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!

😁🤣

EllieQ

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 read Children of the Dust quite often as a teenager. My main memory is of Sarah's last glimpse of outside before the bombs drop - her dog playing in the sunshine, chasing butterflies. And then it's all gone.

11NigelTufnel

@Fuhjutvb you're right, they aren't proper zombies. I am not sure I would care what caused it if they were chasing me though. 28 days later was absolutely brilliant, the terror of walking through London and it being completely empty. I was willing him to be quite and stop drawing attention to himself. 28 weeks later just made me angry that they would all be so stupid.

There's so little security in place that two children can just wander out.

Someone who appears to have been infected but is asymptomatic is brought into the place with all the non-infected people but there is absolutely no security in place there either?

The whole film just caused me to feel increasingly infuriated with it.

During the first lockdown I watched a film about a fictional pandemic. I had to switch it off in disgust. By day three people were rioting, breaking into people's homes, and looting. We were living a pandemic and the film was just so far from the truth as to be laughable.
Zombieland and Zomboat although both slightly comedic, are a bit more realistic about how people actually behave i.e. bit of bad behaviour, but most people just trying to survive and some people helping others.

There's a series of books I got on my Kindle by Devon c Ford
The first one is called "After it happened: Survival"
I thought they were quite realistic, the few survivors found a place to live, organised themselves into groups for working, other people attacked etc. I read all 6 on quick succession

Not saying DoG is a "cosy" book. There is a genre of apoco-lit called "cosy catastrophe". Generally written by middle class twenthieth men with a strong undercurrent of superiority of the privately-educated and "won't the world be improved without all those uncultured and unwashed folk cluttering up the pace". The main character in DoG travels across the country to his grandparents farm, usurps his brother and assumes leadership of the locals by birthright. I suppose JC is writing the world and people he knows. But I am a big fan of his work, especially A Wrinkle in the Skin and World in Winter. He had some other pen-names as well, and all his work is worth a look. John Wyndham is also peak cosy catastrophe. More aliens than natural disaster, but very similar. Boith authors are dead right that the veneer of civ is extremely thin.

Threads terrifying, I should not have been allowed to watch it really 😔

What was the nuclear survival TV series in the 1970s called? That scared me.

The day of the Triffids. An absolute classic. Still one of my favourites.

Its been a while since I watched either movie. At the end of 28 days later if I remember correctly there is a quick shot of an infected person starving to death. The reason they are able to repopulate in 28 weeks later is that the infected had died off. There are no zombies roaming about.

The last of us (tv series or game, game is better in my opinion).

The walking dead come across feral dogs, I enjoyed most of it but there were a few bad ones.

The girl with all the gifts (book and film).

Fallout 4 (game. Set post nuclear war).

Plague Inc (board game/app, you play as a virus/bacteria and try to spread to the whole world. It is strategy based)

Me too!! 😍

@KnittingKnewbie the survivor books were what I was referring to with the man going straight for guns. I liked that they went to a prison, as it would be a good place for defending your group, and they set up a farm. They were a fun read, even if they did get more and more preposterous as it went on.

@SnappyDragony I watched the first series of the walking dead, but was too annoyed with them to continue. Why would you set up camp in the middle of a forest? You won't be able to see the bloody zombies approaching! They deserved to die frankly. I did enjoy a lot of the last of us. They could have done better on permissions defence of course.

Riddley Walker is great. For something a little more relatable (!), Z Nation is very watchable, as is the Walking Dead (I prefer Z Nation, even though I'm not mad about zombie films and I read The Walking Dead comic when it came out.)

I've not read the whole thread but Alex Scarrow Last Light always really stuck with me. It was about what would happen if our oil supply was cut off and it felt so possible I started making emergency plans!

@Fuhjutvb it depends on how long the virus lasts in deceased hosts and how it os transmitted. Assuming it only affects primates, there would still be beasties feeding off the bodies, so could be carriers. Rats, mice, flies and other creepy crawlies. They just need to rock up to where the living humans are and everyone is raged. Or have a stray dog or cat eat the rest and then look cute to a passer by.

Last Light is a good read about Oil running out. It actually terrified me but was realistic in what happened and where the characters ended up and how they survived.

Day of the Triffids is good for characters making sensible choices under very difficult circumstances - focusing on farming for food supplies, moving to the Isle of Wight (my end of the world choice of location). Book obvs excellent and 1980’s tv series a classic - don’t bother with the shit remake they did a few years ago!

If it's a book you are after then o can recommend The Death of Grass and also Station 11

Agree the book I am Legend is very good.

The film not so but still watchable. I'm a sucker for a film with a beautiful pooch

To be fair 28 Days Later is pretty good, film wise.

@WolvesDiscoandBoogaloo, thank you - will check out the 1994 series!

Its vintage but I'm halfway through Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, and so far its better than some of the modern stuff. I thought Bird Box was pretty realistic (if you ignore the monster bits).
I didn't rate Station Eleven.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38169.Alas_Babylon

@ilovebagpuss
Yes, Last Light and it's sequel Afterlight by Alex Scarrow are excellent and scary. I think that it's a realistic depiction of life after a disaster. Don't watch the tv adaptation as it was pants and really awful. I've currently got both in my book like to reread.

@Tootingbec
Day of the Triffids was the first apocalyptic book that I read after seeing the tv series. I've got a sequel in my Audible wish list but haven't gotten around to buying it yet. I think that it involves Bill's son and the colony that was set up on the Isle of Wight

@ilovebagpuss
I think that the most awful bit in Afterlight were the abandoned kids in the Excel Centre - truly horrific

Another vote for the Day of the Triffids. God, I wish they'd do a really authentic and spectacular film remake.