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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
You're right. The big difference is, in post-apoc stories everyone obsesses about the life that was lost.
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I love the idea of stories set in a low-tech society with the remnants of high-tech resources.
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Totally agreed on both points. It's somewhat like a "return to the old ways", but it includes some more modern caveats and benefits. For example, the story "One Second After" (a great read btw, even if the writing need some serious improvement) talks about a world where an EMP has taken out all of our modern technology. The TV show Jericho had the same idea. But in both cases some things (old cars for example) still worked, but others (cell phones, newer cars, etc) didn't. In a way it'd be like getting tossed in the middle of a crash site with some modern and some old school stuff and having to survive using just what you have. That's the exciting part. In a way it's sorta like Junkyard Wars. lol.
Another great example of this comes from another book I read (forget the title though) where it's 100 years on from some big natural disaster (they don't clearly say what, but it pretty much torpedoed all modern life and its associated tech) and they tell how people at first died off in droves, there was all this mayhem and looting and the usual doomsday stuff. But as time went on, things settled down, people adapted, and everything returned to a mixed modern form of the old west blended with the modern. I think the neatest part of the story was how they told of the numerous ways that people used their knowledge to salvage or restore surviving technology and build new stuff that was old school in design, but necessary to make life easier. Just the ingenuity that went into it was brilliant.
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Originally Posted by anamardoll
I see it as a sort of "finding control in a control-less environment". I can't control the quality of the air I breathe, the water I drink, or the food I eat. I can't control how I'm treated at work, what assignments I'm given, whether or not they muck with my health care plan.
But by god, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, I can decide whether to migrate north or south and which grocery store to raid for supplies. It's a Robinson Crusoe fantasy, at least for me.
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lol. I think that's true of a lot of people. I know it is for me in a way. Oddly though, survival and apocalyptic fiction also hits very strongly on our love of underdog and "David vs Goliath" type stories, with David being those who survived, and Goliath being the odds, people and/or environment they're now thrust into, in which they must survive.
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Originally Posted by dadioflex
@elfwreak - that variety of non-dingbat post-apocalyptic fiction, would probably not be that dissimilar to every day life in a developing country.
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Yup, agreed.