Fictional apocalypses

[11NigelTufnel]

I enjoy a good apocalypse film or series, but I often find that I get annoyed with the silly plots though and want to know much more about the practicalities. I started watching Lost, but quickly stopped when it turned out to not be about surviving a plane crash and all mystic woo. 28 weeks later annoyed me because they moved back to an urban area with no clear line of sight for zombie interlopers. It was also a time when there would still have been millions of dead to eat, so the rat population would have exploded and been there to spread the rage disease.

No one ever seems to worry about food security and start farming, they just assume that supermarkets will feed them forever. Even though a supermarket is probably the most dangerous place to go at the beginning of an apocalypse. I have never seen a movie apocalypse consider that people will release their dogs before they die and with no other apex predators (in UK), there would quickly be packs of feral dogs. Or the damage that deer would do without being culled.

Has anyone actually written a realistic apocalypse taking into account what would really happen? Obviously I am assuming that zombies, extinction level pandemics and killer robots are realistic here!

'Threads' was the most realistic apocalypse film that I've ever seen.

@pasteloblong is it good? I haven't seen that one.

Hmm. Hard to say good.
It's bleak as fuck.
But I guess that's what you're after

Yes it's good. But harrowing. Ibhavnt watched it for 20 years and can still visualise it.

Max Brooks did a talk near to us and he basically said that if you don't secure a clean water supply then it doesn't matter what else you get. Without water you are dead anyway so you might as well get yourself bit/eaten/killed as quick as you can before you really suffer. Fiction, tv and films never mention this sole important point.

The problem is that writers aren't experts in everything. I read a great book about the plague in NY that was co-written by an epidemiologist. Can't remember the name but it was realistic.

Another plague book drove me batty. Horses were spreading it, even though int he plague years it was known that grooms and riders got it less. Something to do with the type of fleas not feeding from horses. Then the plot doesn't work.

I agree that Threads is probably the most realistic portrayal of apocalyptic disaster but I also thought The Road is pretty close too although the book is better than the film. It is the most dismal and depressing book that I have ever read.

Station Eleven? I’ve only read the book but the tv show is meant to be good

I had to stop reading it as it was too depressing and horrifying.

I'm not particularly after bleak and depressing. I read the synopsis for.the Road on Wikipedia and decided that watching it would just be hours of my life I would never get back. I am interested in ingenuity. I read a couple of books last year with catastrophic disease based premises. The one written by a man had the main character go straight to obtain guns and the femal writer's character went to the garden centre 😁.

I know I would be quickly eaten by zombies as I can't run and can only see centimetres in front of me without my glasses on. My immune system is pretty good though, so better chance in the plague I hope. @MrsTerryPratchett there was a good program recently on about the theory that the black death was actually spread by human body lice, not rats, so it would make sense that the horses didn't spread it.

Ah Threads. I'd been shopping in Sheffield in the afternoon, watched the very streets/shops I'd been in getting vapourised in the evening. Scared me stupid.

If you want a fairly good post-apocalypse book, i thought Station 11 was well done. And The Parable of the Sower.

Was the NY one the one where the woman was gang raped in the burger joint? I also can’t remember the name but very realistic. Thought it was just called Plague but can’t find it on Amazon.

I’d go to the garden centre to get vegetable seeds in fairness 😁

@MothralovesGojira water, and hygiene in general, is definitely something that is ignored a lot. You rarely see them boil it first, or raid Millets for those purification tablets I took wiyh me every time I travelled and always just bought bottled water instead.

Might not be quite what you're looking for, but after thoroughly enjoying Silo (apple TV) I read the book trilogy, although I thought the first book was best, they kept me gripped until the end.

It was in NY @CormorantStrikesBack and it was very good. I'll have to root around in the book stacks and see if I can find it. <puts on head lamp and crampons>

Journal of the Plague Years is good. Old though!

I also enjoyed Station Eleven, haven't watched the series, but read the book years ago.

@11NigelTufnel
Ah, in that case try Survivors by Terry Nation - the 1975 tv version and not the BBC remake. I think that there is also a book which you maybe able t find on eBay.

Ds and I have already decided, having watched many zombie films, that in the event of a zombie apocalypse we're heading to the big Asda. It has shutters for protection, toilets and a staff shower, plenty of food and bottled fluids, first aid supplies and a Decathlon and alcohol for building homemade weapons and Molotov cocktails.

Melancholia - brilliant but very unsettling film
Z for Zachariah - a novel we read at school around yr 9. Terrifying.

A film of its time so has dates but still an excellent film.

m.imdb.com/title/tt0067525/

@CormorantStrikesBack I have requested the station eleven book on the library app, so will try that soon. Thank you. I am pretty sure I already have as many seeds as the garden centre, but that's for my current gardening fun and not any future world end needs. DP knows the answer to "what is that you are buying" is always more seeds

@Parapapampam I did watch silo, but didn't enjoy it at all. Well except for Sophie Thompson, who is wonderful in everything.

Threads was absolutely fucking terrifying. It's got the be the closest to what an actual nuclear apocalypse would be.

On The Beach by Neville Shute? I admit the book has been sat unread on my shelves for years but I really enjoyed the film.

The books Z for Zachariah and Children of the Dust are both fairly realistic (and grim) about the impact of nuclear war. Both written for teenagers.

I vaguely remember an American TV show about all electrical power stopping working - maybe an EMP, but I can’t remember what it was called! Anyone else remember this one?

Ah, Children of the Dust! Read that 30 years ago and still remember it.

Such a good question, OP!

DH and I always say similar, we really like those kind of films but are more interested in seeing how the characters would make life work day to day, as opposed to the big climactic zombie action bits.

Have you read The Stranding? I thought there were some good details in there about how they lived day to day.

DH says Stephen King’s The Stand has some good bits in it too- he says there is some good ideas in it about how they tried to generate power etc.