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So, I was thinking about what makes Post-Apoc genre product a Post-Apoc genre.

1. Some sort of world shattering disaster has occurred
2. Some people survive
3. They then have to survive in the shattered world

This are the basics, but there are a whole bunch of other themes that seem to exist within it.....

1. Man vs. Man- This world is a world of loners and small groups. No one trusts anyone enough to band together.
2. Man vs. Nature- This world is a constant struggle between man trying to survive in nature
3. Man vs Themselves- This world requires people to push themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally to keep going

I of course use the word "Man" to represent humankind. What are other common themes, tropes, etc that make the genre? Which themes, tropes, etc. of the genre do you think are over-used/bunk?

I really, really hate how zombie apocalypse stuff in particular now always seems to turn into a story about "Guy considered hopeless loser before everything Got Real turns out to have been the brilliant, super smart badass leader everyone really needed once the chips are down".

I think your basics need work. They cover all sorts of things, including fantasy stories like Dragonlance, Shannara and Dragon Age (and quite a few others)

Your themes are also just the fundamental themes of introduced by any English writing class, they aren't particular or unique to post apocalypse.

I'm getting quite bored of the bleakness in most post apocalyptic films. Sure the apocalypse isnt a good thing, but I imagine the majority of survivors would actually try to rebuild their lives. Not instantly turn into murderous cannibals.

As mentioned, those things aren't unique to post-apocalyptic settings. Those are just the 3 most basic story types.

I think what actually makes a setting Post-apocalyptic is the following,

1) A focus on scavenging for resources left behind by the previous society.
2) Rebuilding a new society among and on the shattered remains of the past.

Post-Apoc settings usually involve referring in some way to stuff from the past. like using weapons that were made back before society collapsed, or making new equipment out of scavenged materials. Looting ruined buildings for treasure. The scenes themselves often take place with ruined cities in the background. Ruined Skyscrapers sticking out from a shattered skyline, in which people are rebuilding their lives.

 pix3lboy wrote:
I'm getting quite bored of the bleakness in most post apocalyptic films. Sure the apocalypse isnt a good thing, but I imagine the majority of survivors would actually try to rebuild their lives. Not instantly turn into murderous cannibals.

Well, the real problem is that people think those are mutually exclusive. So whenever the murderous psychos are portrayed in a post-appoc setting they're always portrayed as murderous psychos, rather than a more realistic portrayal of people who having simply resorted to more barbaric activities to survive. They're no longer portrayed as human.

Realistically, in the event of total break down of modern society, you'd have people form tribes that would be in constant struggle with each other. And in certain areas cannibalism would be resorted to, at first out of desperation, and later it might evolve into a cultural tradition similar to the various Cannibal tribes that exist/existed in the past. They would rebuild their lives, and that would involve fighting and potentially eating other people because, hey, food is food right?

May main issue with 'most' apocalypse based things, particularly zombie films is the "scounge for supplies!" trope. In some instances (post-nuclear engagement, etc.) it makes sense. Or a movie which takes place 50-60 years after a world-ending catastrophe, sure. But in silly settings like The Walking Dead, it's absolute garbage.

If we're to believe that somehow, 95% of the population died and became zombies, that would leave an unbelievable amount of goods leftover for the remaining 5%. Canned food, fuel, weapons, ammunition, cars, boats, etc. I also love the idea that suddenly firearms and munition are impossible to find...in America...in the South.

There would be such a surplus of materiel in a situation like that, every survivor could have their own warehouse of goods/food/ammo/fuel. Would this still generate the occasional conflict for resources? Sure. Some assbags would want to become mini-Kings and would try to establish an over-generous region of control or influence, but generally speaking - 95% of the population disappearing would leave everyone an incredible surplus of goods.

One quirk I find irritating is the tendency for too much or too little information to be passed down. Often both inconsistently within the same setting.

Either suddenly everyone knows pre-tech farming/smithing techniques or people can't even identify everyday items their parents used. And naturally wacky new religions form up out of nothing.

