All Comments on 'The End of the World'

Is it just me or is the story on there twice.

Was a good read however.

Should have just left it alone.

A good story with a truly harsh ending. It works, but I find the end twist too final for a clever April Fool (though both of the sisters' pranks were intense! Brava).

I do hope you edit the duplication error.

One of the best stories I have read on lit. Very well written and no editorial mistakes that draw your attention away from the story. Although I must agree with others that the ending was a downer, I still rate this at 5*.

one of the best stories I have read here, your 1 st? You have a great gift my friend. Thanks for sharing

True, it being an April Fool's story means that we saw the prank coming, but the fact that it was in the First Time category also meant we knew she was going to lose her virginity, and that was fine too.

I guess this works on a meta level, where the story wasn't about a prank, the story *was* the prank, but eh, that makes me feel like I went through 11 pages just to have you jump out, throw jazz hands at me, and yell 'The Aristocrats!" I prefer my shaggy dog stories to be shorter.

If you really had to do a tragic ending, I'd rather have it be one that was the result of the character's choices: Have Lana have been right all along. Greg starts acting a bit awkward after they come out and doesn't propose; instead, he kisses her goodbye, flies away, and then never calls or comes back. He *was* actually the asshole she thought he was in high school; he was just telling her what she wanted to hear so he could get into her pants. Ends with her pregnant and sadly saying "Happy April Fools' Day" to herself.

... which is sadder in many ways that the actual ending, but at least that's a sad ending the characters earned, as opposed to "Rock fall. Everyone dies."

F**K YOU!!!!

I was dense enough to not see the "prank", and 11 pages went by really quickly! I was all set to see them raise kids on a huge ranch. F**k you and the ouzo you rode in on!

Great character development, story line, natural progression, absence of glaring grammatical/spelling mistakes. Really well written. I loved it.

F**k you.

I saw it coming ever since the EMP blew out the radios for real, around the time she said something about the power never going out again, but just imagine, she'll have to deal with the soiled sheets, the nanny cams, and all while not having any actual coms with the military because it was hooked up to the emulation. The whole prank fucked her, and the solar panels are definitely dead, so she is triple (Quadruple? Quintuple?) fucked. Jesus Christ this story is sad. Please, do something with her story afterwards, maybe she gets checked up on by an old military friend of her fathers or something? Please, anything to fix this heartbreaking short story.

I start reading, and you write well, but it's so fucking boring. I got a third of the way into the story and no interest piqued. I thought to myself, "This guy is going to keep this story going for 11 fucking pages? No fucking way." It's like you have all the skill of a Gordon Ramsey, but no spices in the cabinet for this piece.

I'll read something else of yours.

There's a third prank here. They made amends and found love before it all ended. If you think The Universe is void of feeling, or capricious and a bit sadistic, that's the real prank. A final middle finger to the powers that be and a sort of declaration that love wins.

This is the ultimate April Fool. From a literary point of view it is an outstanding story. The twist at the end might only work on an April Fool story. You pass out the April Fool rope throughout the story and yank it hard at end. The story should remind us to not take ANYTHING for granted. For some weak readers this is most likely over the top. For me this was the ultimate April Fool. A solid 5 stars well deserved.

and the news delivered could be devastating, TK U MLJ LV NV

Russian troops in Ukraine? Are you a member of PNAC? A disgusting first for Literotica.

Never have I seen a 5 star story go to a three star in seconds.

Gotta say, this one has really screwed with my mind. For the first two or three days after I read it, I couldn't concentrate on anything else.

It's just so... final!

And yet...

It got to me enough that I started doing some poking and researching and I realized... It may sound cheap, after all the hard work you put in, but I figure the circumstances aren't quite AS dire as you left us with. Yeah, she's got short-term survival locked up, and since the radios got fixed (thank you, Greg) she CAN at least reach out for help. And I figure that there's an even chance that Greg COULD have survived...

And I also figure this: there's parallels between the last line of Lana, alone in the dark, crying bitter tears and her sitting in the janitor's closet in the dark and crying bitter tears. I mean, heck, you even used the SAME FREAKING LANGUAGE! And since Greg made it back to her the first time, I think it'd only be fitting if he did so again, though I'll be damned if I can see how...

And it's this faint hope, my friend, that I have to cling to. I'm too much of a romantic for my imagination to let Lana waste away, able to survive but much too distraught over losing Greg to do so. She's strong, capable, and has proven that she can survive on her own if she has to. And, for all she knows, she's got Greg's legacy to think about... She'd find a way to survive.

I hope, I hope, I HOPE that this is just a first chapter! Too much is riding on this to be left on what is, essentially, a cliff-hanger.

Kudos, my friend. 5 well-deserved stars for making me care about fictional characters to do actual research on the effects of nuclear weapons... (If you'll excuse me, I think I hear federal agents at the door with questions for me...)

The first time I found this story the ending shook me up so much when I exited I was unable to find it again. So almost a year later here I am again. Great story and magnificent ending. Will probably another year before I can look at it again. 5 star.

like the previous commenter i had lost this story and found a year later i read a lot of stories on literotica and this one has stuck in my head more than any other,i would have liked our happy couple to both have made it into the shelter but life doesnt work that way i guess but the message is so powerful i wish all our elected officials had to read it or have it read to them in the case of our prez. thanks for writing this story for us and good luck with future writings. mike p

5 stars, thanks

Ending. Ever.

