Nature knows when to give up

Experiencing a book or a flick once again later in Life is always a thrill. Having not seen the movie wargames since the early days of the commodore 64 home computer, the perception would of course be quite different today. With professor falken being a weird and shadowy figure back in the day, wanting to bring on a global thermonuclear war by exploiting the pentagon's respect for "rationality" and non-human judgement, his words now make more sense:

Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David.

This view, although sadly given up by the professor in the movie because of the youthful, pro-life spirit of the 17-year-old main characters, resounds today in the growing anti-civilization subcultures and the emerging awareness of civilization itself being our greatest enemy.