And naturally the pre-tech farms are obviously less harmful to the environment (without fertilizer or crop rotation) and somehow sustainable with just a handful of people.

I think I'd say that the most iconic part of a proper post-apoc setting is the "living among the ruins of the old world", and scavenging, but I always think that should really put a time limit on the setting - it only takes so long before either the old materials/tech is gone/degraded beyond use, or until the survivors rebuild to the point where scavenging is no longer necessary to survive.

I see two flavours of post-apocalyptic* setting: a recent disaster, where the main themes are survival and dealing with the massive change in circumstances, and an ancient disaster where the themes are about dealing with the remnants of the old, and the knowledge that things used to be better and could possibly be again.

They needn't be futuristic; The "ancient disaster" idea works in the context of medieval Europe, for example.

* "Apocalypse" doesn't mean "the end of the world"; it means a revelation of knowledge. The Apocalypse of St John is his visions of the end of the world, not the end itself. Which makes the use of the word alongside themes of losing civilisation, technology and science rather ironic.

Your man vs thing is a base line for all stories not just post apoc.

Basically there are only 4 stories.

Man vs nature.

Man vs self.

Man vs man.

Man vs other.

Every story is one or more of those 4. Its not unique to the genre.

Had an interesting discussion about this over on LAF about a year ago:

Turns out, there actually was an apocalypse, in the sense of a world-changing catastrophe, underway during the 40s. But the "post-apocalyptic" world that resulted, i.e., the 1950s, was characterized not by loss and despair but rather soaring confidence. The "Four Horsemen" of the very apocalypse that ravaged the world during the 40s (before and after WW2 itself ended) - let's name them Ideology, Industry, Technology, and Mass Movements - became the very wellsprings of prosperity and hope in the 50s.

Just like in so many of our gritty fantasies, this real-life post-apocalyptic world was ushered in by atomic warfare. And of course the inhabitants of this real-life post-apocalyptic world were haunted by the memory of war. These horrors drove the survivors to build, both physically and emotionally, a brighter world from the ashes. But the threat of further war, and ultimately atomic war, hung like a pall over such efforts. The 1950s were thus by turns both cheery and morbid. Optimistic and paranoid. Cynical and naïve.

This paradox created what I'd propose to be the hallmark of the post-apocalyptic genre: wry, fatalistic humor. A world of armored school buses, roving bands of raiders armed with scavenged sports equipment, fortresses built out of strip malls, and so on. The post-apocalyptic fantasy setting is basically a grim joke: What would civilized people give up everything for? Nothing (allegorically). Hence the notion of a "regressed" society where the survivors prize disposable, nutritionless Twinkies and worship the would-be instruments of their own suffering, unexploded nuclear missiles.

It's absurd. And so it's also kind of funny. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Post-Apoc, as a genre, is not really about any old society-crumbling diaster but, more specifically, the underlying silliness (whether one plays it up or prefers a "drier" approach) of said disaster. So it kind of has to be the 50s. Things were perhaps a mite too dour both before and after.

The 50s aren't especially dark, even as measured against the immediately preceding decade. To the contrary, the key is that the period was especially bright - and that, all the same, this light (ideological, technological, industrial) did nothing to banish the darkness. That contradiction generates a sense of absurdity. The notion that the source of hope and the source of disaster might actually be the same thing is manifest in the fantasy of nuclear apocalypse. Atomic power and atomic fire were one and the same. And atomic fire was itself darkness, or rather the un-light that revealed the greater darkness within ourselves. Hence the trope of the radioactively mutated cannibal raider.

In reality, the response to this absurdity was counterculturalism. The post-apoc genre itself is not coincidentally a vehicle for critique of modern forms of authority, technological hubris, and commercialism/materialism - everything "square." Certainly by the 1980s, although some artists perceived this much earlier, dystopian fiction no longer required the excuse of an apocalyptic disaster; society merely needed to keep heading down the path it was already on. You can see this theme in pictures such as Mad Max (i.e., the first film), Dawn of the Dead, Alien, Bladerunner, Aliens, Terminator, and RoboCop.

