Would anyone like to live in a post apocalyptic society like in Mad Max or the PostMan or Water World?
What would you do if you did? Would you try to start a peaceful village and re-establish a government etc. What kind of system would you create for the town? Would be King or President? Would everyone have a set job? Where would your water come from? Your food? What kind of laws would you make, how would you enforce them? Or would you be a loner and fend for yourself. Would you be a fighter? A lover? A thinker? A crazy old fool that hangs out in some make shift shop?
Would you be good? Or evil? Would you loot and plunder? Steal all the women and take them to your secret fort? Would you start a gang? A good gang or an evil gang? What would you plans, goals and strategies be?
Wow, talk about the ultimate self centered fantasy! To fulfill your desire, almost everyone else in the world has to die. Uh, . . . no, thanks.
Tris
No.
Long answer.
Not really, no.
Living in anarchy doesn’t hold much appeal. And being an idealistic would only get me in trouble pretty quickly as I tried to sort things out, help as many people as possible and try to introduce some structure back into the system. Heck with the number of selfish people who’d embrace the opportunity to indulge in hedonism without responsibility, I’d be lucky not to be killed.
visions of good marshall being gunned down in the street
Tho’ I WAS dubbed “Mad Murial Queen of the Thunderdome Smurf” by Sqrl…
I would declare myself Tsarina of the Survived…and as thus, I would be Guinastasia I…
Sorry…what was the question again?
(Reminds me of the MST3K skit…what would you do after the Apocalypse…)
What You Could DO after the Apocalypse
Crow: I’m kinda’ looking forward to the apocalypse!
Tom: Yeh! Provided that Paper Chase guy doesn’t survive!
Joel: Guys! That’s a terrible thing to say! No one’s looking forward
to the apocalypse! Though, I agree with you about that Paper
Chase guy…
Tom: Yeh, but look at it this way, Joel. Factor out the unfathomable
human loss & a guy could really get a lot done!
Crow: Think of it! Why, the lines at Nordstrom’s would actually be
quite light!
Tom: Yeh! A fella could play endless games of stick-ball on I-94!
Joel: Yeh, I’d probably take some time off & do some entertaining or
something…
Crow: Yeh, sure you could. And it’d be really fun to make a nutritious
well-balanced meal & then just let it go bad while you cram your
mouth with T.J. Bearwitch cookies! Yum! (makes smacking noises)…
Tom: I’d drive a tank everywhere & just blow the bajeebers out of some
of man’s greatest architecture, as I went along!
Joel: I got it! I’d walk around totally naked holding a Big Gulp
Terminator 2 glass!
Crow: I could see ya’ doing that. But you know, I’d start cars & put
bricks on the accelerators & send them screaming down the highway
for days on end!
Tom: You know, I’d feel completely unself-conscious about renting video
tapes like…Oh, Turner & Hootch…Three Men & A Little Lady…
Joel: You know what I’d like to do? Head down to Wimbleton & hit around a
bit & then truck on over to St. Andrews for a quick nine, you know?
Crow: I’d put football pads on & just go up & down the street diving
through plate glass windows!
Tom: Oh, I know! I’d go into the Taj Mahal on my mini-bike & just spin
doughnuts! (Makes sound of revving mini-bike) Ren-nen-nen-nen!
Crow: (Nasal, childish voice) And bust out the windows with a wrist rocket
using diamonds for ammo! Whooooo!
Joel: You know what, guys? There’s one thing you gotta remember in the
event of an apocalypse. You’ve GOT to bring an extra pair of
prescription glasses!
Crow: Whu…whu…what do you mean? Whu…whu…why is that?
Tom: So you don’t end up like Burgess Meredith on the Twilight Zone!
Crow: (Sounding puzzled) Oh, yeh. Right…Right…Right…
Joel: Yeh, you know that could happen…And you just want to be prepared!
Crow: (Mumbling, still confused) Yeh, he had those shoes…
Tom: No, the shoes were a different one!
