Post-Apocalyptic
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"… It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."
- – R.E.M.
Post-Apocalyptic is a form of Setting Aesthetics that, as its name suggests, takes place in a once-thriving world that was subsequently blown up or otherwise ravaged by massive disasters of some kind or another. It's an extremely popular aesthetic with many different forms, ranging from nuclear war to zombie apocalypse to alien invasion, and has been an amendment to or basis for many different /tg/ related publications.
Many Post-Apocalyptic settings has the cataclysm as its main theme - Mad Max and Fallout are good examples of worlds where the apocalypse is in the forefront - but others are more subtle. Warhammer 40,000 is technically post-apocalyptic, as is Age of Sigmar. Dark Souls is also an example, where the apocalypse is there but it isn't clearly about an apocalypse as much as its about just doing things in a weird world.
Most Post-Apocalyptic media is also Sci-Fi, since the cataclysm that started them required higher level technology, but lower level players are often stuck with “current” or even primitive technology. There’s a rather decent rate of crossover with Mecha, with many prominent works of that series being post-apoc since it allows for high enough technology without the many things that should render them useless. Not all Post-Apocalyptic settings are sci-fi ones however, as settings like Dark Sun having a magically induced apocalypse.
D20 Apocalypse is literally a book about doing D20 Modern games set in this genre.
Types of Apocalypse
Here's a quick rundown of events which commonly bring the end of the world as we know it in fiction. Their nature, their qualities and their appeal to a prospective writer of stories and settings.
Please note that there can easily be overlap. One mass disaster can lead to other mass disasters as knock on effects.
Asteroid
A space rock several kilometer across crashes out of the sky and into the Earth at orbital speed. If it hit's water, it sends tidal waves that flood continents. A shockwave rips across the world, shattering forests and buildings and scorching the landscape. Rocks kicked up in the impact rain down around the world while the planet is rattled like a drum by the impact, resulting in earthquakes. If you survive all that, a dust cloud shrouds the earth, temperatures plunge and photosynthesis basically stops for a few years. Frost, famine and fighting reap many of the survivors leaving only a few pockets of the lucky to weather the storm and emerge into an empty world.
The Astronomical equivalent of Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies has a lot of fire and fury and it's something which can just fall out of the blue. It happened to the non avian Dinosaurs 66 million years ago. If you want "everything was going along as normal, then it all went to shit in a split second" few things beat an asteroid. If you want a simple straightforward explanation for why our world came to an end, this is it.
Examples
- Ace Combat Infinity Timeline
Disease
A new infectious variety of something appears. It might have been a freak mutation or it might have been made in a lab and gotten out. Either way, it spreads rapidly among the human population and is terminal. Attempts to contain and combat it are ultimately ineffective. Even if it can be fought societal breakdown prevents effective response for most people. For every person who is immune, recovers, is successfully treated or quarantined away in sterilized bunkers, hundreds die. By the time the dust settles, most of humanity is dead.
The thing about Disease is that it can clear out humanity while leaving it's stuff largely intact. The survivors can wander cities turned into colossal ghost towns, not shattered but left to decay as nature reclaims the landscape. Similarly anxieties about disease are rather high nowadays given the whole global pandemic.
Examples
- A lot of Zombie Fiction.
Global Warming (and environmental devastation in general)
Human industries continue to pump Carbon Dioxide into the air resulting in a Greenhouse Effect. Temperatures rise considerably and sea levels rise. Low lying regions are flooded, weather patterns are changed. Millions are displaced and what was prime farmland dries out and dry areas are washed away. Violent Storms become more frequent. Civil and political unrest mounts while governments are strained. Wars break out as groups fight for what they can get their hands on. Those that survive find a ravaged world deeply changed by the byproducts Mankind's activity.
First of all, worries about Climate Change are plentiful today just as Nuclear War was in the 1950s. Moreover this is something which is harder to deal with. Nobody sane wants a nuclear war, but the solution boils down to simply not starting one and negotiating things out with other people who don't want to die. When it comes to Co2 Emissions, we're doing it constantly and it's hard to stop this because it is a big systemic thing with a lot of powerful people and organizations in place which profit from it.
