The Flying McCoys by Glenn McCoy and Gary McCoy for March 06, 2011

Well, there goes you “Dad of the Year” award.

Question: If three nuclear blasts are in view, will it make any difference whether there’s enough food in your bunker? If the blasts are that close it’s probably not survivable anyway.

I live way too close to several large targets, so building a bomb shelter and stocking it for surviving nuclear war seems kind of pointless. Nabuquduriuzhur has a better point though, stocking for the kind of thing likely to happen and be survivable does make sense. We had a blizzard here that stopped all traffic for a day, in some places earthquakes and hurricanes and tornadoes can be a concern. In some areas, a blizzard can shut you down for some time.

I’ll donate my left over Halloween candy. Please somebody take it.

Glen Beck can sell him some more.

McMillan, they could be nuclear artillery shells. Nobody’s used them on an actual battleground yet, but they’re out there. Just one of the ideas for someday holding a “winnable” nuclear war…

Besides, if it’s really an Armageddon scenario, you don’t WANT to be among the survivors. If you ain’t Raptured out before the shooting starts, “the living will envy the dead” and all that.

On a completely unrelated subject, I’m surprised that GoComics has let the McCoys include Iron Man in their new banner. Using somebody else’s copyrighted characters in a one-shot gag is “Fair Use”, but you can’t use them as continuing characters or in promotional materials. Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark had a recurring character, Wolveroach, who was a parody of Wolverine, but he got in trouble when he devoted some cover art to him. Likewise, Don Simpson was allowed to parody the Fantastic Four as the Megatropolis Quartet in Megaton Man, but Marvel wouldn’t let the Quartet be spun off into their own series…

Somehow all the food he ate went to her @ss.

Fritzoid….you got that right about Armageddon!!! Why don’t people believe?

Glenn Beck will be glad to sell you a food kit - just send him all the gold you overpaid Goldline for.

There are times I wish that rapture were real. A lot of obnoxious people would be gone. I could use a nice house to move into.

JazzyBella, I don’t believe it myself. Doesn’t mean I don’t know think about the ins and outs…

Also, I think that a lot of people who expect that they’ll be safely out of the way if and when a nuclear exchange takes place, on the Plains of Megiddo or elsewhere, are going to wind up with egg dripping off their faces (many of those who are most sure that they’re among the “saved” are clearly fooling themselves). Everyone’s best chance of surviving “the End of the World” is to work to prevent it…

Fritzoid ….I do believe in the second coming….I just wish more people did….I just pray that I am one of the faithful ones! I hope everyone will be included!

That’s uncommonly charitable of you, Bella. It used to be Official Policy that one of the pleasures of being in Heaven is that you get to watch the torments of those confined to Hell (there was a name for this appalling doctrine, but I can’t remember what it was). This idea hardly seems Christian to me, but I’m not a Christian so what do I know?

Others in my family believe in an afterlife, and while my sister (for example) expects that I’ll be surprised to wake up one morning and find out I’m dead, she hopes I’ll be pleasantly surprised…

^ Whatever it is, I wish some other self-professed Christians I can think of were taking it. Like I said, “I believe there’s a heaven, I hope to get there, and I hope to see all of YOU there” is not the usual sentiment heard from those quarters, in conversation with non-believers.

If God is Perfectly Merciful, everybody will be saved. If God is Perfectly Just, nobody will be.

“Use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping?” – Hamlet

Not a good choice, pops!

If there is an afterlife and everybody gets saved, that means spending eternity with a lot of people I really can’t stand.

On the other hand, if there is a just deity, here’s how the afterlife should work: Instead of getting what they hope they will get, they get what they fear they deserve.

Why go in then? Your dead.

runar, the problem with that is that many of the most irredemiable people are convinced they deserve the best things in afterlife, while some of the best people believe they’re wretched.

I had a friend who was as nice and sweet and kind and giving as anyone you’d ever want to know, but she hated herself. She did some terrible things, but no one suffered more from her actions than herself. One of her counselors summed it up as “Everybody loves Jane, except Jane.” (Not her real name.)

She jumped out a 5th-story window a couple of years ago. If she has the afterlife she thought she deserved, then the torment she suffered while she was living was just the beginning. (And of course, many would argue that the act of suicide itself is a “Go Directly to Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200” offense.)

My personal belief is that her suffering has ended. A God that would inflict any sort of infinite punishment for finite transgressions cannot in any way be considered “Just.” The idea that how we behave during a life filled with adversity is the criterion for admission to an afterlife where there IS no adversity is…stoopid.