After the End/Quotes

Four hundred centuries have passes since man stepped out into the cold depths of space. Forty thousand years. An age so long that that its history lies shrouded in legend. Who knows how Mankind came to be scattered across a million disparate worlds? Who remembers the wars that tore ancient Earth asunder and dragged man down to the level of brute beasts? Who could recognize the names of Earth's ancient ruins, of nations destroyed and peoples long since crumbled to dust? To these questions, there can be no answers. From these times there come only whispers of horror and death.

—Warhammer 40,000

Oh! We're so tired
Watching the world expire
Time that we retire

Up in cathedral spires.

—Cathedral Spires by Judas Priest

The once green earth
Is scattered with horror and gray
No winners, just losers

Who die with a few months delay

—Straight to Hell by Running Wild

Cathy: Does the future always have to be post-apocalyptic?
Dewey: No, but it helps.

Learn by heart this poem of mine
so, dead, I still will share the time
when you cannot endure a house
deprived of water, light, or gas,
and, stumbling out to find a cave,
roots, berries, nuts to stay alive,
get you a cudgel, find a well,
a bit of land, and, if it's held,
kill the owner, eat the corpse.
I'll trudge beside your faltering steps
between the ruins' broken stones,
whispering "You are dead; you're done!
Where would you go? That soul you own
froze solid when you left your town."

Learn by heart this poem of mine.

—György Faludy Learn by Heart This Poem of Mine

They called it The Last War. Not because it was the last war that was fought, but because it was the last one that would ever BE fought. It began over the usual shit, but this time the men in the fancy hats didn't know when to put their toys away. When it was over, it was over for good. The lakes were sand, the fields were ash and the cities were all cemeteries. Humanity was a cloud of dust blowing over everything it had built. Senators and their speeches, priests and their bibles... all they were now was soot that floated in the air and clogged in your nostrils. Cockroaches inherited the earth and mankind's survivors learned their ways. No law, faith, or creed would ever unite men again. There was nothing left to come together over, nothing left worth having. Of course, there was still plenty left to fight about.

—The opening for Weapon Brown

A long, long time ago, there weren't any monsters. People used to live in one place and never move. They worked in small rooms and slept in small rooms and only went outside to move between the rooms. We know this because sometimes we find books and papers in the ruins.

—Clorian, A Moment of Peace

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

—Albert Einstein

The explosion that destroyed our city
Razed our home, transformed our fields into wasteland
Was nothing compare to what was now happening

To those who survived

—65 Days of Static, Another Code Against The Gone

"'Thou Shalt Not Kill... And ye Shalt build up the old wastes...' Sounds like a mighty good book o' rules. Too bad they didn't listen..."

—Grandpa Squirrel ("They" being humans), Peace on Earth

Not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would care, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly.
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

—Sara Teasdale, There Will Come Soft Rains,

Termination (termination)
Expiration (expiration)
Cancellation (cancellation): Human Race
Expectation (expectation)
Liberation (liberation)
Population (population) laid to waste
See our mother
Put to death
See our mother die
[interlude]
Smouldering decay
Take her breath away
Millions of our years
In moments dissapear
...
Fire
Is the outcome of hipocracy
Darkest potency
In the exit of humanity
Coulor our world Blackened

Blackened

—Metallica

First there was the collapse of civilization... anarchy, genocide, starvation... then we got The Plague.

—Opening Narration, Cyborg

The end is where we begin
It's crawling back when
We run away, run away
'cuz the end is where we begin
Where broken hearts mend
and start to beat again
The end is where we begin

—The End Is Where We Begin by Thousand Foot Krutch