Extinct in the Bay Area


The thing that bothered me most about this movie was that only ONE person in the film was doing something that clearly improved the odds of humanity's long-term survival.

Not the engineer, wiring solar cells and lead batteries that would fail in twenty years, and fixing bicycles that would eventually become useless once people run out of inner tubes and patch kits, or when the roads start to crumble.

Not the scavenger, pulling increasingly out-of-expiration date tin cans and medicines out of empty houses.

Not the hipster kids, explaining how they don't need their parents' civilization (while wearing hundred-dollar boots and backpacks!)

Not the teacher, giving a history lesson about the Renaissance, instead of how to treat a wound, or raise crops, or what berries not to eat.

Certainly not the filmmaker! What good will a roll of film in a can be in 200 years, with no electricity to work a projector anymore?

Nope, it was the woman who was trying to get pregnant. With only 186 (oops, 185) (nope, 184!) people left, the only way mankind is going to survive is to make babies, lots of them. And even her character was handled poorly: how useful is asserting that she gets to make the "medical decisions" for the child when the only choice is 10-year old antibiotics or "maybe we should amputate?"

I give the San Franciscan brain trust three, maybe four generations, tops, before they're extinct.

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