Apocalyptic Log: Difference between revisions

Not to be confused with the apocalyptic Loge from [[Richard Wagner]]'s ''[[Der Ring Des Nibelungen|Götterdämmerung]]'', or for that matter, {{smallcaps| The Log}} from ''[[Naruto the Abridged Series]]''. Or with Apocalyptic [[Just for Pun|Lag]]. See also [[Video Will]], the various times when the [[Cassette Craze]] applies to disappearances, and some of the less pleasant cases of [[Message in a Bottle]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* The Director's Cut of episode 21 of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' opens with a security video taken about a month before Second Impact. It starts off in a mundane way, picking up not only chatter from staff but a conversation between Gendo and Keel on the nature of scientists. Then with a crash, the scene cuts to the moment when Adam begins to grow into [[Our Angels Are Different|the Giant of Light]], and we hear shouting from scientists trying to get the Angel under control. The picture cuts off just as Adam's giant, glowing hands reach into the frame.

** Similarly, all we see of the activation of Unit 04 is a mushroom cloud rising up from the test site, followed by static.

{{quote|''We dreamed of creating the world's strongest Pokémon...[[Gone Horribly Right|And we succeeded.]]''}}

* In the visual and sound novels of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'', The TIPS show that Shion kept a journal as {{spoiler|she was going mad due to Hinamizawa Syndrome}}. Although you actually do get to see many of the events that the journal refers to, it gives a closer look into her mind as the events unfold and ends with the [[Tear Jerker|"Notebook of Happiness"]] entry, which ends, as you might guess from the ironic title, {{spoiler|"I'm sorry for having been born"}}. Naturally, it was cut from the anime.

* The horror manga, ''Mail'', has a story titled "Portrait"; it starts with a woman picking up and arranging her sister's belongings after she had committed suicide via self-immolation and discovering her diary. The diary describes the last few weeks of her sister's life including finding a rare portrait and her growing obsession with it. It starts of with her trying to discover more about the painting, to learning more about the girl in the painting, to writing in her diary that she thinks there is something creepy going on in her apartment, to thinking that the source of the creepiness is that new painting she is so fond of to realizing that sometimes, the eyes of the sleeping girl would open up, to finally writing over and over again how she wants to die. When reading that last page, the woman who finds her sister's diary realizes that {{spoiler|the last few pages handwriting slowly changes from her sister's handwriting to someone else's. When she realizes this, she looks at the portrait and realizes that it's looking straight at her. It turns out that the portrait of the girl still has the girl's spirit trapped inside due to the sympathy she got in life, cheering her to live on despite the fact that the only thing she ever wanted was to die and end her suffering and since then, has been committing suicide through the various owners of the portrait!}}

 

* In ''Countdown'', when an unstoppable virus destroys an [[Alternate Universe]] (a universe that had ALREADY been destroyed and remade), we see the last days from through the journal of Buddy Blank. We watch through his eyes as the universe becomes a planet where humans and animals are transformed into violent, bloodthirsty [[Half-Human Hybrid|Half Human Hybrids]].

* Brilliantly used in ''[[Grendel]]'' to illustrate the self-doubts and conflicts within Brian Li Sung, as he slowly succumbs to the Grendel identity. {{spoiler|The brilliant part is that what at first seemed to be mere doodles in his journal's margins turn out to be the musings of the increasingly self-directing Grendel spirit, itself!}}

* Dan Turpin's internal monologue in ''[[Final Crisis]]''.

 

{{quote|Anko: "Fuck!"}}

 

* ''[[WALL-E]]'': Override Directive A113.

* ''[[Felidae]]''. The progressively alcoholic veterinary Dr. Preterius holds a pre-mortem camera diary of him and his two lab assistants trying to develop a new "''glue''" for organic tissue, by experimenting with homeless cats in his practice in his house's basement. The first trials lead to gruesome deaths of several cats, as the prototype glue turns out to be acidic. The next trials on a special homeless cat promptly named [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|"Claudandus"]] are way more successful. However, they have to cut the agonized cat open again for further experimenting. Then, the experiment's funding is cut, and both of Preterius' lab assistants quit. Preterius, who is slowly succumbing to his alcoholism, keeps on working independently, and seemingly goes mad at the end when he claims Claudandus to be talking to him. It should be noted that ''Felidae'' is a crime story told from the viewpoint of a talking cat. Therefore, Preterius' ravings aren't as nutty after all.

