If looking for a post-modern sign of the apocalypse, try this: a father uses his 6-year-old son and a homemade helium balloon to execute a gasp-inducing publicity stunt to earn attention, and maybe a reality television show. That'll do it.

Like everybody else, we were spellbound last Thursday while following the story of the soaring Falcon Heene and his incredible — and bizarre — balloon ride high above Colorado. It was a perfect made-for-television spectacle, a gripping daylight drama with life-or-death consequences.

It was so good, it almost had to be faked.

Guess what. The authorities in Colorado say it was. The whole thing was a desperate ploy by Falcon's dad Richard to launch a science-related reality television show. In the predictable round of post-flight interviews on the morning shows, Falcon did the only "real" thing to date.

He threw up. Twice.

There's a measure of revulsion for people who peddle their children in vainglorious attempts for personal gain. But that's nothing new — it has been around for centuries. The real concern with the Heenes is not their actions, but the fact that it's become so sadly commonplace.

In the realm of "reality," nothing is real anymore. A genre of entertainment that began with Survivor — handpicked people against the elements — has morphed into an entire subculture of entertainment that offers Americans a prime-time window into the pseudo-lives of many different people, some who are famous, and some who just want to be.

That occurred with Heenes, when they appeared on a show that swaps wives between two families. In the aftermath of that appearance, it's been reported, the family tried to develop their own TV vehicle, but the networks passed on the Colorado couple with the spaceship in the backyard.

Hey, that's the business. The problem comes when the lights go dark and the cameras stop rolling, as they inevitably do. Departing the faux-reality of television programming for the challenging, complicated and responsibility-laden reality of life is often devastating.

This can drive otherwise good people — like the Heenes, by all accounts — to do things that are utterly reprehensible. How could pretending, as police think, that your 6-year-old boy is flying away in a homemade balloon and toward certain death ever be considered the right thing to do?

It's not, unless one is too focused on the reality they seek, rather than what is truly real.

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