One of the strangest legacies of America's founding is our national obsession with the apocalypse. There's a new JJ Abrams show coming this fall called The Revolution about a post-apocalyptic America, and of course The Hunger Games. We go to a gift shop in Arizona and see dug-up Indian arrowheads, and never think "this is the same thing as the stuff laying around in Terminator or The Road or that part in The Road Warrior where the feral kid finds a music box and doesn't know what it is."

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We love the apocalypse as long as nobody acknowledges the truth: It's not a mythical event. We live on top of one.

Jack O'Brien is the Editor in Chief of Cracked.com. You can follow him on Twitter.

When he's not drinking and rethinking the decisions that led him to this point in his life, Elford is a regular contributor to the music blog Riffraf and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

For more bullshit that was spoon-fed to you, check out The 5 Most Ridiculous Lies You Were Taught In History Class and 6 Things From History Everyone Pictures Incorrectly.

And stop by LinkSTORM because it contains nothing but truths*.(*This may or may not be true)

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