To embellish a little more on the conversation started in this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1454222#post1454222
War brakes out. Bomb hit DC, world bombarded and on the surface is seemingly destroyed. I got out of the city with my best friend. We hoped on my KZ (motorcycle) her sitting with her back against mine to protect the rear. We skirt through the roadblocks and traffic. Shooting all who try to stop us we make it into the mountains where we designated the meeting place with our families. After awhile bullets run out, there’s no more gas to be siphoned, but it’s all good. I have a sword, and I kick butt. So basically, my fantasy is that I am this bad a** sword fighting babe, dueling my way across the wasteland.
I want to hear everyone else’s fantasy. Please none of that well technically this couldn’t or wouldn’t stuff. This is pure imagination!!
After years of being a warlord, then a dictator, I eventually become Emperor of Earth, and after that I reshape mankind to fit my vision, and spread out across a universe I am the immortal ruler of. I won’t go into details because I don’t want anyone to beat me to it.
Wow, A thread called be my name. I am so flattered!
My post apocalyptic future involves cycles of magic. When the cycle is at its peak the laws of physics change. What we currently do to generate electricty no longer works. Our current fuels no longer burn. Civilization falls apart. But magic does begin to work and shamans and wizards rise to power. Some humans begin to revert to their “true” forms and change into orcs, goblins, and elves… It gets stranger from there. But swords beome very useful things to have.
Blackclaw, sweet fantasy. It reminds me of a book I read called, I think, “The Last Unicorn” (??? maybe?? Some shift in time/space and none of the usual laws of physics worked but magic did).
Okay, mine.
After being captured by raiding gangs and sold to a warlord as a concubine, I quickly become an expert in martial arts and sword play, learning these from his handsome and dashing (but gentle and sensitive [sub]hey, its a fantasy![/sub]) head bodyguard, who has fallen desperately in love with me. I kill the warlord one night, run away with the bodyguard, with the warlord’s minions chasing us over hill and dale. We stay on the run, fighting evil in every form, leaving widows and orphans blessing our name and the bad guys vowing revenge.
Badtz Maru when you become the Emperor of Earth can I be Empress?
Blackclaw, I think in your world I’d be a tree nymph. (Don’t ask, Ok I’ll tell you anyway. One night my friends and me were making up twisted tunes. I made up a verse to a Doors song, Tree…I want to hug you. Instead of Mother…I want to F*** you, and no I wasn’t on drugs)
BunnyGirl, sounds like the start to a great series.
That’s one of my favorites, too. Of course, don’t forget the intuitive grasp that said fantasizer has of the new magic, or his/her reversion to some utterly bad-ass fantastic form…
After hearing a big “BOOM!” and subsequently getting knocked unconscious, I emerge from a pile of rubble to find that I am the only living person in all of Manhattan. I stumble over flattened buildings and the remains of the FDR to South Street Seaport, where I immediately commandeer the biggest boat I can find and motor my way out to Eastern Long Island. Thereafter, I live on the boat and generally enjoy the solitude for the rest of my days, living off the fish in the sea and generally being the lazy ass I always was. No trying to seek out any surviving females so I can “rebuild the human race.” No Beyond Thunderdome-esque motorcycle gangs or races of mutants. No Twilight Zone-ish sudden emotional breakdowns upon realizing that I’m probably the only human left. Just me and my boat.
So there is a big apocalypse that wipes out like 90% of the population and for some reason, the survivors have reverted back to caveman type intelligence. All except me, of course, since I was shielded from the stupifying effect by some star trekkish mumbo jumbo explanation. So that means in this shell of our world, only I know what all these stange artifacts are and how to use them. So I am of course revered and worshipped. “Look grog, see how he makes fire by just flicking that tiny red device with the small metal wheel on top of it.”
Right up to this point, you’ve just described Hasbro’s “Visionaries” action figures.
As for myself – just gimme an armor-plated car bristling with firearms, and I’ll gladly make a living being a courier/driver/escort through the mutant-infested wilderness separating the sparse patches of “civilzation” in this crazy, post-apocalyptic world.
(And once a year, the survivors in the cities hold a ceremony remembering the end of civilization, by burning in a bonfire effigy Dubya The False One whose foolhardy Essdeeaye led to our fall… )
Ok, so far I have my sword, motorcycle, best friend, bow and arrows, horse, war paint, clan following and wolf named JoJo that can read minds and protects me diligently.
Also, I want a summer retreat built in the trees like the Ewok city, and a distillery for all the celebrations in my name. I also have a small band of shirtless, buff men who worship me and see to my every desire, although I am a warrior (Warriors, come out and play-e-ay) and would never burden myself to procreate when there are so many enemies to defeat.
The year 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man’s civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn… A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil. He is Monkey Lucifer, the Barbarian!
It was a disease that wiped out most of the people; maybe 99.99% of them are gone. A month later, I’m camping by the side of the highway, in the middle of a trip from where I was to nowhere in particular. I’m hoisting my pack onto my shoulders and getting ready to climb onto my bicycle (the roads are too clogged with abandoned cars to make automobile travel possible, and now that I need to learn to ride a motorcycle, there’s no one left to teach me) when I see a flash on the horizon. It turns out to be a man, a man I knew a little from before the plague, and he’s also on his way to nowhere in particular. I abandon my tenspeed, climb behind him on his Indian Chief, and set out with him.
Not that I’ve ever read The Stand or Earth Abides. Perish the thought.
My friends and I have always talked about surviving a “The Stand” sort of situation, or something similar. I like the idea of heading out somewhere, an independent island or something, and begin to build my own society, based on my rules.
100 years later, my Monarchial Society, ruled by my descendants comes head to head with the dozen or so “New America” knock-off’s that would grow like mushrooms.
The other idea, of course, is that it’s aliens that have invaded, so we (my friends and I) take to the hills and fight an unending guerilla war.
I like the first one, of course, but the second one has it’s draws as well…eheheheh
Aliens conquer the earth, bombing most of the population centers, enslaving the survivors in work camps. But the slimy extraterrestrials can’t break the human spirit, and mankind engages in decades of guerilla warfare, eventually driving the invaders back into space. I, of course, am the dashing, yet aloof, military genius who masterminds the insurrection and personally kills the alien Hive-Queen by crushing her in a hydraulic door. I then refuse the title of Emperor of Earth, instead returning, Cinncinnatus-like, to my mountain fastness, to brood and prepare for the next alien menace.