Unfortunately, they seem able to take ideas from all over—heroic myths, fantasy, sci fi, and especially utopian ideas—and bundle them into a toxic brew that they feed people to cover up their greed and inhumanity.
My post-apoc story has the point, "The skills your grandmother and great-grandmother knew are way more important to survival than any Alex Jones style prepping will ever be." Whole arc about soap making and a sub-arc where the Away Team is explicitly told to get Ball jar lids.
we are going to be back in an era where poor sanitation, sepsis, and not knowing how to safely store food and water kill more people than we can imagine
Is it published? I would love to read it. I just finished historical book about how Polish women dealt with food shortages during nazi occupation and it's damn intresting angle. I would love to see stories like that in fiction more (and write some of it too).
"Okupacja od kuchni". It's Polish book and as far as I know it wasn't translated to English,so it's reach it's limited :(. I know there is a cookbook in English published during WW2 in England called "Polish Wartime Cookery Book". I really want it, but for now I couldn't track any copy down :(.
That’s the truth of it. You can’t eat guns, and their effectiveness in obtaining goods is going to be a lot less useful than a lot of people imagine. Gardening and canning, trapping and meat drying, now those are survival skills that will save a person if there’s no one coming to save you.
Surely all post-apocalyptic fiction should include detailed instructions on how long to marinade the rich before they are cooked and the inevitability of their slaughter. Happy for them to imbibe those ideals.
When the first Hunger Games book came out, everybody I knew was reading it. I remember thinking at the time that everybody was way too into post-apocalyptic fiction. Then people started acting like they wanted it to be reality.
Write fiction describing where we want to be. Genie-out-the-bottle fiction. Crowd out the tired old tropes of powerful men and women and “others” as victims. ✌🏾
I had to stop reading „Alien Clay“ by Adrian Tchaikovsky because it deals with an authoritarian (and other things) earth and it was too much with all that’s going on..
I do think we should be balancing them out with utopian stories as well though, just in case. It’s hard to imagine the world improving without that being depicted anywhere.
"Oh the content mines? And they have 30 year contracts that work like mortgages while they're stuck in a single room in space? I bet the profit margins are great...."
Or maybe start adding in little tidbits like a screen door for ventilation or cisterns to collect rainwater. Radiation poisoning is only something the libs believe in right?
Or turn the stories around. Ego & hubris assumes they are superior, create their utopia & in doing so, the utopia realizes how dangerous it is & self destructs. Lord of the Flies meets Prometheus.
This reminds me of my father’s fixation on Bigfoot. He had heard about some supposed research that included DNA analysis and he proceeded to unwitting describe the alien ‘architects’ lore from the movie Prometheus.
Just look at all the MAGA who suddenly developed geeky unexplainable preoccupations with “Citizens’ tribunals” and “Firing squads” after watching The Dark Knight Rises…. 🤓
I'm wondering why everything's not just apocalypse fiction. If you survive an apocalypse, it wasn't an apocalypse and then it's just fiction again! There aren't enough books where everything just ends. Way too much surviving going on
it’s true, had Orwell known that his books would become the literal blueprint for 21st century politics he probably wouldn’t have printed them. Poor guy thought they’d be a lesson, a deterrent, a warning…
Haha, I've wondered the same thing, are there people out there who read / watch the post-apocalyptic books/movies and then instead of seeing it as a cautionary tale, they are like, great blueprint to the future!
Absolutely!! Couldn’t agree more. I was thinking this the other day.. I’m glad you mentioned it.. we are speeding towards some really dark and fucked up shit. 😣🥺😭😭😭
Works the other way too. Seen George Romero's Land of the Dead? Zombies and the poor kind of cooperate to take down the rich people's luxury fortress. In the end zombies eat the rich. 😂👍
Yes!! Let’s tell the stories that portray the world we want in our future, ( and present) not the one we are terrified we are building. Your focus determines your reality.
If it is, though, I’ll assume bringing state-of-the-art bows & quivers to the party is legal and will put my order in for a set of those along with a Matrix-style hacking rig.
A fantastic YouTube video that dives into this very concept about how Elon Musk thinks he's the hero, but in reality, he's the oppressive police state, highly recommended: https://youtu.be/FGhsEADnbOU
Elon Musk claims he likes the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series. If that's true, he's the only one to read it with the belief that he should be more like Vann Harl.
I haven't been able to finish the 3rd installment in my series since 2020. With Musk having a full villain arch which mirrors a character I based on him a decade ago, my writing is in the dumps.
🤣😶 seriously. I bought the novel 2034 a while ago, about a plausible next world war, and the authors cite post-apoc fiction during the Cold War as being useful for getting ppl to imagine the reality of nuclear war instead of romanticizing it, therefore preventing it, which I thought was interesting
I totally agree! My husband watched nothing but. Until the first trump turmoil. Now we watch time travel, hoping that technology will catch up in our lifetime.
They are the heroes of their internal storylines.
And nobody writes post-apocalypic books that detail the horror of an infected toenail turning into an amputated leg, forcing the protagonist to crawl to the open pit toilet every morning.
It's all sunshine and winning battles,init?
I binged The Walking Dead & could see MAGAts doing the same, but ungrateful for all we have, & inconsiderate of vulnerable loved ones. Smart enough to know there are no zombies, so settling on civil war as the next best thing. Libs as evil bullet magnets, & no expiration on abandoned goods.
Right? And what's with a zillion murder tv shows and all the blood and gore and dead bloody people constantly in our faces? Is this the only thing Americans watch? WTF America?
Comments
- @markhamillofficial.bsky.social, maybe
Shame. Could have made a killing back when things were sane.
A mere 2 degrees will disrupt every system on the planet, 3 degrees ending most current ecosystems.
They know what's coming, and don't care.
When one has insights that could lead to power in any way, should you write/share w ppl who could abuse ?
* feels immense wave of guilt *
the world is always ending, you just gotta deal with it
We need more books written about Rich people Purges !!!
#TheStoriesWeTellMatter
Instead Europeans & Americans commented that they hate everyone & everything that is Non-European (NONE)
Beginning of a genocide of the world. Wont stop until they are only race left on planet earth.
And nobody writes post-apocalypic books that detail the horror of an infected toenail turning into an amputated leg, forcing the protagonist to crawl to the open pit toilet every morning.
It's all sunshine and winning battles,init?
It's what I'd do
They don't know he is a walking, talking fictional character.