The main truth revealed at the end of the story, “By the Waters of Babylon,” is that “the gods” were just men living in a more technologically advanced society than the narrator's, and that society destroys itself with nuclear war (The Great Burning). On his journey to the Place of the Gods, John discovers an apartment building full of technological advances like appliances and an elevator. In an apartment, John has an “out of body experience” where he sees a bustling city full of cars and people like "ants" scurrying down the sidewalks. He realizes after seeing the body of a god in the apartment that, “I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons . . . They were men—they went a dark road, but there were men.” John also understands at the end of the story that all of the wonderful inventions he discovers in the city were produced by ordinary people. He says because they were just men and not gods, “I had no fear after that.” John finally understood that it was not the gods who destroyed the society, but that it was the weakness of man to not seek peace that caused the destruction of this civilization in the past.
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