* In the "found footage" genre of horror movies, a good portion of the film is supposed to be footage recorded by someone experiencing a horrific scenario.

** Infamous exploitation film ''[[Cannibal Holocaust]]'' is split into halves, the first being the recovery of an Apocalypse Log, and the second being the log itself. Because the film was made way back in 1980, this makes the found footage genre [[Older Than They Think]].

* The BBC docudrama ''Supervolcano'' has a group of people watching the logs of a dying scientist, who documents the conditions of the U.S. after the eruption of Yellowstone. Subverted, in that {{spoiler|the scientist actually survives, and is one of the people watching the logs}}.

 

* Played with in ''[[World War Z]]'', which is an oral history of a narrowly-averted [[Zombie Apocalypse]].

* ''And the Ass Saw the Angel'', by Nick Cave, is the protagonist's stream of thought as he sinks into [[Quicksand Sucks|quicksand]].

* In [[Garth Nix]]'s ''[[Old Kingdom|Sabriel]]'', the titular heroine discovers a magical recording of the last moments of a soldier's life.

* [[Older Than Radio]] example: ''M.S. Found in a Bottle'' by [[Edgar Allan Poe]], also a [[Message in a Bottle]]. The protagonist states that he's writing the account for posterity, and that if he is about to die or suffer some other fate that would render him incapable of finishing the story, he will put it in the titular bottle and throw it in the sea. He apparently does so when he goes down a whirlpool on a ship full of [[The Voiceless]]...

* ''[[Frankenstein (novel)|Frankenstein]]'' may or may not be one of these, depending on whether or not you think the sea captain who narrates the [[Framing Story]] will rescue his ship from the Arctic ice.

* [[Shel Silverstein]] combines this with [[Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion]] in the poem ''Boa Constrictor''.

* [[Dan Simmons]] seems to really enjoy these. In ''[[Hyperion]]'' the Apocalyptic Log is subverted as we get to read the journals from the character as he goes insane from sickness and then as he gets better. In ''[[The Terror]]'' it's much nastier as the journal appears through out the book slowly becoming more and more hopeless until in the final entry {{spoiler|he tells us how he finally managed to kill the people who captured him as he dies of starvation, scurvy and freezing cold.}}

* ''[[The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]]'' has Dr Jekyll give the narrator his Apocalyptic Log in the final chapter.

* [[Bram Stoker]]'s ''[[Dracula (novel)|Dracula]]'' is assembled from several of these logs, with a few newspaper articles thrown in.

* W.J. Stuart's [[Novelization]] of ''[[Forbidden Planet]]'' has an excellent example of the Apocalyptic Log, in which "Doc" Ostrow, having had a taste of the mental powers provided by the [[Upgrade Artifact]], suggests the answer to the question of how the incredibly advanced Krell [[Precursors]] could have been wiped out in an instant: by unleashing [[The Heartless|invincible monsters from their subconscious minds]]. As he feared, the [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|effects]] of the [[Upgrade Artifact]] killed him before he could explain any further.

* In the novel based on true events ''Mila 18'', one person decides to keep a log of his starving to death as a Jew in Nazi occupied Warsaw. He figures since he is starving, he might as well contribute to science with full logs of all the effects. That is not the only instance of Apocalyptic Log, as other Jews also record the atrocities and their resistance for posterity. [[Downer Ending|This is not a happy book]].

* ''[[The Third World War]]: August 1985'' includes excerpts from the emergency logs of three communities during the war and pulls this twice. The first log ends when the building it is in is destroyed by a bombing raid (with a statement that the book was found in the ruins), but resumes with the backup copy describing the situation. The second, from an area in central Birmingham, ends with {{spoiler|the warning of Birmingham's imminent nuclear destruction being received, stopping mid-word. A statement follows that its charred remains were found in the destroyed building}}.

