The Rise of Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

I'm pretty sure there's a link between vampires during booms and zombies during recessions. I think everyone is still kind of on edge about the economy so a typical post-apocalyptic scenario seems more feasible. Maybe even a feeling that life would be simpler if we didn't have to sweat the details and got back to fighting packs of *mutant dogs for old tinned goods.

* the mutation was can-opener jaws. Can-opener jaws.

"Here's the weirdest graph you'll see all week. It's graphing the popularity of zombie movies versus vampire movies, split out by whether the president at the time was a Republican or a Democrat. There are exceptions, but in general when a Republican is in office, it's all about zombies. When it's a Democrat, it's all about vampires:"

"Night of the Living Dead shambled into cinemas during the Nixon era. Carter gave us two adaptations of Dracula. See that massive red spike in the '80s? That's when conservative superhero Ronald Reagan occupied the highest office, and a Night of the Living Dead remake, one sequel, two Return of the Living Dead movies and Reanimator occupied the cinemas. Then Clinton gave us Anne Rice. The connection is confirmed by academics who study the subject. What the hell?"

"Actually, it makes perfect sense. Horror plays off of social anxieties of the times, and it's all about what the left and right are afraid of."


Read more: 6 Mind-Blowing Ways Zombies and Vampires Explain America | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19402...#ixzz1pibQrXla



i'm into sword wielding warriors wandering the lands of a civilization/world in decline where mutants dwell and the rule of law is a distant memory. libertarian? centrist?

[Elfwreck]

(Warning: contains political content.) I'm with John Michael Greer on this one; I think it's nihilistic escapism.

Back of all the gaudy claims of history’s end currently on display – the Rapture, the Singularity, the supposed end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, and all the rest of it – is a frantic insistence that we don’t have to live with the consequences of our collective actions. That’s the common thread that connects the seeming optimism of the claim that Jesus or the Space Brothers or superintelligent computers will fix things, on the one hand, with the seeming pessimism of the claims that we’re all about to be wiped out by solar flares or asteroid bombardment or the evil plans of the Illuminati.

In another post, he points out,

It’s understandable; science fiction scenarios and apocalyptic fireworks are so much more exciting than the future of mass impoverishment, infrastructure breakdown, sociopolitical disintegration, and ragged population decline that the misguided choices of the last few decades have handed us.

He even put out a call for post-apoc stories containing, in his words, "no alien spacebats"--no supertech beyond the ken of modern man, no saviors-from-beyond, no drastic change in the DNA of humanity so we can breathe in space or eat plastic, etc. A post last month mentioned it should be coming out soon; he's got a title-and-author list for the stories (in the middle of a complex political post):

• Randall S. Ellis’ "Autumn Night"
• E.A. Freeman’s "The Lore Keepers"
• Thijs Goverde’s "Think Like A Tinkerer"
• Susan Harelson’s "Maestra y Aprendiz"
• Harry J. Lerwill’s "Caravan of Hopes"
• Catherine McGuire’s "The Going"
• Avery Morrow’s "The Great Clean-Up"
• Kieran O’Neill’s "Bicycleman Sakhile and the Cell Tower"
• J.D. Smith’s "The Urgent, the Necessary"
• Philip Steiner’s "Traveling Show"
• David Trammel’s "Small Town Justice"

[dadioflex]

@elfwreak - that variety of non-dingbat post-apocalyptic fiction, would probably not be that dissimilar to every day life in a developing country.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

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.

You're right. The big difference is, in post-apoc stories everyone obsesses about the life that was lost.

[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.

[Elfwreck]

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.

I agree. The big difference is the amazing collection of resources that no developing country's ever had. They'd have easy access to glass windows, plastic containers, copper wire, steel rods in what would seem like infinite amounts (even if the people know that's not true), and a huge amount of medical and scientific knowledge that most developing societies don't have access to--germ theory, understanding of fertility, CPR techniques, understanding of electricity, sound theory, and so on.

The very poor wouldn't sleep in wooden shacks; they'd sleep in gutted cars. And they would, at least theoretically, know to boil water before using it to clean wounds.

The reason there were no microscopes in 1200 C.E. is that they didn't know it was worth building them, not that they couldn't make lenses that small or accurate. (Not that the hypothetical post-apoc society would need to make them; we'll have all the technological equipment we can use for decades, maybe centuries. Research labs aren't going to be high on the list of places to loot for survival supplies.) The reasons there were no guns is that nobody had figured out how to make them; even after the factories shut down, black powder & shot will be widely available. Penicillin can be made from blue bread mold, once you know what it does. And so on.

I love the idea of stories set in a low-tech society with the remnants of high-tech resources.

[Steven Lake]

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.

I love the idea of stories set in a low-tech society with the remnants of high-tech resources.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yup, agreed.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I love the idea of stories set in a low-tech society with the remnants of high-tech resources.

So far, most post-apoc lit suggests that survivors often lose the knowledge to properly use the tools left behind; ie, what good is a microscope if no one knows that they're looking at? And there are usually a few people who retain the knowledge of the past, and become significant forces for advancement.

Few people have written about the possibility that, with all the information storage potential that everyone carries around in the simplest cellphone, we could see a post-apoc future where everyone is knowledgeable, and manage to bring recovery about that much faster... in fact, the only trick to survival would be finding working equipment that your cellphone told you that you needed...

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Few people have written about the possibility that, with all the information storage potential that everyone carries around in the simplest cellphone, we could see a post-apoc future where everyone is knowledgeable, and manage to bring recovery about that much faster... in fact, the only trick to survival would be finding working equipment that your cellphone told you that you needed...

