JUMP!

JUMP!, originally uploaded by rachiestar_me.

I've mentioned the rich and deep vein of apocalyptic thinking that rushes like a torrent through American culture, from recent movies that eagerly imagine the destruction of New York City (Cloverfield, I Am Legend), to novels (Cormac McCarthy's The Road, soon to be a movie), to TV shows like Jericho. Someone came up with this great shot on Flickr, above. Even before I saw it, I was musing absent-mindedly on what magnitude of crisis on Wall Street might bring the news that a ruined financier, as several did in 1929, leaped to his death rather than face life in the gutter with the rest of us?

More Apocalypse is coming to your TV screens, thanks to HBO, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter:

"What if the current financial crisis in the U.S. becomes so severe that Americans start to flee the country?

Welcome to "Americatown," a Chinatown-like enclave of U.S. immigrants in cities around the world.

HBO is developing the futuristic drama series project, which hails from writer Bradford Winters and producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

Set 25-40 years into the future when the precipitous decline of the U.S. leads to a mass exodus of its citizens, "Americatown" takes place in a cluster of newly arrived American immigrants in a big foreign city."