* At least half of ''Strange Objects'' by Gary Crew is taken up by the serialized journal of Wouter Loos, one of two convicted killers marooned on the western coast of Australia in 1629. At first a straightforward record of Loos and his "friend," Jan Pelgrom, attempting to seek shelter with a local tribe, the journal slowly becomes more and more supernatural- especially with the introduction of a mysterious ruby ring that Pelgrom wears. However, the truth of this particular matter is never quite resolved, as the most overt record of anyone displaying magical power is in the final chapter- by which time, Loos is [[Unreliable Narrator|delirious]] and barely coherent in his last pages.

** Being a [[Scrapbook Story]], ''Strange Objects'' also includes diary entries written in 1986 by the scrapbook's "compiler," Steven Messenger. The diary begins with Messenger's accidental discovery of a small cache of artefacts that once belonged to Loos and Pelgrom: though most of them are quickly handed over to the authorities, Messenger succeeds in taking one- a small jewelled ring, which he keeps on a necklace. As the months pass, he begins to experience a feeling of [[Being Watched]], and frequently mentions encountering a silent "double" of himself. Eventually, Steven begins wearing the ring on his finger; according to the epilogue, he vanished from his home soon after and was never seen again.

* In the last ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' book, Sean and friends find an ancient digital diary documenting the fall of society on that planet. {{spoiler|The general populace went mad from listening to the dwindling hyperspace transmissions of the Fourth Imperium when a loose bio-weapon killed '''everything''' on '''every''' other Imperial world. They turned against technology as the source of the disaster}}.

* ''[[Friday the 13th (film)|Jason X: Planet of the Beast]]''. The space station crew managed to acquire a few of the logs of the ''Blackstar 13'' (a shuttle Jason had gone on a rampage in) before it crashed into a nearby planet. The last log was made by the ship's hiding and rambling cook, and ends with Jason bashing through the door, and horribly murdering him.

* ''[[The Stormlight Archive]]'' has an Apocalyptic Log in the form of {{spoiler|Dalinar's visions}}. Yes, an Apocalyptic Log {{spoiler|from God}}.

* ''[[Otherland]]'' uses this trope in a rather interesting way by having the narrative point of view occasionally shift to Martine Desroubin's subvocalized journal entries. The segments are thus effectively an apocalyptic log in the progress of being written. They're doubly intriguing because she is blind and is therefore writing solely from her own experiences and perspective. Later, her journals are recovered from Otherland and she spends time reading them to analyze her own [[Character Development]].

* The [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] short story "The Horror of the Heights" details the adventures of an intrepid aviator who flies above 40,000 feet and encounters an "air jungle" - an entire ecosystem of atmospheric beasts. He barely escapes from a predatory creature on his first flight, and records his intentions to go back up later and explore more thoroughly. The framing story reveals that the aviator's plane was found crashed and the aviator himself missing. All that was found in the plane was a torn, blood-stained journal. The last words are hastily scrawled: "Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"

* ''[[Non-Stop]]'' by Brian Aldiss conveys the story of the disaster that made the setting [[After the End|post-apocalyptic]] through a diary found by one character.

 

* ''[[Buck Rogers in the 25th Century]]'', episode "Space Vampire". The title creature (called a "Vorvon") is being tracked by a man named Helson (possibly from "Dr. Van Helsing", as a [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[Dracula]]''). Helson's drone makes a recording of him confronting the Vorvon: it ends with him being killed. Buck discovers the monster exists by watching the tape.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': in the episode "Silence in the Library", the Doctor and his companion listen to a recorded message (censored "for tone and content") on a data-terminal in an abandoned library. "Message follows: Run. For God's sake, run. Nowhere is safe... We can't--Oh, they're here. Argh. Slargh. Snick. Message ends."

* The original ''[[Land of the Lost (TV series)|Land of the Lost]]'' had the Marshall's tracking down installments of a diary by a predecessor to the land. Eventually, they enter a cave full of dormant Sleetaks and find his long decayed corpse and his final entry in a small section. They read that he never found a way home and was doomed because of being trapped in the cave with the Sleetaks awake. Suddenly, the Marshall's heard the sound of the Sleetaks waking up, take the hint and barely manage to escape themselves.

 

* "Death Story" by Lecrae is the last-minute prayer of a gangster on his deathbed.

{{quote|''I wronged You, I see that, I want to give in,

* "The Chariot" by The Cat Empire.