It's the squareness of the 50s - one might use that term to refer to the special tension between soaring confidence in material progress and the preoccupation with massive destruction that said progress might demand.

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=106344.msg1324666#msg1324666

There's usually some sort of self chastisement theme as well, like man should have been less aggresive, shortsighted, reliant on technology etc.

 Elbows wrote:
May main issue with 'most' apocalypse based things, particularly zombie films is the "scounge for supplies!" trope. In some instances (post-nuclear engagement, etc.) it makes sense. Or a movie which takes place 50-60 years after a world-ending catastrophe, sure. But in silly settings like The Walking Dead, it's absolute garbage.

If we're to believe that somehow, 95% of the population died and became zombies, that would leave an unbelievable amount of goods leftover for the remaining 5%. Canned food, fuel, weapons, ammunition, cars, boats, etc. I also love the idea that suddenly firearms and munition are impossible to find...in America...in the South.

There would be such a surplus of materiel in a situation like that, every survivor could have their own warehouse of goods/food/ammo/fuel. Would this still generate the occasional conflict for resources? Sure. Some assbags would want to become mini-Kings and would try to establish an over-generous region of control or influence, but generally speaking - 95% of the population disappearing would leave everyone an incredible surplus of goods.

Aye, though from what little of the Walking Dead I've watched it seems to be more of a "Can we get to X supplies without being killed?". So its not so much that the stuff isn't there, but more that it can't really be accessed yet. Because in that cast, its not that 95% of the population disappeared, its that 95% of them became zombies.

In a non-zombie post-apoc setting though, any of the easily found stuff would be used up fairly quickly.

Take a nuclear war. The rough stages of what happens next is something like this.

1) Major cities get directly hit, but the outskirts of all these cities are not wiped out which leaves a lot of people still alive. Just with varying levels of radiation exposure, most of which will be non-lethal. Minor cities do not get hit by the blasts at all.

2) The EMPs from high altitude detonations, as well as any bombs hitting specific targets, wipes out any electronics which aren't specifically shielded. IE: Anything not deep in a government bunker. This destroys any ability to transport goods, particularly food, long distances because most vehicles have vital electronic systems. Meaning they won't work once the EMP has hit them.

3) Because of the crippling results of the EMP, there will be mass starvation. During the first couple weeks, all food in urban areas will be consumed with the population rapidly killing each other off for what little food remains. People fleeing the violence will stream out to less populated areas in a desperate attempt to find food. After a few months, the vast majority of people will be dead due to starvation and/or violence over any food that does exist.

4) After a couple months, things will begin to somewhat stabilize in that the population will have shrunk to a level that local food production can sustain. Furthermore, as the Fallout will have expired people can begin looting areas that were in very close proximity to the nuclear blasts. This will give a small boost in non-perishable food and other supplies that can now safely be accessed.

5) 6 months or so after the war. most governments will still exist in some form, but they will be severely reduced in what land they control. Existing countries will likely shrink as the governments will have to concentrate their power bases, which will leave many areas with power vacuums. New factions and countries will likely form in these areas. Existing governments will also probably be inclined to fracture into several smaller groups too.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
May main issue with 'most' apocalypse based things, particularly zombie films is the "scounge for supplies!" trope. In some instances (post-nuclear engagement, etc.) it makes sense. Or a movie which takes place 50-60 years after a world-ending catastrophe, sure. But in silly settings like The Walking Dead, it's absolute garbage.

If we're to believe that somehow, 95% of the population died and became zombies, that would leave an unbelievable amount of goods leftover for the remaining 5%. Canned food, fuel, weapons, ammunition, cars, boats, etc. I also love the idea that suddenly firearms and munition are impossible to find...in America...in the South.

There would be such a surplus of materiel in a situation like that, every survivor could have their own warehouse of goods/food/ammo/fuel. Would this still generate the occasional conflict for resources? Sure. Some assbags would want to become mini-Kings and would try to establish an over-generous region of control or influence, but generally speaking - 95% of the population disappearing would leave everyone an incredible surplus of goods.

