragons taking over the planet or the moon exploding)… well, it’s actually possible.  And I think that’s what freaked me out the most, giving my brain fodder to shift into high gear as I was driving home.  There’s a crapload of genetic tinkering going on these days — hell, I just read an article a couple of days ago about how scientists are trying to genetically manipulate viruses to reprogram them to work to our advantage rather than against us — and there’s so much of it going on that we don’t know about.  What if one of these things gets out?  What if one of them is deliberately introduced because it shows initial promise but then turns bad, and there’s nothing we can do?

And then my brain started to wonder… what if I (or any of us) was faced with this kind of scenario?  What if there was a virus that had deadly effects or could turn to you into some kind of mutant zombie thing like 28 Days Later?  If you knew you were infected or there was a possibility you’d turn into something horrible… would you kill yourself?  How would you deal if a member of your family or your best friend or significant other became infected?  If you were among the immune, how would you protect yourself and survive?

And then my brain started to spin out of control with the whole thing, and I decided it was probably a good idea to pacify it with vodka.