{{quote|''This is a song that came upon me one night

* "Chiron Beta Prime" by [[Jonathan Coulton]].

{{quote|''That's all the family news that we're allowed to talk about

* "Experiment IV" by [[Kate Bush]].

* "Space Oddity" by [[David Bowie]].

{{quote|''Ground Control to Major Tom

** The acoustic version on the ''Sound+ Vision'' album even [[Last-Note Nightmare|ends with a choked sob, and the Morse Code for S.O.S. repeating into the fade.]]

* Dr. Jekyll sings an Apocalyptic Log in the musical version of ''Jekyll and Hyde''.

* "Two Suns in the Sunset" by [[Pink Floyd]] describes the last few moments of a man's life before he is killed by a nuclear bomb.

{{quote|''the rusty wire that holds the cork

* [[Billy Joel]]'s "Goodnight Saigon" - the first two lines let you know that it doesn't end well.

* [[Iron Maiden]]'s "Satellite 15...The Final Frontier" is about a pilot in a damaged ship giving his last report.

* "Pioneers over C." by [[Van der Graaf Generator]], which, like "Space Oddity" deals with space exploration gone wrong:

* [[Rush]]'s "Cygnus X-1" is about a space pilot flying his ship directly into the heart of a black hole. Subverted in the second part, "Hemispheres", where he comes out the other end.

* Mind.In.A.Box's "Stalkers". By the sound of things, the singer is either suffering from a mental breakdown from paranoid schizophrenia, or being [[You Will Be Assimilated|forcibly assimilated]] by a [[Hive Mind]].

{{quote|''I can feel my thoughts dying out

* "30k ft" by Assemblage 23 is about a doomed airline passenger making a final phone call to his wife/lover. The song [[Killed Mid-Sentence|cuts off in mid-sentence]] at the end.

 

{{quote|'''Phillips:''' A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What's that? There's a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they're turning into flame!

''(screams and unearthly shrieks)''

{{quote|'''Announcer:''' Smoke comes out, black smoke, drifting over the city. People in the streets see it now. They're running towards the East River, thousands of them, dropping in like rats. Now the smoke's spreading faster. It's reached Times Square. People are trying to run away from it, but it's no use. They're -- They're falling like flies. Now the smoke's crossing Sixth Avenue... Fifth Avenue... a hundred yards away... it's -- it's fifty feet.... ''(a thud, as he collapses)''}}

 

* The prologue to the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] game ''All Flesh Must Be Eaten'' has a scientist, just bitten by a zombie, discuss the transformation from human to infected cadaver in a truly disturbing series of logs. The last few are ''after'' his death, as the brain is the last thing to go... and the final one has him reduced to groaning that the hunger is all he has left.

* There's at least three examples along these lines from the ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' magazine ''White Dwarf'', although two are merely dealing with attacks by vampires and Necrons respectively.

** Supplement ''Cthulhu Companion'', adventure "The Mystery of Loch Feinn". Professor Gibbson's journal details his investigation of the Water Horse and his run-ins with the MacAllans - the Cthulhu cultists who eventually killed him.

** ''Fearful Passages'', adventure "Armored Angels". Professor Powell's notes give information on his plan to open a gate to the planet Yuggoth. The last page of his diary give a horrifying account of the invasion of Mi-Go and a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath through the gate.

* Many of the cards one can draw on the Forbidden Island in the ''Touch of Evil'' expansion "Something Wicked" detail an exploration party gradually succumbing to a lycanthrophy curse. Several other cards can ''inflict'' lycanthopy on the exploring player.

* The recent "Jihad" series of [[BattleTech]] sourcebooks feature a number of these, usually from victims of the Words frequent use of WMDs. Probably the most distressing are the {{spoiler|cries for help from Alarion; the population are dying from a bioweapon attack, but claim there are un-infected children}}.

* ''The Morrow Project'' adventure R-002 ''Project Damocles''. In the [[Backstory]], a group of scientists create an artificial intelligence but a nuclear holocaust begins while they're testing it. They try to escape the underground area where they're working but the AI (named Damocles) malfunctions and won't let them out. One of the project members, William Lezrow, records the events that led up to the disaster and the fate of each of the team members. The [[PC]]s can find it and read it as they explore the area.

