What if the world ended tomorrow?

I'll bet you thought this was going to be a really religious post. Ummm ... not so much (yet. Who knows where I'll get by the end of this).

I've been watching the first season of 'Jericho' on cbs.com. The new season starts tomorrow night and I figured it was time to get caught up. Let me tell you about this show.

Location: Jericho - a small town in Kansas
Premise: the people of Jericho see a mushroom cloud (nuclear bomb) go off in the direction of Denver. They lose contact with everyone.
Characters: hot men, hot chicks, one FBI agent (are we sure? he showed up the day before the bomb went off), tough men, tough women, scoundrels, youth ... everything I knew from my days in small town Iowa. A pretty good cross-section.

Then, even though they made it through the bomb and there is no fallout, a plane flies over and there is an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) that kills every electrical circuit. So ... nothing works.

We deal with the fact that the world is changed. People that are selfish become even more selfish. People that are gracious are extended beyond their limits. Law and order becomes nearly impossible. Greed sets in. Fear predominates. When refugees come to town, they are barely tolerated and are forced to sleep in the local church, even though there are homes in town standing empty since their owners were out of town at the time of the destruction.

News trickles in - these nuclear bombs went off in many cities around the country. The government is in turmoil. Raiders are on the highways. It's not safe anywhere.

I started watching this show when it started, but ended up falling away because it's not on a night that I'm usually home. But, I decided to try to catch up this weekend - and will Tivo the episodes for the new season. I managed to fully immerse myself in the storyline this weekend. And I'm a bit overwhelmed.

Last night, I laughingly told Max that my conspiracy theory brain was in overdrive. Maybe the government was in league with Hollywood - all of these 'survivor' type shows (LOST, Survivor, Jericho, etc.) are being shown because they know something we don't and they are trying to show us what could happen and help us become more prepared. HAH ... whatever.

But, at the same time, it really has gotten me thinking about the ease of our lives. We fully expect electricity to be on at all times in our homes. The internet has become our main tool for research and for many of us ... communication. We pull up to a gas pump and expect to fill our cars. When we walk into a grocery store, we want to have multiple choices for everything we purchase, we wouldn't know what to do with empty shelves. Most of us have cupboards stocked with plenty of food and our freezers are full. We turn on the faucet and receive clean water. We rely on the infrastructure of this country. We wouldn't know what to do without it. We have no plans to ever have to know what to do without it.

When we were warned about the Y2K crisis in 1999, we thought about it. When the planes hit the Twin Towers in 2001, we thought about it. And yet, we've put away our generators and emptied the water containers. We don't want to be considered nuts.

Yup, I'm an old lady with a bent towards conspiracy theories. And once I get past paying attention to this show, I'll set them aside and think about other things. But, today ... I'm wondering what would happen if the world as we know it ended tomorrow?