I just got done watching The Day After (directed by Nicolas Meyer for the ABC Television Network, 1983) and it got me thinking. I have watched, read and loved a ton of post-apocalyptic fiction. Today was my first time watching The Day After, but I grew up on the Mad Max movies. The Hunger Games is, of course, set in Panem after a nuclear exchange. The latter two series in the Robotech universe take place in a world that has been savaged by aliens. I could go on forever. Science Fiction fans love post-apocalyptic settings. It's just what we do.
I guess the difference between The Day After and the vast majority of other Post-Apocalyptic settings is that it shows the actual apocalypse and the time before it on a level I've only ever seen exceeded by Jericho. At the beginning of The Day After life as normal is taking place. There is a wedding coming. People are registering for classes. If it weren't for the constant chatter about worsening tensions between the US and USSR from TVs and radios in the background they couldn't have made things more average if they tried. Actually, I'd be willing to bet that they DID try and this was the best they could do. They did a damn good job of it too.
So in a lot of ways, The Day After is one of the few post apocalyptic thrillers that truly shows the cost of the apocalypse itself. The cost of the apocalypse is not just measured in the mess made of a ruined city. The cost is measured in real human beings, shattered families and ruined lives. It is measured in the attempts to come back from the horror of an honest to God nuclear exchange. It's something we've never had to witness on the scale envisioned in the movie and thank God for that, but it is truly terrifying.
I grew up during the time when The Day After was made. I turned seven in 1983. I remember checking books out of the library about military everything. I remember reading about the USS Enterprise (The aircraft carrier CVN-65, not the Galaxy Class NCC-1701) and the nuclear arsenal it carried. I remember watching the news with my dad and my grandpa hearing about some guy named Khadaffi and some bombs that went off in Libya. I was way too precocious and I was reading things I had no business reading at that age. I didn't realize that at the time (what seven year old really understands how young they are?) but I should have waited until I got older. Lesson learned, I guess. I took my daughters to see Wonder Woman and my twelve year old thought that poison gas was fake, so I didn't push her as fast as I pushed myself, right?
What I've never understood though, is why we (I?) like it. I mean, it's exciting and suspenseful. If you don't know what's out there, you don't know what the threats are. If you don't know what the threats are, they could be anything. If you're surrounded by threats, survival becomes a problem. All stories need a problem. Just ask your high school literature teacher. (Mrs. Maloney are you out there?). But why this setting and this problem. What's fun about a setting where ninety-plus percent of the human race is dead?
That's the interesting part for me. I've heard people with doctoral degrees in psychology claim that it's because people wonder about their own death and wonder what the world would be like without them. With all respect due to the people who know what they're talking about, I don't think they know what they're talking about. I seriously think that whoever came up with that thesis never bothered to have a conversation with a real fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. Think about it.
Every fan of the PA game that I've come across thinks that they're Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead. We, at heart, are all The Chosen One, who will survive the crisis and restore order to the world. When the world falls we'll be the finest scrounger. When we set up the camp, we'll be the one who leads the defense of it. When the first new crops are grown, we'll be the person who found the seeds. When civilization is re-established we'll be the person leading it. Us. The nerds. The real science fiction fans who grew up reading about/watching this stuff. I mean, I'm even working on a Mafia/PA mashup. My main character is THE MAN... Or he will be if this freaking mob boss quits telling him what to do.
Anyway...
I think the fact of the matter is that the attraction of post-apocalyptic fiction is really a desire to be in charge. We want to run things our way and it's never going to happen that way. Even most presidents don't make the difference they thought they would. We all know that the world would be better off if we could just get rid of the corruption and fix the system. The real problem is that the system is so broken that it can't be fixed. It has to be disposed of and the only way to get rid of it is a nuclear war, or a zombie apocalypse, or an alien invasion, a terrible disease....
You know, whatever caused the thing. It really depends on the writer, but at the end of the day something wiped out everything that came before and this time we're going to start over and get it right. This time, there won't be any corrupt politicians because if they try that bullshit, we'll just feed them to a zombie...
Yeah.
The average post-apocalyptic fiction fan has a heroic fantasy. We're going to save the world. We don't necessarily count the cost because it's just a fantasy, right? I mean, I spent how many hours playing Everquest and slaughtering the orcs in Crushbone? The people in the fantasy don't exist. Except...
Except, I wonder.
Every power mad dictator in the history of history has had a vision of a world (or nation) that he ran himself and how it would be "for the people." They all thought that they would be the one to save the world. Lenin thought he would feed all of the people instead of starving them. Mao thought his Great Leap Forward would put the Chinese economy on par with the economies of industrialized world instead of killing tens of millions. Pol Pot thought that moving backward was best for the people and created his own apocalypse by killing half of its inhabitants in order to murder the educated and save Cambodia. Yes, even Hitler thought that slaughtering millions would prevent them from breeding and result in the eventual evolution of a Master Race that would then improve the world. Every one of them thought they were working for the betterment of the human race (in Hitler's case he had a narrower view of what constituted a human than I do) and they were all wrong. Every last one of them was a disgusting excuse for a human being. None of them should be remember positively by anyone.
And those were the closest we've come to an actual apocalypse, especially with Hitler and Pot. (Hitler killed more people. Pot killed a larger percentage of the population of the territory he controlled. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which is worse.)
So, nerd friends, I guess my point is this: Be careful what you wish for. The cost is too high and the outcome is probably not going to be what you desire. Even if you get what you want it probably won't turn out the way you want. But, as long as we're keeping it to people who don't actually exist I guess we're okay. Just don't let the zombies eat T-dog. I know, too late, but I miss that guy.
Some Post- Apocalyptic entertainment products are available at the links below:
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