 

* At [[Disney Theme Parks]], one of these can be heard while waiting in line for the Jungle Cruise ride.

** The plot of Curse of Pompeii and many other Howl O Scream rides is often one of these, too.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

{{quote|I hear trolls

I'm sorry Mother}}

* The Mo'ia Atoll tablets in ''Endless Ocean'', albeit a lot less disturbing than most. Also, the emails you get after discovering parts of the Deity Idol.

** "There is something... from the window..."

** The logs in the computer screen tell us the story of an experiment Alphys did: {{Spoiler|Alphys intended to investigate how human Determination worked and if it was possible to use it to empower monsters, so she injected determination extracted from human souls on dying monsters and on inanimate flowers in increasing doses, with increasing desperation. The monsters then appeared to having recovered, only to completely collapse and become ungodly abominations just the day before their intended release. Oh, and one of her flowers injected with determination mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the chaos...}}. One screen has also an alternate log, obtainable only by poking in the game code, {{Spoiler|implied to be the last thing wrote by unpersoned scientist W.D. Gaster before he booted himself out of reality}}.

** The tapes in the resting room tell the story of the death of the children of the Underworld kingdom. {{Spoiler|More exactly, how the human Fallen Child convinced his adoptive monster brother Asriel to enact a plan which involved the death of the Child via ingesting poisonous flowers and Asriel absorbing his soul and how Asriel reluctantly agreed to it.}}

 

* In Warren Ellis's ''[[Superidol]]'', a pop culture writer describes a computer-generated [[Idol Singer]]'s [[The Virus|viral]] takeover of the world.

*** [[Alternate Character Interpretation|Or he just made it up, writing a story in the hopes it would be published should someone find it.]] After all, what's a better way to kill time when you're trapped?

** Later, when they travel to the sunken Sea Shrine in a submarine which is ''really'' their aptly-named airship "The Deathtrap", Black Mage falls into a spoken version. After he tells you of his team's decent into madness, Red Mage tries to tell him it's only been a few hours since they started the journey. Black Mage keeps narrating with something to the effect of "I ignored the gibberish which sprouted from my former teammates misshapen lips". Apparently he really likes doing this. Or he just [[Omnicidal Maniac|wants to see them all dead. As usual.]]

* [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=69 This strip from] ''[[VG Cats]]'', even though the writer actually comes out okay.

 

* In ''[[The Gamers Alliance]]'', [[The Spock|Nymgrock]] finds the elven sages' forgotten diaries which chronicle the first spread of the Blood Fever which occurred hundreds of years earlier. The first entries show some curious, out of the ordinary events in the sages' lives. However, as the entries progress, the effects of the Blood Fever start showing up in more gruesome ways and the writings become increasingly desperate and terrified, eventually culminating in the respective final entries where the writers perform a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to end the plague. [[Foregone Conclusion|It doesn't work because the plague shows up deadlier than ever in the present day, which has been the very reason Nymgrock sought out the diaries in the first place to find information about what could be causing the plague]].

* There's a web-only story which isn't an apocalypse log, but a diary found in a life raft out at sea. The sole survivor of a shipwreck saw dolphins around her all the time and believed that she was turning into one; the last entry is more or less a heavily misspelled variant of "Flippers are useless. Fuck it, I'm going into the water."

* Right-wing [[You Tuber]] Nightvisionphantom made an "If Obama Wins" video during the 2008 election (needless to say, it was quietly removed afterwards), in which he claims to be the last surviving member of a resistance who fought a losing battle against the Islamofascist hordes that Obama unleashed upon the world.

* The [[ARG]] viral campaign for the Nine Inch Nails album ''Year Zero'' is a wide collection of barely decypherable websites That describe a [[Crapsack World]]. These websites are sent from the future by a team of computer programmers and quantum physicists as a warning to those of us living in the time of the events triggered their circumstances. Bonus points for one entry written by a White House aide describing the monster sent to allow the Earth to... shall we say, [[Kill'Em All|start]] [[Reset Button|over]].

