# What makes a good Post- Apocalypse story?



## Whisper (Oct 19, 2012)

I’ve wanted to write a post-apocalypse story for awhile now. I’ve been interested in the idea probably since I read _The Stand_ in high school and was recently re-inspired by reading _The Passage_ and _Cannibal Reign_. The story I’m currently writing is a kind of post-apocalypse story, but takes place millions of years in the future, so not the kind I’m really talking about. 

I’ve started to jot down notes in my notebook as I start to pre-outline. My question though is, besides strong characters, what makes a good post-Apocalypse story. Is it a believable event (super earthquake or super volcano, climate disaster, asteroid strike/plague? Is it a description of the event, the aftereffects? The struggle to survive? Or something else?


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## Juganhuy (Oct 19, 2012)

I built mine off of political collapse and war.

Find something that is really small that can effect the world.

Post apocalyptic could be as simple as oil running out. How will people adapt since the world is so dependant on it?

Maybe a disease that strikes only males (Or females) leaving the population stuggling to survive?

Personally I stay away from natural disasters since they have been used so many times.


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## JackKnife (Oct 19, 2012)

What I find really interesting about post-apocalyptic and/or zombie stories is the way characters react. Differences have to be overcome and people must work together to survive, despite how much they hate each other. I've always loved the idea of people overcoming their adversities for any number of reasons, because on top of this, people are ultimately people at heart - that is, many still just will not be able to cooperate with each other. They may not be able to coexist or they may lose their minds because of their situations. Either way, it's fun pushing your characters to the brink of survival and seeing how they deal with it.


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## FleshEater (Oct 19, 2012)

For me a good post apocalyptic story starts with realism. I want something that seems like it just might happen and I want occurences to come up that would absolutely happen. Those apocalyptic stories that set themselves so far removed from present times don't excite me in the same way. They're entertaining but they don't dig under your skin and make you uncomfortable. For me, any good story is going to make me uncomfortable (when discussing detrimental plots that is). 

Also, diseases are much more terrifying. It's an invisible enemy.


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## IanMGSmith (Oct 19, 2012)

prequel ...man had not realise all the oil he sucked out and spat into the atmosphere was part of a cycle which carried the great pockets deep under the earth's crust by tectonic plate subduction, where it became superheated and exploded, keeping the Earth's core energised, hot and spinning.

As the core slowed and cooled, the sea began soaking back into the earth so your story would have many new countries forming on all that new dry land and of course people and countries fighting over it, especially the bits where they can get even more oil (that is where your arch evil guy comes in and doesn't care one bit about the earth.

ref:- What would happen if Earths core cooled down [Archive] - Physics Forums

Cheers,

Ian


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## ppsage (Oct 19, 2012)

*Post-Apocalypse *

Maybe the thing to remember about a post-apocalypse story is, that it's post-apocalypse. It's not about the disaster, it's about the specific characters after the disaster. Although I'm not enamored of the novel, the way Atwood develops the setting and its reasons in Handmaiden is a nice example. To be really good, the disaster needs to reveal itself by the nature of the unfolding action. Sometimes it can be almost automatic. So, like the Robinson story about the nuclear ice age, when the protagonist investigates an apartment building being crushed by a glacier's advance, things fall into place for the reader and the story—about coping or social change or… that one's kind of coming-of-age—proceeds without breaking a sweat, setting-wise. Or when the guy ties his dive boat up to the steeple of St. Marks in Venice. One thing about natural disasters, it's pretty easy to use a familiar geographical setting to get the disaster scenario over in a nutshell. In that Disch story, which is short and set in Manhattan, (I referred to it in another thread) he keeps some tension in play—figuring out the disaster—and never really pinpoints it explicitly, but the reader comes naturally to some personal version of the increasingly popular loss-of-political-control: corporate-green-zones-surrounded-by-bandit-country version of the apocalypse. I'm not remembering a disease scenario, and maybe they're tougher to lay out, without becoming encyclopedic in their exposition. But if a person could get to zombie-nation authentically and realistically, without falling into info-dump-overload or magic, and then tell a decent story there… I think that's needed, at least as far as I've discovered.


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## Whisper (Oct 19, 2012)

FleshEater said:


> For me a good post apocalyptic story starts with realism. I want something that seems like it just might happen and I want occurences to come up that would absolutely happen. Those apocalyptic stories that set themselves so far removed from present times don't excite me in the same way. They're entertaining but they don't dig under your skin and make you uncomfortable. For me, any good story is going to make me uncomfortable (when discussing detrimental plots that is).
> 
> Also, diseases are much more terrifying. It's an invisible enemy.



I agree. I think realism is going to be important. Not just in what makes the world post-apoc, but realism in how the characters act to given situations as well as how groups of people would survive and what they would to to ensure their own survival. For example, if your group doesn't have women, what do you do to get women or do you live out the rest of your life without or join a group that does?


