# Sleeping through society's collapse **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 2, 2025, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669 "2025-09-02T00:06:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/1 "2025-09-02T00:06:15Z")
One of my streamers has just added 28 Days Later, which is always worth a repeat watching. This time watching Jim (Cillian Murphy) regaining consciousness in a hospital ward and gradually coming to the realisation that not only was there no one else there but that something very, Very, VERY bad had happened, I realised that the same had happened in the beginning of Day of the Triffids (book and adaptations) and Walking Dead (comic and tv). I’m sure there are many others. I can see the attraction from a narrative perspective - its clean and jumps us straight in, and gives us a first-person perspective on the discovery of just how bad things are. Of course versions of this have been used as a time-travel trope - Rumpelstilskin big sleep etc. Modern Fallout style shows also play with the idea. Any other examples of a regular person being jumped into the thick of the (awful) future inadvertently by being medically stuck / out of it while all the nasty stuff happens? The irony is that in the real world of places like Gaza, hospitals are the epicentre of bad things, beoming quickly and desperately mobbed with causualties they cannot hope to handle or even triage. The idea that an unconscious bicycle courier could be allowed to take up a post-op bed is a bit far-fetched when reality hits. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/2 "2025-09-02T00:07:46Z")
Avatar checks out. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/3 "2025-09-02T00:16:20Z")
Woody Allen’s Sleeper Idiocracy (and the story it rips off “The Marching Morons”) Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/4 "2025-09-02T00:18:05Z")
HG Wells’ _When the Sleeper Wakes_ may be the granddaddy of this trope. A Victorian Englishman comes out of a coma in the year 2100 were the world is ruled by a plutocracy called the White Council that uses a Black police force to enforce their rule. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/5 "2025-09-02T00:23:55Z")
Futurama. Fry sleeps through the fall and rise of several societies while being accidentally cryogenically frozen for 1000 years. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/6 "2025-09-02T00:49:18Z")
_The Walking Dead_ begins with Rick Grimes waking up from a coma to discover civilization collapsed. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/7 "2025-09-02T01:14:35Z")
_Day of the Triffids._ In the book, the protagonist is in the hospital, having been temporarily blinded, and everything is falling apart when he gets his eyesight back. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/8 "2025-09-02T01:30:46Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Rumpelstilskin Did you mean Rip Van Winkle? ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/9 "2025-09-02T01:36:20Z")
Edward Bellamy’s _Looking Backward: 2000-1887_ ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/10 "2025-09-02T01:40:09Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Futurama. Fry sleeps through the fall and rise of several societies while being accidentally cryogenically frozen for 1000 years. Accidentally? Yeah right. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/11 "2025-09-02T01:43:45Z")
There the hero wakes up in a good world ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/12 "2025-09-02T01:57:48Z")
Funny how the cryogenic facility survived intact for 1000 years. Of course Fry’s bank also continued, maintained a long-dormant account, and even honored the compound interest (in 20th century American dollars!) it earned. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/13 "2025-09-02T02:40:56Z")
Yeah it’s a really unrealistic trope even in movies with zombies or giant man eating plants\*. ICU stands for intensive care. As in, the people in there need to be cared for intensively that’s what makes it different from a regular ward, the people in it require the attention of medical staff more frequently. If the people giving that care get eaten by zombies no unconscious patient is going to last more than a few hours. Ventilators, IVs and feeding tubes do not work forever without someone to operate them. `*` - though IiRC in Day of the Triffids its a more believable overnight hospital stay that stops the protagonist from watching the comet. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/14 "2025-09-02T03:00:02Z")
[Two](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_of_the_Eons) similar [stories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awakening_(short_story)) by Arthur C. Clarke, where a Hitler-like dictator goes into suspended animation at the end of a war he lost. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. [The Last Train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series)), a British TV miniseries from 1999. ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/15 "2025-09-02T03:24:23Z")
_Strange Holiday_ (1945) - A bit of a variation in that the protagonist returns home from a remote fishing trip only to find the U.S. now run by fascists. Originally made by GM for its workers, it was padded out for general release. I tried to sit through it once and found it unwatchably heavy-handed. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/16 "2025-09-02T03:51:53Z")
in the 1968 film _Planet of The Apes_—Charlton Heston’s character awakens after a deep 2000 year hibernation as an astronaut only to crash land on a planet inhabited by intelligent apes. Spoiler: It was Earth after human society collapsed. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/17 "2025-09-02T05:41:01Z")
_Genesis II_, the Gene Roddenberry post-apocalyptic movie. > [@griffin1977](#): > > though IiRC in Day of the Triffids its a more believable overnight hospital stay that stops the protagonist from watching the comet. Not overnight, but he’s not in the ICU. It’s the bandages over his eyes (ironically, from being hit with triffid poison at work) that prevent him watching, not merely that he’s in hospital. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/18 "2025-09-02T05:46:59Z")
Yes - I suspect I did ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/19 "2025-09-02T07:18:17Z")
[Marooned in Realtime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime): Set tens of millions of years in the future, with a small population of people who are the sole remnants of humanity after the rest mysterious vanished. This group of remnants spent the crucial time period when everyone else vanished trapped in time-stopping “bobbles”. Larry Niven’s _One Face_ is a short story set on a starship whose FTL drive malfunctions, freezing them in tIme for many billions of years. They find themselves in a dead solar system, with the Sun reduced to a white dwarf. [Letter to a Phoenix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_a_Phoenix) is a short story that’s presented as a letter from a 180,000 year old man who has literally slept thoguh multiple collapses of civilization. He’s not immortal, he just has a drastically slowed biorhythm that includes waking and sleeping periods of 30 and 15 years, respectively. > The narrator makes fragmentary references to civilizational benchmarks he has witnessed, including interplanetary, interstellar, and even intergalactic travel, the planting of colonies on many worlds, and above all wars. He makes a distinction between “minor” nuclear wars, which result in “mere” Dark Ages - a few centuries during which technologies are not forgotten, but the industrial base for them is lost - and “blowups,” which follow the invention of much more destructive weapons, represent a complete loss of continuity, and require the rebuilding of civilization from scratch. He notes that he has experienced six blowups. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2025, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669/20 "2025-09-02T09:18:44Z")
Kafka’s _Metamorphosis_. Gregor Samsa wakes up with a fairly immediate problem. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sleeping-through-societys-collapse/1022669.md?page=2)