Ha! April fools, indeed. If I remember correctly, Hitchcock, in his thriller "Sabotage" (1936?) creates crazy tension with a scene where a kid is (unknowingly) carrying a terrorist bomb on a bus. It's brilliantly done but (spoiler) in the end the bomb explodes. Audiences HATED this and Hitchcock learned: never kill the kid. And he's right...

... unless it's an April fool's story. We'll played, sir. Oh. Good story, too, of course. You seem to have moved on. Too bad. You write well.

loved it - didn't see the ending coming - now to read the follow up

Excellent read. Five stars.

Wow, unsure how I feel about that, but it’s 5/5 from me

It's really a shame to go to all that trouble, just to "nuke it" in the end. I really liked how you did the April fool's joke but the disastrous ending was completely unnecessary. I got the feeling that it was done that way because you couldn't come up with a good way to do an adequate "GOTCHA" on Crystal and Braylin for the hidden cameras. OH WELL, I won't be back.

Five-star... all but the buzz-kill ending. Sorry, but I have been (Covid) quarantined far too long to appreciate your end-of-the-world apocalypse ending!

Fantastic story with about the most tragic ending imaginable. Lana now gets to try and survive in a world completely alone with little hope of survival thanks to the collapsed entrance. I fully expect she will be suicidal within a month or two and dead from suicide within 6 months. She may be a strong woman and a heart of iron, but nuclear apocalypse is an outside context problem that no one is prepared to take emotionally, especially not when it causes you to lose everything.

I would like to say that this story deserves a sequel but I can’t imagine what you would write. Maybe a fellow surviving pulling her out of the depths of despair to find love again as they struggle not to starve? Regardless, it would be a brutally depressing read on the level Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. You definitely have the skill to do it because your writing is fantastic though.

Hate the eñd

It was tracking to be a 5* rating, but the ending killed it…

garbage ending ruined it

It was a sure fire 5 all the way to the last few paragraphs.

You should just delete those in the re-write.

As it is, I only knocked it down one star.

You will find that those stories with a happy ending ALWAYS score higher than rotten endings.

Until the end it was fantastic. You have the talent to be more than just good. It is a rotten shame to waste it on a story with such a crap ending. It makes your readers feel like an idiot to have just wasted the time spent reading it. Your other stories are terrific. You need to rewrite the ending to this one. It's a real shame to have this stinker among the other gems.

My first story from you. You suck.

Awesome 99.9% story. Last line you left a teenager pregnant alone in a bunker with no communications and noone to talk to. You are a VERY DARK MAN.

Yes the ending was not expected, however it demonstrates the fragility of life with a twist of irony.

A well crafted story and an enjoyable read despite its sad ending.

What started out as a good storyline ended up in the crappiest way. What a way to destroy a perfectly good story. Thanks alot Sh..H..d. I don,t think I want to read anymore of you stories.

Have to agree with some of the other comments, great story right up to the end. It would have been better to finish with the alarm clock going off. You are a good story teller, the ending just didn’t fit.

Your story setup is too close for comfort for todays headlines. Great story. Ignore the people complaining that things didn’t end like a fairy tale. It doesn’t make it a bad story.

I'm a sad and lonely person that never had the happiness those two shared. Their happiness actually made me sad. The ending, dark as it may be, actually gave me a chuckle. Misery loves company, I suppose. Life really is the worst sometimes and having a sense of humor about it pulls us through.

I read this without knowing it was an April Fool's story, but, ironically, I'm finding it just a few days after April 1st. I read Life Raft, by chance, because it was randomly recommended, leading me to look up your other work. Great story, great twist ending. When everything is perfect, it's not believable, and I think the ending makes it more... real. (Did I mention I was sad and lonely?) All the anger about it just shows how much emotional investment people had in these characters, so you should take it as a compliment about your writing. No one was actually hurt, so it was a pretty good joke. And, lastly, I'd also like to echo the sentiments of the post before mine, that this is uncomfortably close to a reality we may not be far from...

very good until the very end, NO need for a real nuclear war. the high school cruel words are so often said. great prank

Fabulous story that deserves 5 stars but I rather preferred the idea that they marry, buy Wilson’s farm raising 6-8 kids and live happily ever after

Liked it up until the end, a bunker with two occupants is pointless.

I had a feeling that this fairytale might not end as planned when I saw that there was a part 2 to this story. Unable to read any further, I fast forwarded to page 11 and then, ragingly mad at the author, proceeded to read part 2. It wasn't until after I finished it that I felt strong enough to read all of part 1, and I have to admit it all worked put very well, to such an extent that I'd pay to watch the movie, as long as it wasn't starring a silicone-boobed curvy blonde portraying Lana. I love how she thinks she's ugly until she sees herself through the eyes of love. It's one of love's many perks. The only thing I disliked about the story probably was Greg's penis size, along with the idea that they both were just perfect lovers right from the start. It's not how first times go, and I could have dealt with a bit more realism there. But still, the story is absolutely worth reading!

Well that was a roller coaster. On to part two.

Never thought about April Fools Day and never suspected the ending. WOW!!!

I really enjoyed the realism of the teenage longing and mistakes. The reunite and makeup were so well described and written. The ending sucked. Come on, a fake nuclear attack followed by a real one, it's way too formulaic for this story. What's the point of all of this perfect love and longing only to have it all wiped out with a single unbelievable event?

Second reading: upgraded from 4 to 5 🌟 rating. Heading for part 2... ->