# Recommend a "realistic" post-apocalyptic story without magic, cyborgs or zombies! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 15, 2010, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238 "2010-06-15T01:57:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Dennis3240](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eada6e/32.png) [@Dennis3240](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dennis3240)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2010, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/121 "2010-07-03T23:25:20Z")
oye earth Abides has been mentioned already… Should have read the post prior to posting sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/122 "2010-07-04T01:05:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Interesting! A bit of a hijack but could you expand on this? I don’t see how things got “weirder and weirder” in DtF. The Change was a one off event and, having changed the physical laws stayed the same. To me the first three books are very much about “an examination of human nature in the midst of collapse”. There’s the Wicca angle. Juniper and Rudi’s magic becomes more and more real as the series progresses. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/123 "2010-07-04T02:29:14Z")
People who recommended _Earth Abides_: It was published in 1949, does it really hold up to what our modern world would descend into? I’m trying to pick a new book for my Book Club and it looks good and believe it’s a good story, but I’m concerned it’ll be dated. ---
**Author:** ![Windwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@Windwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Windwalker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/124 "2010-07-04T04:12:24Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > People who recommended _Earth Abides_: > > It was published in 1949, does it really hold up to what our modern world would descend into? I’m trying to pick a new book for my Book Club and it looks good and believe it’s a good story, but I’m concerned it’ll be dated. Surprisingly, it does. The author goes into some of the technical details of how automobiles, electrical networks, water networks, etc. will deteriorate, and nothing struck me as particularly dated. I’m sure some of the technical details have changed a lot in 60 years, but if the author had pretended it was 2010, I probably wouldn’t have noticed too much. The stuff about how plants and animals adapt to the new situation didn’t seem dated at all. And he absolutely nailed (IMHO) how some human communities would develop in the face of an apocalypse. Probably the most realistic take I’ve seen, and utterly gripping. This, in spite of the fact that the point of view we get is from a rather detached scientific-minded protagonist. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/125 "2010-07-05T07:21:07Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Oh man, I can’t believe it took me so long to remember this and that no one else has mentioned it yet! > > **Dollhouse**. It took a couple episodes for Joss Whedon to figure out where he was going with it–but stick with it. It gets good. Really, really good. (And then FOX cancelled it, as per usual. But they got two seasons out of it, and enough warning to more or less wrap things up.) > > ETA: Most of the show itself is everything leading up to the collapse. It’s the two season-final flash-forward episodes that show you what life is like after. Dollhouse had magic: The tech they used for brain imprints can hardly be described as anything else, especially once it gets weaponized into little handguns. Cyborgs: The hive mind soldiers were Borg without all the electronic junk on them. They even had a queen for a minute. Zombies: “Did they eat my brains?!” is the first thing Topher says when the Dolls are remote-controlled by Alpha for an in-house ass kicking spree. The butchers in both “Epitaph” episodes could be considered zombies too. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dollhouse but it doesn’t fit the criteria. I’ll third or fourth Warday. Excellent book. There is mention of mutant creatures but only as rumors. > [@](#): > > Is there a name for a flavor of post-apocalyptic fiction that takes place in the far future after the apocalypse? I’ve always enjoyed those stories of finding treasure troves of long forgotten technology and the hints of the back story that no one really knows anymore. John Varley’s Steel Beach is set on the moon, two hundred years after humans were kicked off Earth by alien invaders. His whole Eight Worlds universe has this backstory although the details don’t always line up. He’s also worked his later novels (Red Thunder, Red Lightning, Rolling Thunder) into the Eight Worlds continuity to a degree. All excellent stories. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/126 "2010-07-05T07:26:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Is there a name for a flavor of post-apocalyptic fiction that takes place in the far future after the apocalypse? I’ve always enjoyed those stories of finding treasure troves of long forgotten technology and the hints of the back story that no one really knows anymore. Larry Niven has written a lot of stories with this as a background…but it was not humans who had the apocalypse. Humans (and other species) are the ones who FIND the treasure troves left by a species that is now long gone. ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/127 "2010-07-05T11:55:59Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > **The Road** was incredibly taxing. I think one sentence from the film summed it up: “It was a world waiting to die.” There was no rebirth to speak of (or even one imminent by the end), no hope or change or drama, just despair weighed down by more despair with bleak desperation waiting at the end. In terms of realism, I can fully believe this is what might happen should some sort of catastrophe occur… but in terms of being a narrative, it didn’t work for me. It followed no traditional structure and instead started out bleak and only went downhill from there. I don’t think I’d be able to read a whole book of this without wanting to kill myself too… or is there something more redemptive about the book? For a book that has something of the same finality about the earlier sections of it, I mentioned _Things We Didn’t See Coming_ by **Steve Amsterdam** earlier