Crow: (Still confused) He had a third eye…
Tom: No! That’s a different one, too! (Commercial Sign)
I think it would be interesting to live in a Post Apocolypitic world…of course, that’s after playing that hilarious game Fallout II.
Dispite all the Fallout and Fallout II I’ve played, (absolutly fantastic games) and the fact that I’d LOVE to watch Joan Chen bite guy’s ears off on a daily basis, I’m gonna have to say no. I’m way to lazy to want to strugle for day to day survival, and it’ almost a sure thing that it would be tough to find a bottle of Dr. Pepper or a functioning copy of Strider or Vurtual On.
And I’m almost certan I’d be the first guy that the tribe of leather wearing, tough but sensitive and lonly on the inside, surprisingly affectionate with each other but non-lesbian amazons would crucify, while searching for the last fertile man on earth.
But even with that as a benifit, I’m not sure it would be worth it. I’d proably end up hearing about what jerks all the OTHER last fertile men on earth were.
–
“Okay, I’m in the Chocolate Lake! My own personal hell.”
While I’d take a pass on the post-nuclear holocaust type scenario (radiation pockets and decaying mutants just don’t float my boat when not on the PC), a setting like The Stand might be cool if I could walk in after the whole “everyone is dying” part. Screw rebuilding society, I just want to play with society’s intact toys after everyone else is gone.
This is exactly the mentality I imagined most people that fantasize about post apocolyptic survival have. While I enjoy the great sense of sci-fi/fantasy involved in some of those movies, and books, and I love looking of my fine collection of swords on my walls, I don’t really ever look forward to the destruction of my world, or the countless deaths brought on by war.
so… no. Not really.
Actually hadn’t thought of it but Joph’s right: a world like The Stand would be very cool (after you got over the death of millions of people)
Interesting question as long as you don’t have a doomsday device in your basement…
If it happened…
I would look for others who thought like me. Non violent types with the ability to kick some serious ass. Peace would have a price I think. One person trying to stand alone wouldn’t have much of a chance…
Let’s look at the day to day tasks:
- Food. Probably not a problem as long as you don’t want ice cream, because
- No reliable electricity, which means no running water (pumps are out, sorry), no refrigeration (going to get awfully hot in Richmond in August from here on out), no light, TV, computers (I can hear all the Dopers falling over into their lunches now), etc. etc. etc. Better develop your taste in literature.
- Hope to God that you don’t step on a rusty nail, break an arm, or need some sort of medical procedure.
- Travel would probable be a bitch and a half. If everything just stopped, right now (12:45 pm EDT), the streets (at least in the more populous places) are going to be clogged with vehicles. But that’s OK, 'cause you can always walk.
- Society may get pretty ugly, depending upon how many are left, what their abilities are, how well they can deal with the fact that they’re left, whether they mind being on burial detail, 'cause lots of dead bodies are going to stink, bloat, explode, spread disease like you’ve never seen, and be a general pain in the neck to deal with.
All in all, no, I think I’d like to be at ground zero when the big one hits.
My friends and I made exhaustive Y2K plans. His mother is a COBOL programmer who has worked on hundreds of contracts trying to update hardware and software for compliance. She believed that an enormous disaster would ensue. Her son was the only one who really believed her doomsday rhetoric, but we made the plans all the same.
The high school where we went lies on a steep hill nearby, and has a wonderful bell tower. We planned on taking and fortifying the high school (with weapons stolen from a mininally defended army depot nearby) and establishing a pioneer society. What fun. I almost wished that it had actually happened. Almost.
MR
plnnr-
You raise an interesting point. If given enough warning, I wonder if there would be as much of a rush to get to Ground Zero as there would be to flee. A quick end under these circumstances sounds a lot more appealing. Unless I’m hanging with Tom and Crow.
Naaahhh!
If I lived in a post-apocalyptic world I GUARANTEE that my glasses would break, especially with all those books left. nd I’d be crying my eyes out like Burgess Meredith.
There were a LOT of post-apocalyptic short stories in 1950s science fiction. None of them made it sound at all appealing.