Aye, though from what little of the Walking Dead I've watched it seems to be more of a "Can we get to X supplies without being killed?". So its not so much that the stuff isn't there, but more that it can't really be accessed yet. Because in that cast, its not that 95% of the population disappeared, its that 95% of them became zombies.

In a non-zombie post-apoc setting though, any of the easily found stuff would be used up fairly quickly.

Take a nuclear war. The rough stages of what happens next is something like this.

1) Major cities get directly hit, but the outskirts of all these cities are not wiped out which leaves a lot of people still alive. Just with varying levels of radiation exposure, most of which will be non-lethal. Minor cities do not get hit by the blasts at all.

2) The EMPs from high altitude detonations, as well as any bombs hitting specific targets, wipes out any electronics which aren't specifically shielded. IE: Anything not deep in a government bunker. This destroys any ability to transport goods, particularly food, long distances because most vehicles have vital electronic systems. Meaning they won't work once the EMP has hit them.

3) Because of the crippling results of the EMP, there will be mass starvation. During the first couple weeks, all food in urban areas will be consumed with the population rapidly killing each other off for what little food remains. People fleeing the violence will stream out to less populated areas in a desperate attempt to find food. After a few months, the vast majority of people will be dead due to starvation and/or violence over any food that does exist.

4) After a couple months, things will begin to somewhat stabilize in that the population will have shrunk to a level that local food production can sustain. Furthermore, as the Fallout will have expired people can begin looting areas that were in very close proximity to the nuclear blasts. This will give a small boost in non-perishable food and other supplies that can now safely be accessed.

5) 6 months or so after the war. most governments will still exist in some form, but they will be severely reduced in what land they control. Existing countries will likely shrink as the governments will have to concentrate their power bases, which will leave many areas with power vacuums. New factions and countries will likely form in these areas. Existing governments will also probably be inclined to fracture into several smaller groups too.

That summary of what happens after a nuclear war sounds a lot like the plot of a book I read a few years ago: One Second After, by William R. Forschten. Except that rather than a nuclear war, it's an EMP attack on the continental US (and a few other areas). The major cities quickly become so dangerous that even the military is reluctant to go in there! Within a year of the initial attack 90% of the population of the USA is dead from starvation, disease, and violence.

 pix3lboy wrote:
I'm getting quite bored of the bleakness in most post apocalyptic films. Sure the apocalypse isnt a good thing, but I imagine the majority of survivors would actually try to rebuild their lives. Not instantly turn into murderous cannibals.

The problem is that it doesn't take much for people to go bad. The moment that things like removal of overt punishment for bad actions (aka law enforcement) became public knowledge, anarchy begins.

A couple of days into the Government shutdown in the US and people were vandalizing National Parks and pooping on the grass outside of bathrooms that hadn't been emptied.

People go bad when there are no repercussions, and they go bad FAST. Then add panic and fear into the mix and you first have cities burning in riots, and then everyone goes tribal and follows the most powerful person they can find who promises to return some of their lost luxuries, no matter what they might have to do to get it.

The one trope I can't stand, specific to zombie apocalypses, is that they always take place in a setting that doesn't have zombie apocalypses as a part of the culture. Here, in the real world, we've had so many zombie apocalypse video games, books, TV shows, and movies that we know how to handle it. A zombie apocalypse would be over almost before it even starts. But in the fantasy lands these things take place in, everybody's clueless at first.
Kind of like how many superhero movies take place in a world where there is no history of superhero comic books and even the term "superhero" is unknown.

Yeah, the real tricky part is making the timeline believable. Fallout 4 really misses that with their supply scavenging- 200 years is just too long for any edible food to be preserved, excepting honey and certain booze. And I really doubt duct tape left outside is going to be adhesive after that long outside.

Conversely, you put it a year after the disaster there shouldn't be any scavenging- it's just a glorified riot with home depot castles.

Usually the sweet spot is the next generation- people who grew up with only rumors of the past civilization, and all the skills passed on by parents that have survived. 20 or 30 years in, you've got time for new authority structures to rise. Alternatively, you've got to toss it ages in the future, and treat the old society as nothing more than a myth, where the mere hint of a gun or a piece of lostech is cause for the bearer to be held up as a hero.