in the thread. It’s equally grim at times but does lighten up! I wrote this several months ago; it contains major spoilers: Post-disaster America, told in a series of loosely linked short stories. It’s not always obvious that it’s the same protagonist, or what has happened between sections… The background seems almost as miserable as that of The Road, but this is a more enjoyable read, imo. The situation is never spelt out, but seems to relate to extreme climate change, followed by plague and disease. It starts with a piece that seems to be set at the turn of the Millennium as a family flee to the country to await Y2K and the fall of civilisation (which didn’t happen!). Whether it’s really set then, or a decade or two later isn’t made clear - it may be foreshadowing, rather than the actual start of the collapse - but it’s not that important as there are no dates mentioned in the book, only the main character (assuming he’s the protagonist of all the stories) aging as the book goes on. In the end, assuming it’s the same character, and not the youth he was acting as a kind of father to in the previous story, only 25 years have elapsed since the first tale, and society and civilisation are greatly changed, but a semblance of previous life has re-established itself… Interesting little book. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/128 "2010-07-05T12:24:34Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > People who recommended _Earth Abides_: > > It was published in 1949, does it really hold up to what our modern world would descend into? I’m trying to pick a new book for my Book Club and it looks good and believe it’s a good story, but I’m concerned it’ll be dated. I would recommend _Alas, Babylon_ for a book club read. It is dated a bit with regard to sexual and racial politics but I thought it was overall beautifully written and a joy to read. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/129 "2010-07-05T12:44:59Z")
> [@Windwalker](#): > > Surprisingly, it does. The author goes into some of the technical details of how automobiles, electrical networks, water networks, etc. will deteriorate, and nothing struck me as particularly dated. I’m sure some of the technical details have changed a lot in 60 years, but if the author had pretended it was 2010, I probably wouldn’t have noticed too much. My take[spoiler]is that it does indeed stand up very well - it’s very plausible - but that in the 1940s, tech was so mechanical that it took years to fail - e.g. the valves in the reservoirs. Nowadays, we’re so electronics-reliant that the moment the power stations stopped, most other things would too. One of the complaints above is about the protagonists’ passivity. I think that’s all part of the realism. He has big dreams at first, but in the end he can’t fulfil them. The final scene with his progeny having reverted to the role of hunter-gatherers is entirely intentional.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/130 "2010-07-05T13:09:10Z")
> [@choie](#): > > This may be a strange recommendation, since it’s really a young adult/kid’s novel, but I fondly remember the book [The Girl Who Owned a City](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Owned_a_City), by O.T. Nelson. It’s about a virus that kills off anyone over the age of 12, which leaves kids fending for themselves and struggling to figure out how to find food and maintain safe shelter from gangs. The protagonists are Lisa and her kid brother Todd. Lisa wants to build society back up and has to convince the other kids in her neighborhood to figure out a longtime food solution, organize education so they can learn about medicine and technology, and find a way to defend against the bullies who just want to steal what they need. There’s a sorta _Lord of the Flies_ vibe here but it’s more about the practicalities of surviving in a world without adults, and how kids would learn how to drive, cook, treat injuries, and so on. > > (On the downside for me is that there’s a pretty strong Ayn Rand vibe to Lisa’s mindset. I’m sure others wouldn’t be as tight-assed as I am about that sorta thing!) > > I always thought it’d make a great film or even TV series. I just ordered this for summer reading for my kids. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/131 "2010-07-05T14:02:23Z")
BTW, can anyone identify this book? It starts as a typical “plague kills all adults” book, except that most children die as well. The protagonist is a young boy whose family had died earlier in an accident. He winds up driving around the country in various stolen cars, and sometimes meets other survivors and the like. I believe he meets one boy driving a mobile home full of stolen treasure, and discovers a recent suicide. He eventually meets two girls, and starts to make plans for the future, but one of them tries to kill him. Ring any bells for anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/132 "2010-07-05T18:26:24Z")
> [@MarcusF](#): > > A great yarn and one of my favourites but not, I think, what the OP is asking for. It’s post-apocalyptic but after 155 years the apocalypse is well in the past and the world is no longer a ruin. Oh, and you could argue it involves magic/the supernatural. Yes, but _The Peshawar Lancers_ is just such a ripping yarn that it’s always worth mentioning. How about a sub-category of books about worlds slowly recovering from almost-Apocalypses. With maybe just a _little_ magic? Robert Silverberg’s\* [Tom O’Bedlam](http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=1194)\* shows a world severely damaged by radioactive dust, in which a madman offers escape. To oblivion or to real worlds? And Philip K Dick’s _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ depicts an Earth suffering the results of an atomic exchange that didn’t kill everybody off. Just most of the animals. And many humans aren’t all that healthy. Filmed, of course, as _Bladerunner_. No magic here–but the replicants could be described as cyborgs. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/133 "2010-07-05T18:46:51Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > I would recommend _Alas, Babylon_ for a book club read. It is dated a bit with regard to sexual and racial politics but I thought it was overall beautifully written and a joy to read. The thing I noted most about _Alas, Babylon_ is that it is not particularly apocalyptic. Certainly there was a war, and lots of folks died, but … the US survives (albeit as a “third rate power” and the recipient of “lend lease”) and apparently many nations survived more or less intact. A big disaster to be sure, but civilization does not end, much less is humanity faced with extinction. