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I just recently found myself researching different "end of the world as we know it" scenarios for a short story that I'm writing. In my story, all the worst global warming predictions have come true and all of humanity is gathered on the polar caps. However, all the research into doomsday prophecies has gotten me to thinking. What are some of your favorite end-of-the-world scenarios? (Obviously, as far as fiction goes. I doubt that anyone could really use the term "favorite" while considering the actual end of the world.)
[This message has been edited by LauraAustin (edited September 24, 2007).]
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Stephen King's "The Mist" had the most awesome apocalyptic feel. A few dozen people trapped in a grocery store while the world falls apart amid a supernatural fog. I don't know about the movie, but I'd recommend the story to anyone.
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Excellent! "The Mist" is still one of the creepiest stories I've ever read. I've always liked the way that the story never really explains why it happened. The reader is left just like the characters, hanging in the unknown.
[This message has been edited by LauraAustin (edited September 24, 2007).]
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If I remember correctly, and I'm not mixing it up with something else, it was hinted at that the military did something to cause it. Also, I believe "The Mist" is listed as a Dark Tower related book, so we can probably assume that there was some opening between dimensions. Wow, I'm a book geek.
[This message has been edited by TheOnceandFutureMe (edited September 24, 2007).]
Do you mean published scenarios? My two favorite aren't published, that I know of.
Interestingly, I thought of one today where a shape-shifting alien is able to alter his genetic code by create a virus. Except the virus mutates and becomes airborne, changing every human on the planet into the exact same person (genetically speaking). Most of humanity kills itself off in the resulting paranoia and chaos. The rest, well, they can't produce viable offspring anymore.
The other is a biological weapon that induces hallucination and paranoia until humanity wipes itself out.
Notice that both my scenarios involve humanity killing itself off? That probably says something about me
My final scenario is an alien nano that devours circuitry, but leaves everything else alone, plunging humanity into darkness and chaos (i.e., the 19th century )
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Blood Music by Greg Bear, intelligent nanites subsume the known universe, also makes a nice argument for the impact of intelligence and intelligent design and it's impact/influence on reality as we know it.
Planet of the Apes (the original films not the travesty from a few years back).
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I love global warming. I think we need some more of it. Melt the caps, convert the salt water into pure water, and dump it in the deserts. Everyone lives in peace and happiness because of unlimited resources.
Or wait until we run out of oil in the middle east and see how they react. THAT will be a fun world.
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TheOnceandFutureMe, it was hinted around in the story that the military base that was near the town might have something to do with it, but it never showed as anything more than conjecture on the characters' parts. I haven't touched the Dark Tower series yet, though, so I have no idea if it would be related or not.
Iehollis, definitely not just published scenarios. I always like the ones where humanity kills itself off, just because so often the sentiment behind it rings true. (And I really like the shapeshifting virus idea!) Oh, and the idea of the sudden lack of technology is a favorite of mine just because I love the idea of retro, steampunk science fiction.
HuntGod, I remember being completely floored the first time I saw the original Planet of the Apes. That is definitely how apocalypse should be done.
Marzo, I haven't seen Children of Men yet, but it's on my Netflix list!
RMatthewWare, if you're looking for straight out over the top doomsday, I haven't found anything that beats the sudden onset of drastic global warming. Which isn't to say that I'm buying it - not anymore than I did The Stand. Running out of oil though would absolutely be a very interesting route to take.
I just read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick and it is set in a post-apocalyptic world. It's not the end of civilization as we know it, but it's a very different world. It was used as background for Blade Runner, but the movie diverges quite a bit (well, it seems to me like the movie focuses on a very few scenes from the book, actually. The book isn't that long either. And then there's a significant plot element present in the movie that is present in a different way in the book. But I digress...)
The two asteroid thrillers Deep Impact and ... what was the other one? Something with an A ... by far the more well-known - Armageddon maybe? Blockbuster cast of Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, but not nearly as good/compelling a story as Deep Impact, IMHO - with a very young elijah wood, tea leoni, and maybe vanessa redgrave? And Morgan Freeman as the president. Really haunting, compelling story.
