# What story was this in?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-story-was-this-in/971949>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** books-writing-myths\
**Created:** [September 21, 2022, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-story-was-this-in/971949 "2022-09-21T01:21:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**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 21, 2022, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-story-was-this-in/971949/1 "2022-09-21T01:21:01Z")

</div>

In some post-apocalyptic novel where people are struggling with TEOTWAWKI, it turns out that some old woman’s flower garden include opium poppies, which allows the survivors to produce a crude laudanum. I thought this was _ **Alas, Babylon** _, but I just checked and that’s not it. Anyone?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2022, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-story-was-this-in/971949/2 "2022-09-21T09:55:06Z")

</div>

Definitely not _Alas, Babylon_. It’s also not _On the Beach_.

I enjoy the post-apocalyptic genre myself, so I’ll be interested in the answer to this.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [October 10, 2022, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-story-was-this-in/971949/3 "2022-10-10T16:20:38Z")

</div>

Thought maybe I’d remembered, but _ **Lucifer’s Hammer** _ apparently isn’t it either. Or _ **Rings Of Ice** _ by Piers Anthony either, even though both contain scenes I’d conflated into a single memory.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2022, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-story-was-this-in/971949/4 "2022-10-10T18:08:16Z")

</div>

> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> TEOTWAWKI

There’s a post-apocalyptic series called _World Made by Hand_ by James Howard Kunstler in which people grow opium.