Come the Apocalypse...

If it ever comes to pass that man's o'erweening ambition brings him low, and I find myself leading a new generation of children through the shattered remnants of our once great civilization, I think I'll start spicing up human history. Our shared history is, in many ways, a rather extensive collection of stories about how horrible we've been to one another. I wouldn't want the new generation coming in to lose sight of what man can do to man, but I think the outset of a whole new era in human history might benefit from the inclusion of a little whimsy.

When I gather the young'uns about the fire after a long day of exploring ruins for useful objects and fighting off mutants and zombies, I think I'll make world history a little more... colorful than the history that we're taught today. I'll tell stories about how half-man/half-bovine 'cowboys' won the west, in a generations-long game of cards. I'll talk about how the world was revolutionized by the advent of the Monkey Express Postal Delivery Service, and teach them to settle internecine disputes with West Side Story-style dance offs. I'll fill their language with a mishmash of gangster lingo, Brooklynese, and hepcat style.

Why not. Living in a harsh, scarred world, in what way could it hurt to teach them that Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde struck fear into the armies of Fu Manchu by attacking dressed as giant rabbits, the most feared beasts of the old world?