I'm working on one that is a post-apocalypse suburbia story. still haven't decided if this is my NaNo project or if it's just an 8k short story. Have to work out the ideas more.
My apocalypse ideas generally revolve around something happening to the food supply - genetically modified foods having some really deadly downside that hasn't been identified yet. That kind of thing.
Oh, and of course Battelstar Gallactica - the new one. Wow, what a great show. I know I'm picking more movies than books, but I usually avoid books dealing with apolocalyptic-level events, too depressing.
Just remembered one more, though. THE GIRL WHO OWNED A CITY. It's about a girl and her younger brother, and how they get by after the entire adult population is wiped out by some illness. Fascinating, and set in my home town, so the author used familiar landmarks. Fascinating! YA/Junior fiction so it's quite short. I'm going to have to re-read it sometime to see if it stands the test of time. It's probably been 10-15 years since the last time I read it.
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I'm inclined to dismiss some notions of the "post-apocalypse" world. The world may have changed, but, it would seem, in a lot of them, the people-slash-survivors are getting on in their lives. (Blood Music, mentioned above, seems a good example---alas, I've only read the first novelette of it, which ends as the apocalypse is beginning.)
I think of a work like Edgar Pangborn's Davy, where (a) global warming of some kind has obviously taken place, (b) what was once the northeast of the United States is no longer that, or even unified, and (c) the people we meet along the way seem as happy or unhappy as anybody before the disaster. (One reason why I'm less worried about global warming---if it does happen, people will adapt, get by, make do. And think of all that new coastal property that will open up.)
You can take something like, say, George Stewart's Earth Abides, where nearly all of humanity is wiped out in a plague, where the survivors slowly come together and form tribes, and then stumble a number of times on the way to the future---it's not "civilization" as we know it, but it is life.
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If you want to see a cool apocalypse, there is only one place to go...well, an entire genre actually. GIANT ROBOT ANIME. They typically end in a very cool end of the world scenarios.
SPOILERS BELOW: I RECOMMEND YOU JUST WATCH THE SHOWS, BUT IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO, I'LL SUMMARIZE THE ENDINGS.
NEON GENESIS: EVANGELION has kind of a mystical spin on the end of the world that is very interesting. Two specific beings merge and wipe out all of humanity's physical boundaries so the entire human race becomes one giant collective mind kind of thing.
BLUE GENDER has the Earth being taken over by these giant insect-like creatures that kill people indiscriminately. The last few remaining humans have to go into space and live on a space station where they stage missions back to Earth to try to take it back. The infighting on the space station ends up killing everybody there, and only a few humans survive to live in a primitive little village down on Earth (after that creatures have been defeated by the hero).
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As far as novels go, one of my favorites has always been Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. When it was written, the idea of a giant asteroid destroying the Earth hadn't been overdone like it has been today, and the take was fresh and interesting. It was a Hugo nominee in 1978.
It dealt with a more realistic kind of future where life just kind of adjusts for the survivors, rather than displacing the world into the stone age. What's really good about it, is that it's more about the characters than the aftermath, and dealing with survival problems, both from the situation, and from the threats of other survivors.
Of course, there's always ones like Stephen King's The Stand and for new novels, Jeff Carleson's Plague Year, which offers a good concept and unique setting.
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The Dipmobile in Roger Rabbit's Acme Factory was a pretty scary apocalypse for toons, especially if you're eight-years-old. That green gooey dip was scarier than ghost slime by a mile. Posts: 746 | Registered: Jun 2007
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What about the end of the human race by mutation? I thought Children of Men was a very good film, but I haven't read the book.
I guess I'm too anxious a soul to contemplate global apocalypse. I've been know to interpret the book of Revelation as the 7 decades of a natural lifespan.
I'm haunted by some images from Card's Homecoming series about what happened to Earth, and the rich people eating in front of starving people.
There's also the idea of Miranda in Serenity where a planet dies from, you know, the things that kill that planet. I guess in that respect it has some things in common with Children of Men.
[This message has been edited by Tricia V (edited September 25, 2007).]