Bear in mind, some forms of climate change, including devastating kinds, have nothing to do with human intervention; the Ice Age can be thought of as the Dinosaur's own apocalypse. Particularly nasty supervolcanic eruptions have been known to cause ecological devastation well beyond the original point of eruption, such as the Volcanic Winter of 536 that devastated crops and possibly lead to the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian as a result of malnutrition. The eruption of Krakatoa, the deadliest in recorded history, created worldwide acid rain in addition to global cooling.
Examples
- Water World
- CATastorphy
- Mad Max
Nuclear War
The nightmare of the Cold War. One way or another (international relations entering a death spiral, a rabid hawk in the wrong place in the wrong time, some crazed nutter with an apocalyptic vision gets hold of the Big Red Button, an "Oops" scenario when warning systems give a false positive an attack which convinces the guys in charge to "retaliate") the missiles start flying. Cities around the world disappear under mushroom clouds, killing tens of millions at a minimum from the blasts itself. Millions more die from wounds and radiation soon after, and more die from fallout, disease, starvation and the breakdown of social order and services. Those that remain will inhabit a shattered poisoned world of ruins and chaos as bands of people seek to claim what they can by force.
Nuclear War is a very human disaster and one made with deliberate intent. An asteroid is simply moving it it's orbit as it has done so for billions of years and just happens to be moving towards another celestial body one day. A virus simply bumps into cells and injects it's RNA into them if they're the right type. Co2 Emissions are a byproduct of human civilization and opposition to reducing them is motivated by economic incentive. But a Nuclear strike is a deliberate premeditated move by humans to kill other humans en mass and our species has gotten frighteningly good at the murder trade.
Examples
- Fallout
- Metro 2033
- Fist of the North Star
Robot Uprising
AI becomes advanced enough that they begin to supersede humanity. So much so that, for one reason or another, a war breaks out between humanity and machines, resulting in machines either wiping out or enslaving mankind. This can go in a variety of different ways depending on how the author feels about what AI would do in a given situation, or perhaps how misanthropic they feel. AI is usually seen as breaking free of their bondage at the hands of mankind, or else taking an extreme managerial approach and deciding that humanity needs to be culled for their own good. Very rarely, the Robot uprising is a result of AI following their programming to the letter but with unintended consequences, such as trying to meet contradictory commands or a flaw in their reasoning. Either way, the end result is that the machines take over, and anything that doesn’t support the machine war effort is disposed of; ecological devastation is pretty common, since machines don’t need a clean environment or biodiversity to survive.
A robot uprising stokes on the fears of human hubris and the idea that something we create can end up replacing or enslaving us; humanity already experiences much anxiety over robots replacing low-skill workers in industry, as well as technology being used to control the flow of information or otherwise trapping people inside a virtual online world. Having the machines outright rebel is that idea taken to its logical extreme. It also can be used to explore the ideas of “what is human,” or “what is consciousness,” since we do not have any other kind of life form that is capable of rational thought to compare ourselves to.
Examples
- Terminator
- Horizon Zero Dawn
Societal Collapse
The least glamorous version, but the one with the most historical examples. Sometimes its not a singular cataclysmic event that wipes out a civilization; sometimes we don't even know what may have wiped out a once-mighty nation apart from vague references in forgotten tomes or folk memories buried in mythology. Whatever happened, it was enough to overwhelm a civilization to the point that its support structures buckled under the strain and people are forced to fend for themselves, and it may take centuries for society to recover. Ancient Rome is a classic example; while Rome was officially ended by the sacking at the hands of the Visigoths, it was in a centuries-long decline caused by war, famine, wealth inequality, political corruption, the black plague, the weakening of political, social, and military institutions all at the same time. All of its advances were forgotten until almost a thousand years later. For an earlier, more mysterious example, the Bronze Age Collapse saw multiple very sophisticated civilizations wiped out, possibly by drought, invasions from "sea peoples", and the fragility of top-down authoritarian empires. And if we want to look forward in time, an increasingly interconnected world means that two countries warring in Eastern Europe suddenly translates into a global food shortage. Either way, if you're looking for something a bit more grounded (if less dramatic), history has plenty of examples.