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/134 "2010-07-05T19:53:38Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > The thing I noted most about _Alas, Babylon_ is that it is not particularly apocalyptic. > > Certainly there was a war, and lots of folks died, but … the US survives (albeit as a “third rate power” and the recipient of “lend lease”) and apparently many nations survived more or less intact. A big disaster to be sure, but civilization does not end, much less is humanity faced with extinction. But in order for it to be _post_-apocalyptic there has to be something post. Although it seems somewhat optimistic it ends with a line something like “and he turned around to a thousand years of night”. ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/135 "2010-07-06T21:25:21Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > **J. G. Ballard** has various novels set during or after some sort of disaster, although his characters don’t necessarily deal with their problems entirely rationally! _Hello, America_ is possibly the one to start with. > **M. John Harrison** ’s first novel was _The Committed Men_, about a post-disaster Britain, which I enjoyed, but I believe he’s not so keen on it! > > If you’re looking for something a bit different, _The Slynx_ by **Tatyana Tolstaya** (some sort of relative to Tolstoy) is set a couple of hundred years in the future in a collapsed Russia… Other British examples of the genre: [The Chalk Giants](http://www.solaris-books.co.uk/Roberts/dchalk.htm) by Keith Roberts. A story cycle rather than a novel and perhaps it all takes place in the head of the protaganist - who may well be dying or dead within a couple of paragraphs of the start - a difficult but rewarding read. Robaerts also wrote a deliberate hommage to John Wyndham in The Furies ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/136 "2010-07-06T21:59:54Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > Dollhouse had magic: > > The tech they used for brain imprints can hardly be described as anything else, especially once it gets weaponized into little handguns. > > Cyborgs: > > The hive mind soldiers were Borg without all the electronic junk on them. They even had a queen for a minute. > > Zombies: > > “Did they eat my brains?!” is the first thing Topher says when the Dolls are remote-controlled by Alpha for an in-house ass kicking spree. The butchers in both “Epitaph” episodes could be considered zombies too. I disagree, on all three counts. Magic: Magic in the same way that a lightbulb would be magic to someone 500 years ago, maybe. If all we are is defined by our memories–and I see no reason to believe otherwise–then we should, eventually, have the technological capability to save, create, and overwrite those personalities. Cyborgs: Being mentally linked by hardware is a pretty broad definition of “cyborg,” and a natural potential progression of imprinting technology. Zombies: Oh c’mon, \*a Topher joke \*counts as there being zombies? Weak. And the butchers don’t count–they can be killed exactly as a human can be killed. Nothing supernatural there. Contrast this with Stephen King’s _Cell_–while I’d say the earlier part of the novel would qualify, the people who got their brains wiped start developing supernatural powers in the second part. Butchers are just normal people who got programmed to kill anyone who wasn’t running the same program. They don’t have magical powers, and they have the same physical limitations of any other human being. > [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > No magic here–but the replicants could be described as cyborgs. AFAIK, you can’t have a cyborg without starting from a human being. Replicants are androids–created, articifial beings. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/137 "2010-07-07T01:15:32Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > The Postman is, for my money, the best one of these. While it does have augmented soldiers they could have been left out without changing the point. When first written, WE involved tech that (a) would’ve been science fiction, but (b) now seems as down-to-earth as gunpowder or the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/138 "2010-07-07T14:49:22Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > When first written, WE “WE”? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/139 "2010-07-07T15:18:24Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > But in order for it to be _post_-apocalyptic there has to be something post. Although it seems somewhat optimistic it ends with a line something like “and he turned around to a thousand years of night”. If a post-apocalyptic has to have something “post”, what is _The Road_? 😉 [spoiler] Yeah, I remember that line, but it seemed totally unwarranted in context - considering that he had just been visited by a helicoptered-in representative of the government who offered him a ride out of the “zone” - and, because he and his commuity were doing so well, no-body took up the offer. Also, the statements that most other gov’ts survived intact, were organizing relief shipments, etc. all seem to indicate that the US destruction wasn’t likely to last a 'thousand years" any more than WW2 destroyed Europe for a thousand years; though certainly, there would be radioactive craters all over the place. [/spoiler] Compare with the results of _A Canticle for Lebowitz_ where atomic war reduces world civilization to neo-medievalism. ---
**Author:** ![Cowgirl\_Jules](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@Cowgirl\_Jules](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cowgirl_Jules)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238/140 "2010-07-07T20:10:03Z")
gallows fodder, I just finished Into the Forest last night, based on your recommendation. I really liked it, even though it had such a narrow scope. Usually, these books deal with civilization as a whole, or at least you get more of that sort of picture. This one was really good though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-realistic-post-apocalyptic-story-without-magic-cyborgs-or-zombies/543238.md?page=8)