A total eclipse of the sanity

There’s probably a nicer way to put this, but I’m just going to come out and say it: People in the ancient world suffered from major anxiety disorders. It’s fashionable these days to think of the ancients as repositories of great wisdom. We’re not supposed to use words such as “primitive” and “ignorant” to describe ancient civilizations, but when it comes to solar eclipses, for instance, it’s hard not to snicker a bit at our Nervous-Nelly forebears.

The Aztecs, for instance, believed that during a solar eclipse, the sun god was being attacked by the stars of the night sky. The only way to prevent the extinction of all life on the planet was to engage in some gruesome human sacrifices. The ancient Chinese believed that solar eclipses occurred when the celestial dragon ate the sun. The Mesopotamians and the Vikings also freaked out a bit during a solar eclipse. There were festivals and rituals and sacrifices designed to avert whatever specific disaster these cultures imagined was coming when the moon temporarily — and predictably — blots out the sun for a few minutes. People in the ancient world, in other words, had zero chill.

Thousands of years later, it’s not entirely clear that we’ve come very far. On April 8, there will be a full solar eclipse visible in parts of the United States, and the safety bureaucracy is getting serious jitters.  

New York state, for instance, began planning for the eclipse in 2022. Gov. Kathy Hochul convened an Interagency Task Force, made up of nearly 24 state agencies, to prepare for traffic accidents, stranded travelers, eye injuries, all sorts of calamities and disasters predicted to occur when the sun gets gobbled up by the Bad Wolf (or whatever). 

The task force is suggesting that we stock up on medicines, water, fuel, and nonperishable food. The state is ensuring that there will be additional porta-potties at rest stops. Road construction will be suspended, and they are also recommending (surprise!) that schools close for the day.

For reference: the solar eclipse on April 8 is expected to last between four and five minutes. 

Indiana and Illinois, both of which are in the “path of totality” for the eclipse, aren’t sleeping on the job either. They’ve convened task forces and issued safety guidance along the lines of the Empire State, and in all of those places, the Department of Homeland Security has been involved in the disaster planning because eclipses are scary, apparently, and when something is scary, the Department of Homeland Security gets involved. They are warning eclipse-viewers about the potential for gas station lines, cellphone outages, hospital emergency room overcrowding, and interstate highways jammed to a standstill.

Once again, just in case it slipped your mind: The solar eclipse on April 8 is expected to last between four and five minutes. It’ll be light, and then dark for a few minutes, and then light again, but during the dark part, the national bureaucratic swamp is expecting all hell to break loose.

It won’t all be riots and mayhem, of course. Up and down along the path of darkness, there will be festivals, sports contests, mass yoga classes, drum circles — if you’re in the area and you squint a bit, you’d swear you were back in ancient Norway or China, watching the locals commemorate the War of the Sun God. People are having eclipse-timed weddings, and there’s even something called a “Space Prom” in Texas.

People are expecting a lot to happen in those four minutes and 28 seconds. 

In a way, though, you have to hand it to the Ancients. They may have overreacted to the eclipse, or seen terrible omens in the temporary darkness, but we have no historical record of any Aztec high priest or Viking druid reminding the flock not to look directly at the eclipse. There are no discovered hieroglyphs or ancient Mandarin scrolls that tell folks to use special glasses or a pinhole projector to see the dreaded event. There are no guy-looking-at-the-eclipse-with-a-line-through-it cave drawings. People back then may have believed a lot of crazy stuff about sun-eating sky dragons, but they knew enough not to stare directly at the fireball in the heavens. Especially when it was misbehaving.

Not so their 2024 descendants. We’re bracing for disasters and chaos and human stupidity. Maybe we’re the ones with zero chill.

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Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.