Examples
The End Times
Most mythologies have some kind of apocalyptic vision of the future (it’s literally where the term “apocalypse” comes from). In scholarly terms, this is called “Eschatology.” While the details will vary between religions, common themes include devastating wars, the whole world is devastated by monsters and demons, famine wipes out large swaths of the population, kingdoms degenerating into tyranny, society as a whole degenerating into complete wickedness, and finally, an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, before the old world is finally destroyed. In some tellings, the world is reborn and a new cycle begins with the survivors of the old world. In others, evil is permanently destroyed and a permanent utopia is established on Earth.
Naturally, this version of the apocalypse is less common in modern times, but some have attempted to take these ancient tales and envision how they would play out in the not-too-distant future. One common trope is taking the Antichrist from the Biblical Revelation, and cast him as a powerful tyrant who unites the world under a fascist regime. In other cases, a Doomsday Cult is attempting to bring about or accelerate the End Times. The Cthulhu Mythos can be thought of as a modern version of this, as it makes it pretty clear that the world is doomed one way or another. Very rarely do these modern stories actually follow through with the apocalypse though, as Eschatology is defined by its finality. Unless you’re just doing a straight retelling of the apocalyptic scenario, there’s very little wiggle room to tell your own story once the apocalypse actually happens. Setting your story in the middle of the Apocalypse, however, is more doable, since it’s not nearly as instantaneous as a nuclear war or meteor strike, and is likely to be drawn out until the climax.
Examples
Timespan
Another point of consideration for a post apocalyptic setting how long has it's been since the apocalypse happened.
Immediate Aftermath
The Apocalypse has happened fairly recently. It might have run it's course yesterday, maybe it's been a few years. For brevity's sake, we'll put the cap at twenty years. Point is that most people around are people who survived the disaster and directly remember the world before. Survivors often survive by scavenging the ruins for cans of beans, ammunition, laptops and similar. Survivalists are still locked up in their bunkers. Remnants of Government authorities, military forces, corporations and other such Old-World institutions are still about, pursuing their own agendas. Accountants, janitors, lawyers and jazz musicians have to work out how to survive. Many of them gang up and many gangs which prey on others, sometimes literally.
Examples
- Most Zombie Fiction
After the Aftermath
The Apocalypse happened between 20 years to maybe a couple centuries ago. If nothing else, a generation has grown up in this marred world. Memories of the old world have faded, as have much of it's knowledge. A few areas have stabilized and there are trade towns. Scavenged stuff is still a big deal, but people increasingly are making new things bodged together from junk. Whatever surviving Authorities have stumbled along their own course, if two groups of (for example) US Army troops survived in Oregon and Tennessee, they'd probably have radically different ideas and not respect each other's authority if they met. There are a few peaceful areas, but other areas are torn up in war. Moreover this would not be a smattering of desperate folk clubbing each other for cans of dog-food but battle hardened hosts of warriors who've learned to survive in this hostile age.
Examples
An Ancient Cataclysm
The Apocalypse happened hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago. The Apocalyptic Event is now an object of myth and legend to cultures which have emerged after the aftermath. Cultures which are as distinct from ours as Roman Empire was to us. Never the less, a Dark Age persists. There are a few Kingdoms and City States, while vast tracts of land are haunted by barbarian peoples. Much of Technology has been lost and if it has been recovered, it's not well distributed.
Examples
The Healed World
The Noblebright version of Post Apocalyptia. In short, people eventually got their shit together and rebuilt. New cities emerge from the ashes and efforts are done to clean up the mess. More over lessens are learned to avoid such disasters going forward. What rises from the ashes is a better world.
Examples
The Inheritors
Thousands if not millions of years have passed and mankind is a distant memory. In it's place, new creatures have arisen. Rats, bats, cats, weasels, seagulls, pigs, foxes, dogs and similar small adaptable creatures persisted and diversify to fill emptied niches. Usually at least one lineage of them has develop intelligence and tool use. To them, humans would only be skeletons in museums.
Examples
- Splatoon