The Stand.... and then what?

[Tristan]

It's been one of the things that always niggles at the back of my mind.....

At the end of "The Stand", by Stephen King, the characters seem to indicate that a lot of folks are drifting away from Boulder.

When I was in High School, I always tried to write some decent fan-fic set in that world, but I sucked.


Anybody have any ideas as to what would happen afterwards? Would society continue to degrade until we got to a late Medeival level, or what?

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Read Earth Abides. It's about social structures in a post-apocolyptic world much like that of The Stand. They even all die from a disease.

[JohnT]

Well, some people left but by no means all. A lot of the founders decided to leave when their role was complete, but I got the sense that the vast majority stayed in Boulder and would do so for the near-to-mid future, maybe migrating on to Denver when population pressures start to work their inevitable toll.

But I don't know if they can sustain it. There will be so many things that they will need to know NOW that the base population might not be able to keep up. Too many people are no longer doing the things needed to support an industrial civilization, and the Boulder group will probably slide into barbarism.

The only thing that can possibly save them is a fierce eugenics program, where they are pumping out baby after baby, coupled with an intensive educational process. They would also need to scout for survivors (send people of non-childbearing age!) and bring them back into Boulder ("We're creating a new world, blah blah blah"). Over time, you will definitely want to seed the communities surrounding Boulder down on into Denver. Education would take a severe turn towards the practical and necessary: there will be no poetry majors in this society! I would think that knowledge regarding medicine and energy/power production would be the most sought after. There's a lot of crap work that needs to be organized - body detail (Denver's huge!), trash, food detail, etc. Btw, how's the farming up in Colorado?

Btw, I think that as soon as it looks like they'll make it they should send out "reclamation parties" of 50-100 people to go and settle other cities. It could happen that these parties spontaneously form after a while when people get bored with Boulder.

Over in Flagg's territory it's another matter. A good percentage of his population went up in smoke (not to mention his base of operations and chain of command), but he did have far more people spread out across the West so there were a few "bad guys" remaining. But we were given little idea as to how many people lived in LA, Seattle, etc (there was one sentence about it), we can probably imagine they number in the hundreds. If they survive, who knows how their history will take. If I was in that situation, I'd migrate to the Valley (like around Fresno) and grab some good farmland with an oil rig on it.

[FriarTed]

no one ever thought "What would Mother Abigail do?"- surely there would be a small group of disciples who would at least develop a church if not a theonomic society around her brand of C'nity.

ALso, what's going on in other countries? Does the vast Russian territory also have a Randall Flagg & a Mother Abigail or perhaps a Czarina Flagganov & a Father Abovich?

[Tristan]

That's exactly the sort of things that percolate through my head.... I had a mental picture of a quasi-feudal society, with small pockets of steam-tech. No real powerplants to speak of, no real industrialization.

The only real advantage they've got is with 3 milion people left alive in the US (roughly) there would probably be a handful of farmers.....

[scout1222]

Interestingly, I'm about finished with the unabridged version right now.

FriarTed, I just read a passage yesterday or the day before when Flagg is out wandering in the desert (when Tom Cullen is heading back to the Free Zone) and he's contemplating things. There's a statement in there that he wonders what's happening in other countries. Whether or not in Russia or China there are similar things happening. So as much as he seems to be powerful, even he doesn't know the answer to that.

[Lissa]

I always wondered if the short story (whose name escapes me) in "Night Shift" about the teenagers on the beach who discover that they have a new version of the flu that killed everyone else gave a hint as to what happened after "The Stand"

[Skeezix]

I'd think it was a pretty direct line of thought from that story to The Stand. Captain Trips was the name given to the plague in both stories, IIRC.

If I'm not too much mistaken, the short story was written first, matter of fact.

[NotBob13]

At the very end of the Book, Flagg washes up on a beach in (I believe) Africa, leading me to believe the good vs. evil cycle would start there.

[Bryan Ekers]

"The Stand" is often followed by "The Sit" or even "The Nap", because standing around all day can get pretty tiring.

[smiling bandit]

Civlization would have ended, period. You could not re-start industry. Once its gone, its gone. There aren't enough easily available resources for another society. Maybe in a billion years there will be, thanks to geological action.

[Profane]

Why are the only choices indutrial civilisation or barbarianism? Why not an agrarian society? We could live quite well even without all our mod-cons.