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Somewhere I heard that global warming doesn't necessarily mean the polar ice caps will melt. In the scenario I heard about, the ocean temperatures change to the point where there is no longer a Gulf Stream to warm Europe and that triggers an ice age (the opposite of what we usually think of in terms of global warming).
Posts: 603 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: The other is a biological weapon that induces hallucination and paranoia until humanity wipes itself out.
Brian Lumley's Psychamok comes close to this. A supercomputer is searching for God and emitting a frequency that the human mind cannot withstand, it induces hallucination, hysteria, and paranoia, eventually leaving people babbling (pun intended) in a nuthouse. The governments don't know the computer is causing it, so they think it's an epidemic and call it The Gibbering.
Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song is similar to Stephen King's The Stand, but it is after nuclear holocaust (which incidentally is caused by a malevolent demon).
quote: Planet of the Apes (the original films not the travesty from a few years back).
Planet of the Apes was a political commentary novel.
David Gemmell's Jerusalem Man series is post-apocalyptic. I love that. The cause is Time-continuum/Atlantian Magic/and Nukes. How's that for Apocalyptic Taco Mix?
As for movies, I'm going to have to get back to you. But, Red Dawn was an awesome story in both formats, as was Children of Men. Apocalypse Now and Mad Maxx were cool.
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Tricia V, I can't even consider using something like Miranda. If I even think about Serenity while I'm trying to write, it'll come out as nothing buy thinly-veiled fanfiction, I know it. I'm just way too big of a fan.
Corky, a lot of scientists think that will be the overall effect of global warming. Enough of the ice caps will melt into the North Atlantic to wipe out the warm Gulf Stream current and a least large chunks of the world will be plunged into an ice age. That's really the most interesting thing about researching global warming like this. There's just no telling WHAT will happen.
I have to ask if anyone's read The Taking by Dean Koontz. I inherited it from my mother in law and just finished it up the other day. I thought it was very interesting from the point of view that it was almost a retelling of Noah's Ark... except the angels and demons were aliens.
My list of books to read is just going up, up, up thanks to this thread!
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Apocalyptic taco mix? There's a trigger if I ever heard one! Posts: 1911 | Registered: Mar 2007
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TheOnceandFutureMe
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I read The Taking and thought it was amazing - much better than most of Koontz's work. (Although if someone had told me the ending on an online forum *cough* Laura *cough*, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much). I actually enjoyed the novel so much that I read it a second time and marked it up just to see if I could tell how Koontz kept my attention so well.
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Wait, I misread. I guess you didn't reveal the ending. Although you seem to have a different understanding of what happened than I did.
[This message has been edited by TheOnceandFutureMe (edited September 26, 2007).]
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Sorry, I didn't think I'd given away anything more than anyone else had about the books mentioned here! And for me, it was all about the descriptions. Excellent imagery, just all the way around.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Sep 2007
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You're fine, Laura. I misread. The Taking is awesome all around.
Also, if you haven't, read Odd Thomas. It's definitely the best book Koontz has written, and it is one of my favorite books in general. I've never felt so attached to a character.
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I've read a few Koontz books, but haven't read anything in awhile. I enjoyed Watchers and Stinger, though my favorite was The Bad Place. I will add The Taking to my list, thanks!
Posts: 552 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Ypu, sure is...Lightning is the one I was thinking of, not sure why Stinger popped to mind, not like the plots are even similar.
Posts: 552 | Registered: Dec 2004
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You picked a good one to start with, in my opinion. And that's all you'll get from me. (Although my first Stephen King was The Eyes of the Dragon, which is a fairy tale and one of my all time favorite books.)
Posts: 19 | Registered: Sep 2007
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A good friend of mine liked to end most of his stories with the moon crashing into the earth. I always loved that as an apocalypse.
Posts: 554 | Registered: Jun 2007
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I think "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is an incredible post-apocalyptic novel. Here's a website featuring an author I know, Sonny Whitelaw: http://www.sonnywhitelaw.com . Sonny writes official "Stargate" novels, other novels, and books and articles about environmental issues. Because she's so concerned about environmental issues, Sonny's now giving away FREE from her website one of her novels, "The Rhesus Factor". Posts: 11 | Registered: Aug 2007
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