My guess is that the biggest problem would be power. Once you could reestablish some small part of the power grid, you could start building tools to do the rest. My guess is the rise back up would be pretty fast after some power plants are brought online. Coal, wood, and etc. would probably be the easiest source to generate power. I would also guess that whoever controls the power plants rules the world, at least for a while.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

[...]Few people have written about the possibility that, with all the information storage potential that everyone carries around in the simplest cellphone, we could see a post-apoc future where everyone is knowledgeable, and manage to bring recovery about that much faster... in fact, the only trick to survival would be finding working equipment that your cellphone told you that you needed...

I think your phone must be smarter than mine

More seriously, a lot of the high tech stuff that we rely on requires many levels of extreme specialisation. Anyone here setup to start manufacturing computer chips? What about batteries? Batteries have a limited life, even sitting on the shelf. Who's going to start making new ones to replace them? Then you have to get them into all these devices that are currently being manufactured to be thrown away before their battery die. This is a consumer society, our technology is not made to be used for 20 or 50 years while it waits for our technological capability grows to be able to manufacture new ones. So the more difficult question may be how long would it take to gain a population large enough to once again support that level of specialised knowledge and experience so that we can once again have production of our mod-cons in the brave new world.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by gmw

I think your phone must be smarter than mine

More seriously, a lot of the high tech stuff that we rely on requires many levels of extreme specialisation. Anyone here setup to start manufacturing computer chips? What about batteries? Batteries have a limited life, even sitting on the shelf. Who's going to start making new ones to replace them? Then you have to get them into all these devices that are currently being manufactured to be thrown away before their battery die. This is a consumer society, our technology is not made to be used for 20 or 50 years while it waits for our technological capability grows to be able to manufacture new ones. So the more difficult question may be how long would it take to gain a population large enough to once again support that level of specialised knowledge and experience so that we can once again have production of our mod-cons in the brave new world.

I dont think that will be much of a problem... most of what would be required to get society back up to a "modern level" , cars, planes, etc is relatively simple to understand. Sure we might not be staffing the ISS again for a while, but we could easily get to mid 1900's very fast. There will be LOTS of computers, and other devices in surplus around the planet. If a large chunk of the population was removed we would a ton of surplus spare parts/etc to get things working again.

I think the biggest key is power. Get power plants back online and we would quickly regain ground.

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I love the idea of stories set in a low-tech society with the remnants of high-tech resources.

Have you read Eric Flint's 1632?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_%28novel%29

A chunk of the West Virginia goes back in time to Germany in 1632 and they set about recreating the USA, sorta.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

My guess is that the biggest problem would be power. Once you could reestablish some small part of the power grid, you could start building tools to do the rest. My guess is the rise back up would be pretty fast after some power plants are brought online. Coal, wood, and etc. would probably be the easiest source to generate power. I would also guess that whoever controls the power plants rules the world, at least for a while.

There's a reason we switched from coal & wood power to petroleum... it packs a *lot* of power in a small space. And we're using it up very quickly. Unless we find some amazing breakthrough in basic physics--fusion power, teleportation, fine control of magnetics, alien spacebat assistance--we won't have access to the amazing wasted power we throw around today. (2/3 of the electricity generated at power plants is spent delivering it. This could be changed by keeping it within a few miles of the plant... and cutting off power for anyone who lived far away.)

For more politics etc. on this topic, google "peak oil," which will first get you a bunch of sites about "peak oil debunked," which is much like "global warming debunked"--a whole lot of people are invested in the current system and spend a lot of effort convincing others it'll never change. You have to search for "peak oil survival" or similar terms to get the sites with facts. (And speculation. But it's speculation based on numbers, rather than the insistence that, since we found something to replace wood to power our stoves, of course we'll find something to replace oil to power our cars.)

Back to bookish discussion: whether or not one expects us to rebuild our current culture, or something similar to/better than it, I am surprised at the number of post-apoc stories that assume we'll all plunge directly into the dark ages rather than *using* the resources we've got, both physical and informative.

We have mass literacy, which was *never* the case in any previous collapse. We have libraries *everywhere,* and not just in big public buildings which, yes, are likely to be looted & burned for fuel. We have computers which, whether or not we get a network running, the Occupy movement showed you can power with a bicycle--a good collection of farming, weatherproofing, windmill/water wheels, and textile production info on disc could get an entire community set up in a village that doesn't need most of what modern life considers essential.

E-ink readers with solar power could work for decades, and there's your new library-of-Alexandria in a six-ounce box.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There's a reason we switched from coal & wood power to petroleum... it packs a *lot* of power in a small space. And we're using it up very quickly.

We are talking post-apoc here, the power NEED will be WAY less, so we can use less efficient means to bridge the gap till something better can be rebuilt.

Besides, if any of the nuke plants survive they have what 80? years of fuel.. thats enough time to build stuff.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

We are talking post-apoc here, the power NEED will be WAY less, so we can use less efficient means to bridge the gap till something better can be rebuilt.

Besides, if any of the nuke plants survive they have what 80? years of fuel.. thats enough time to build stuff.

Oh, mostly agreed. It's the long-term "we will rebuild!!!" that I have doubts about, but that's got very little to do with the immediate post-apoc stories.

I think that, while power plants will be around, and plenty of them will be functional (enough... although tech problems & meltdowns would be a lot more interesting), the infrastructure to get that power any distance away would be broken. No more repair teams making sure the wiring is connected to the next city; those lines work until the next tornado, earthquake or rat infestation, and then they're gone.

So: little pockets of high-tech, surrounded by large areas of no electricity, with plumbing that works until it gets clogged somewhere down the line... and then you move to the next house, or the next block, because that's certainly easier than rebuilding or starting from scratch. Hmm.