“I’m the first wave of baby boomers: I was born in 1948, three years after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” McCrystal said. “I grew up through all that period of time with the Cold War when it was a hot Cold War… I used to have nightmares about it as a kid, and the nightmares didn’t stop until … the Soviet Union was broken up.”

McCrystal also remembers his own fear of total war, which manifested as frequent nightmares. These ill dreams often included post-apocalyptic themes and images of nuclear destruction.

“The worst case scenario was like the second Terminator movie, the chain link fence scene. It still makes me shudder,” McCrystal said. “The more recurring dream, which was worse, was the wasteland. The radiation poisoned landscape.”

Even now, McCrystal is drawn to books that revolve around the theme of the apocalypse. Below are his two favorite books that he would recommend to students at MVHS.