The Day of the Triffids

by John Wyndham

Above it all rose the Houses of Parliament, with the hands of the clock stopped at three minutes past six. It was difficult to believe that all that meant nothing any more, that it was now just a pretentious confection in uncertain stone which would decay in peace. Let it shower its crumbling pinnacles onto the terrace as it would—there would be no more indignant members complaining of the risk to their valuable lives. Into those halls which had in their day set world echoes to good intentions and sad expediencies the roofs could, in due course, fall; there would be none to stop them, and none to care. Alongside, the Thames flowed imperturbably on. So it would flow until the day the Embankments crumble and the water spread out and Westminster became once more an island in a marsh.

I feel this kind of thing even when the apocalypse hasn’t struck.

“Listen,” Coker told her patiently. “Just put the Americans in the jam-tomorrow-pie-in-the-sky department awhile, will you. Try to imagine a world in which there aren’t any Americans—can you do that?” The girl stared at him. “But there must be,” she said.

We probably WOULD be useless, especially right at this moment...