One of our all-time favorite episodes of the Twilight Zone is the one where the character Henry Bemis, a mild-mannered bank clerk is having a humble lunch down in the basement bank vault and who inadvertently, miraculously avoids a nuclear detonation. He comes out of his basement lair, and contemplates the awesome destruction, and prepares to commit suicide at the thought of living his life alone in the now-familiar post-nuclear world. We say now-familiar, because there was a recurring theme in Twilight Zone of what people would do in the face of a threat of nuclear war, and the show may have had profound effects on people's attitudes, so popular was the show. Many people when asked now, say that they would rather die than exist in a post-nuclear world, so horrific is the thought.

When the show came out however, the Post World War II generation saw nuclear weapons as just a big bomb, and the idea that one could retreat to a shelter for a short period of a week or two was thought to be a possibility, and then rebuilding could go on, just as it had in Europe after the decimation there. But slowly, since the early 60s, the idea that the war was too traumatic to live to has taken hold, and seems (with some exceptions) to be the rule. We say rule, because there are very few bomb shelters, or Civil Defense shelters around anymore. If you search around on the Internet there are some intriguing web sites that give detailed instructions on post-Apocalypse survival, even building designs for residential buildings that survive a substantial shock wave.

And with the recent news from Russia about a 2036 asteroid deflection plan, those sites might prove of growing interest, since they provide instructions on what to do in the event of a massive hit from a celestial passerby that has in recent years been receiving much more attention. The effects of such an event would be similar, with a possibility of a planet-wide extended period of icy global cooling due to fine dust and debris flung up into the stratosphere by the impact. So it appears that building an impregnable shelter to survive a world-shaking disaster has started to come back in style.

But recalling Rod Serling's often prophetic, or at least insightful take into the fictional worlds that he created in his little "teleplays", the character of Henry Bemis stands out in our top 10 most memorable episodes. The plot to many of you is familiar, it is probably scheduled to be on today or tomorrow if you want to check the cable listings.

But the remedy for the character's suicidal thoughts has remained in our minds over the years: the fact that he recalled all the books that he needed to read, and having the peace, tranquility, along maybe with a supply of canned goods like sardines and chicken soup, all combined to create, from the My-Lynx Associates online store point of view, a kind of perfect world of stacks of unread books towering across the landscape.

Of course it is a fictional world untroubled by grief and sorrow, of having an entire civilization vanish into smoke, with only the ruins of buildings and rubble left behind. But in a selfish, kind of paradoxical way, Serling's character is just anti-social enough of a proto-nerd, or should we say retro-nerd, that it does not bother him in the least and that everyone he knows has been annihilated.

But because of his cheerful attitude in the face of unmitigated sorrow, He is, in a kind of odd way, our idea of a perfect customer, stacks of books piled up horizontally in nice, neat piles, sorted by which one came first.

Most of you know the heartbreaking ending (to us anyway), and we have spent the intervening years contemplating how his fate could be remedied or avoided. We think of all the ways that the twist of an ending could be avoided using different kinds of optics, and we constantly update our mental files, so that in some distant recess of our minds, we can then see Henry Bemis still enjoying the fruits of his unexpected luckiness, picturing him sitting on the steps of the local city library and slowly ruminating in bliss the many tomes in his vast and growing personal collection, perhaps daintily wiping his fingers with a napkin as he carefully wipes his fingers free of some sardine oil to keep from staining the pages.

Here is a picture of him in his moment of greatest triumph, played by the redoubtable Burgess Meredith, as he celebrates a perfect world, wrested from a pointless self-assigned death by a summoning of a pure mental attitude alone, and glorying in the possibilities of a world of enchanting books. If you revel in the thought of plenty of time and leisure to read, perhaps you might click the picture below and add to your collection of books.