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!

@boogaloola On the Beach actually affected me so much it triggered a bit of depression, it haunted me!
Survivors (1975)is on Britbox, it's very much of its time, I've watched three and plan to watch more but have to share the TV. I do remember it features packs of feral dogs ( which amusingly are obviously well fed pets who look like they would run up and lick you to death!). The opening sequence is about a flu virus escaping from a Chinese lab!

Riddley Walker by Russell Hogan is a long past Apocalypse novel that I really enjoyed years ago.

The Society on Netflix although not about zombies does deal well with the practicalities of what happens in a scenario where all adults disappear.

The book Last One at the Party was pretty realistic I thought

Survivors, the 1970s version was very believable especially in view of the threat of nuclear war at the time. I don't know how well it would date now.

Two I'm watching at the moment. La Brea which is outstandingly awful and entertaining because of it.
Also The Last Ship on Prime which is pretty good.

I am so happy to see someone else recommending Melancholia - I watched it 3 times back to back when I first found it, and still watch it once a month or so - it's hauntingly beautiful and yet - as you say - unsettling. Not everyone's cup of tea, but one of my favourite films ever :0

If the apocalypse happened and everyone died, there was no clean water, no hope and I was starving I would be happy if Pedro Pascal was there

Is it this one? Set in NY and apparently John S Marr is an epidemiologist.

The dog thing comes up in Last One at the Party - I liked it because the main character starts out by getting smashed on champagne in Harrods food hall which feels like an appropriate response to being the last person left alive in the world.

The Stranding has lots of practical details on survival, and is a great story.

The Stand is so, so dark but felt pretty realistic though it goes to incredibly weird and twisted places - and is about a thousand pages long.

The End of Men might not be so practical, but such an interesting premise that only men - and all men - die while women are unaffected.

But generally, people writing fiction want to create a good story and so the plot and character development drive it more than every practical detail being correct.

I did read Z for Zachariah as a teenager and it stuck with me for years. I liked that it ended so ambiguously. I switched the film off half way through though.

Oh, Threads watched it on 1980whatever when I was a teenager (I live in one of the locations). It's haunted me ever since and I've always got a "plan".

The Omega Man is a film version of I Am Legend by Richard Matheson which, if memory serves, does give a lot of detail of the main character's day to day life of apocalypse survival. It's a good read and one of my favourite apocalyptic books.

Getting a great reading list going on here. Unfortunate most of them aren't on the library app, but can buy over time. Thank yiu for all the suggestions.

Book- The Stranding is excellent

Melancholia also great. And also try Silent Night which is steaming now (Netflix or prime can’t remember) loved it.

children of the dust, a classic!

@EllieQ was the series called Revolution?

You should read the Edge of Collapse series by Kyla Stone. I've just finished it and the writer has obviously done a lot of research into the effects of an EMP attack and prepping etc. so it feels more realistic - would recommend!

Z for Zachariah stayed with me after I read it as a teen - I could sense the loneliness that the main character felt and simple points like setting an alarm each day as a reminder to tick the date off her calendar otherwise she couldn’t remember what day of the week it was.

The Stand by Stephen King is a very good post-apocalyptic novel despite being very very long. There’s a scene early on set in the Lincoln Tunnel that is so believable and scary that I realised I was holding my breath while reading it. I don’t know if it’s been made into
a film.

The last train

"A group of train passengers, including a policeman (Ian Hart) a wanted criminal (Mick Sizer) and an M.O.D. scientist (Harriet Ambrose) are travelling to Sheffield when their train crashes inside a tunnel and a strange gas envelopes them. When they awake, they find that Harriet froze them all so they could survive the giant meteor impact that destroyed the rest of the world. Now, they seem to be the only survivors of the human race in a world overrun with tropical plants and patrolled by packs of man-eating dogs."

I quite enjoyed this mini series back in 1999

m.imdb.com/title/tt0195471/

After COVID I think any realistic dystopian novel/movie needs to start with stockpiling of loo roll and pasta and also having to queue for half an hour to get into the supermarket…

The TV series survivors (70s and then remade) is about a disease released from a Chinese laboratory that kills over 99% of the population and features the survivors trying to survive (they have to learn old farming skills etc).

This is the Plague book I was trying to remember with the gang rape scene. No zombies, but very end of the world. Must be over 30 years since I read it https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plague-Graham-Masterton-ebook/dp/B0BPCKR5RF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=285I7V3KB1EPF&keywords=graham+masterton+plague&qid=1706655008&sprefix=graham+masterton+plague+%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1

I enjoyed the book of Survivors (and both sequels, although the third book got a little random I think). Not seen the television prog tho.

A couple of other reads I found absorbing: On the Beach (Nevil Shute), One Second After (William R Forstchen), World made by hand (James Howard Kunstler). Death of Grass (John Christopher- a bit cozy catastrophe, but interesting nonetheless). Love Station Eleven like many PPs. Earth Abides (George Stewart).

There was a mini series, it wasn’t great.

I literally sat here shaking my head at your post. You've missed the biggest issue is that with a zombie apocalypse you need to be as far away from people as possible to avoid people. You head to Asda and I guarantee you you're not surviving. You're either getting bit on the way/when you get there. But let's imagine that somehow that doesn't happen, and you and your husband get to Asda, find it unoccupied and manage to pull the shutters and lock yourself in. Now you're sitting ducks for the biggest threat in any apocalypse, the living. The two of you are not holding a gang of scared, hungry humans out of that Asda. Not even with your alcohol based weapons. Which will probably just end up with the store going up in flames.