I saw this photo this morning, and a passage from my post-apocalyptic comedy, The Amadeus Net, came to mind. This is the character of Les Parsons, who is a retired Canadian diplomat, speaking:
If not for the Shudder, Canada would have disintegrated, like the United States did. And there is the supreme irony. A physical threat like the Shudder was capable of bringing our country together, while in the States, it was the final straw. The cracks in the American social system were the Achilles heel; all it took was the arrow, that chunk of rock hurtling out of space, to kill the body politic of that great nation. I know all this intimately, because that’s where I was stationed following the disaster. In the U.S. Actually, the Principality of New York. And then in Detroit, which is technically part of Canada now, thought most Canadians would never admit to it.
Photo by Jason Tester, via BoingBoing. More about The Amadeus Net at the publisher’s site. (You can also buy it there, hint, hint.)
Yeah, my hometown’s falling apart. And the sad thing is that I want to move back. (I vividly remember chuckling to myself when I read that section, too.)