That's where TWD shines. You have smaller bands of survivors falling under the sway of charismatic leaders, and developing weird, hyper focused groups forged in the crucible of survival. Cannibals, zombie impersonators, oppressors, religious zealots. You should be able to see a whole range of human responses to tragedy- some obviously good, some obviously bad, and all ultimately flawed.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Yeah, the real tricky part is making the timeline believable. Fallout 4 really misses that with their supply scavenging- 200 years is just too long for any edible food to be preserved, excepting honey and certain booze. And I really doubt duct tape left outside is going to be adhesive after that long outside.
.

It depends on the food. Food which is properly canned is theoretically edible for an indefinite period. It definitely won't taste very good after a hundred years or more, but food preserved with modern methods can remain edible for a very very long time.

The part that actually stretches the imagination is that there would still be any of this canned food left to find after 200 years. Realistically, all that stuff is going to be gone within the first few years.

Duct Tape left outside might not be preserved, but if its inside a structure and isn't super exposed to the elements it could definitely still be around. At least the inner layers would still be usable.

Four main types of Apocalypse:

1. Natural (pandemic, volcanic super-eruption.)
2. Unnatural (invasion by space aliens.)
3. Supernatural (Cthulhu awakes, zombies.)
4. Man made (nuclear war.)

Two main types of scenario:

1. The unfolding of the crisis. and the struggle for survival in the aftermath.
These stories are often unsatisfying because they don't come to a good conclusion. They simply shift the world into a state of flux where people are trying to survive. It's usually some kind of action-adventure story. If the conclusion is successful, for example the end of Independence Day when the aliens are decisively beaten, then it isn't really a post-apocalypse scenario.

There are some novels in which the situation resolves successfully with a reconfigured society. In Larry Niven's Footfall, space aliens successfully invade the Earth, but eventually are beaten in a space battle and forced to surrender their mother ship to human control. Conflict is ended, and the next phase will be the integration of the aliens into Earth society, which is outside the scope of the novel.

2. 100 years later. (Or any period of time which has allowed the crisis to resolve and society to stabilize in a new configuration.)
In this scenario you usually find a world with a distorted memory of the past. For example, religion has replaced science.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
The one trope I can't stand, specific to zombie apocalypses, is that they always take place in a setting that doesn't have zombie apocalypses as a part of the culture. Here, in the real world, we've had so many zombie apocalypse video games, books, TV shows, and movies that we know how to handle it.

Shaun of the Dead.
They refer to that as the 'Z-word', and 'don't call them that'.
That is the only ones I know of though.

Once you accept the premise of zombies, and all the ways they mangle our understanding of physics as well as biology, accepting that in this world George Romero was famous for his rom-coms doesn't seem like much of a stretch. It cuts out the tedious postmodern self-referential nonsense for one thing, and means you can actually make a film without tripping over the IP of other studios.

No one in Star Trek has ever seen Star Wars, either (or experienced any popular culture at all after about 1960, but that's a different issue).

 Easy E wrote:

I of course use the word "Man" to represent humankind. What are other common themes, tropes, etc that make the genre? Which themes, tropes, etc. of the genre do you think are over-used/bunk?

If you haven't read it yet, perhaps the Apocalyptic Index over on TVTropes will be useful: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypticIndex.

Personally, as much as I like zombie stuff, I do think zombies are overdone. Or rather, there's very little originality to be found in the regular stream of derivative already been done a hundred times already. I actually think Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead were great in part because of their self-referential nature. They acknowledged that zombies are a cultural thing and ran with it, which gave them new angles that haven't already been done. Post-apocalypse works pretty well for tongue in cheek cultural critique. I kind of wish it was done more, not that it's rare mind you, it's just such a broad thing I feel like there's still lots of unexplored ground.

I think my favorite brand is the Lovecraftian apocalypse. I feel like I don't see it that often. It was the part about Hellgate: London I liked, and it works great in Grim Dawn.