 

* ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' features a rather unique and disturbing take on this trope, as Franz Hopper (a.k.a. Waldo Schaeffer), the creator of [[Cyberspace|Lyoko]], uses the supercomputer's "Return to the Past" function to create a [[Groundhog Day Loop]], while preserving a video file of his attempts to avert his and Aelita's impending abduction by government agents during that looped day. By the time the entry for "day 1000" rolls around, his sanity seems to be hanging by a thread (and there are still a thousand more entries to go). Meanwhile, as far as his daughter and the outside world are concerned, no time has actually passed at all.

* [[Memetic Mutation]] has turned [[Candle Jack]] from ''[[Freakazoid!]]'' into a perpetual generator of exam

* In an episode of ''[[Futurama]]'', the Planet Express team, on their way to the hive of giant space bees, aka "deadly, deadly bees," on a quest to gather space honey, discover the wrecked ship of their predecessors, who were killed whilst undertaking the same mission. They discover the black box recording, which recorded a conversation between a nervous underling suggesting they turn back because it's too dangerous, and the over-confident captain insisting they press on to glory. And then recorded the sounds of their horrible, horrible deaths moments later. Leela, who has been taking the role of "over-confident captain" in the current team's efforts, is particularly keen to pretend they never found it.

* ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' Classic episodes "The Invisible Monster" (Isaiah Norman's notebook) and "The Sea Haunt" (the ship captain's log).

* ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series]]'' episode "Beyond the Farthest Star". 300 million years ago a member of the crew of the dead ship left a warning message telling what happened to them and why they decided to destroy their own ship.

* ''[[Adventure Time]]'' has one in the episode Holly Jolly Secrets. Finn has found an old set of VHS tapes that contains a video diary of the Ice King. {{spoiler|The last tape is the diary of a human, Simon Petrikov, as he slowly loses his mind and humanity, until finally becoming the Ice King.}} Bonus points for the apocalypse taking place in the background over the course of said log.

* ''[[The Amazing World of Gumball]]'' episode The Joy is a parody of a zombie apocalypse. With Miss Simian playing the role of the protagonist, she has a video camera that she uses for this trope.

 

* David A. Johnston: [[wikipedia:David A. Johnston|"Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"]]

* Vince Coleman: [[wikipedia:Vince Coleman (train dispatcher)|"Stop trains. Munitions ship on fire. Approaching Pier 6. Goodbye."]]

* Less known is the 1349 [https://web.archive.org/web/20130210010842/http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/ashorthistory/archive/topic38.shtml report of the Black Death]:

{{quote|I, Brother Clyn of the Friars Minor of Kilkenny have written in this book the notable events which befell in my time ... so that notable deeds shall not be lost from the memory of future generations I, seeing many ills, waiting for death till it come, have committed to writing what I have truly heard; and lest the writing perish with the writer, I leave parchment for continuing the work, if haply any man of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and continue the work which I have begun.

(in another hand) Here it seems the author died. }}

* This is sort of the whole reason they have black boxes on airplanes. The CVR, or Cockpit Voice Recorder, records everything said in the cockpit and over the radio on an aircraft.

ALA 261 - [upside down and falling fast] [[Distress Call|Mayday]] }}

** The most common last word on black box recordings is "Shit" (or its equivalent in the pilot's native language). This is rendered as "Unintelligible" when said recordings are broadcast on the news.

* The last speech that Jim Jones gave to the residents of Jonestown was recorded for posterity. In it, you can hear him direct the older members of the community to help the younger children, and for them to "not worry about the children's crying; [the punch] is just a little bitter. It's not painful." Makes for some [http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16 chilling night time listening.]

** [https://web.archive.org/web/20120708232603/http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JTResearch/eRollerJournals/ The Edith Roller journals.] A former college professor, she kept a detailed log of her daily life in America and Jonestown. She never came home.

* [[Ulysses S. Grant]] completed his autobiography five days before succumbing to throat cancer. His notes concerning the progress of his cancer were reportedly required reading in medical schools for many years.

* During the shooting at Columbine High School a library phone line was left open by a teacher who called 911 before the shooters entrance forced her to leave the phone to go hide. The open line caught and recorded the sounds of students being killed and injured, the dialog of the shooters to their victims and each other, and after the shooters leave the surviving students being told to quickly flee out a nearby door then dead air.

 

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{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fictional Document]]

[[Category:Madness Tropes]]

[[Category:Information Desk]]

[[Category:Horror Tropes]]

[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]