I'm also leaning very heavily toward disease. Massive die off by disease would leave lots of food lying around and I think I perfer that to the character having to learn to farm. It also sets up plenty of conflict.


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## Whisper (Oct 19, 2012)

ppsage said:


> *Post-Apocalypse *
> 
> Maybe the thing to remember about a post-apocalypse story is, that it's post-apocalypse. It's not about the disaster, it's about the specific characters after the disaster. Although I'm not enamored of the novel, the way Atwood develops the setting and its reasons in Handmaiden is a nice example. To be really good, the disaster needs to reveal itself by the nature of the unfolding action. Sometimes it can be almost automatic. So, like the Robinson story about the nuclear ice age, when the protagonist investigates an apartment building being crushed by a glacier's advance, things fall into place for the reader and the story—about coping or social change or… that one's kind of coming-of-age—proceeds without breaking a sweat, setting-wise. Or when the guy ties his dive boat up to the steeple of St. Marks in Venice. One thing about natural disasters, it's pretty easy to use a familiar geographical setting to get the disaster scenario over in a nutshell. In that Disch story, which is short and set in Manhattan, (I referred to it in another thread) he keeps some tension in play—figuring out the disaster—and never really pinpoints it explicitly, but the reader comes naturally to some personal version of the increasingly popular loss-of-political-control: corporate-green-zones-surrounded-by-bandit-country version of the apocalypse. I'm not remembering a disease scenario, and maybe they're tougher to lay out, without becoming encyclopedic in their exposition. But if a person could get to zombie-nation authentically and realistically, without falling into info-dump-overload or magic, and then tell a decent story there… I think that's needed, at least as far as I've discovered.



I agree in theory, but I think some of the best books I've read such as the Stand and Cannibal Reign start with the before and end with the end. Although I've enjoyed both, it seems I've enjoyed the before and during as it goes through the progression of people evolving from fast food junkies to learning how to survive in a world without McDonalds and running hot water.


Not to mention watching people react to a world without rules.


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## Whisper (Oct 19, 2012)

FleshEater said:


> For me a good post apocalyptic story starts with realism. I want something that seems like it just might happen and I want occurences to come up that would absolutely happen. Those apocalyptic stories that set themselves so far removed from present times don't excite me in the same way. They're entertaining but they don't dig under your skin and make you uncomfortable. For me, any good story is going to make me uncomfortable (when discussing detrimental plots that is).
> 
> Also, diseases are much more terrifying. It's an invisible enemy.



One problem, though, is how far do you take the realism. As part of my research I looked on line where all the nuclear power plants are located in the United States. I was surprised at how many there were. How long can they last without human interface? Is there some realism I should skip? I'm thinking probably. However, I also think that's part of my problem. I tend to over think things - it's from being in navy intelligence for so long.


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## Potty (Oct 19, 2012)

Loot. I like loot.


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## IanMGSmith (Oct 19, 2012)

Potty said:


> Loot. I like loot.



...yeah, pots of it!


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## Morkonan (Oct 19, 2012)

Whisper said:


> ...The story I’m currently writing is a kind of post-apocalypse story, but takes place millions of years in the future, so not the kind I’m really talking about.



Then, it's sort of not a post-apocalyptic story. I am assuming the "post apocalyptic" part happens sometime in the near future? If not and if it happens millions of years from now and it impacts the people in the story, not just "survivors" who have been "survivors" for millions of years, then it's a post-apocalyptic story.




> My question though is, besides strong characters, what makes a good post-Apocalypse story. Is it a believable event (super earthquake or super volcano, climate disaster, asteroid strike/plague?



Strong characters are best if sprinkled over a number of genres.

As far as believable events, when was the last time you sat down to write something that your readers would not be able to believe?



> Is it a description of the event, the aftereffects? The struggle to survive? Or something else?



They have to feel the immediate effects of the apocalypse. In other words, they survive in a society that is still dealing with the apocalypse. The society must be seen to be restructuring itself within the aftermath of the apocalypse. That, in my opinion, is what post-apocalyptic stories are all about.

Let's say the Apocalypse happened several hundred years ago. You and I are sitting on the beach, drinking martinis and watching sunbathing beauties. 

"Yeah, the Apocolypse... They had it rough, recovering from that, didn't they?"
"They sure did. Hey, look at that one!"
"Wow, she's stunning. I'm going to introduce her to my Whisper Quiet Martini! Catch ya later!"

Not much apockyclipse, is it?

But, if it happened in recent memory, or close enough that the characters in the story are not far removed from the destruction of their society, then the situation is much different. You'd be dealing with an unstable society, knocked from its foundation by its own hubris. Elements would be competing in a post-technology world. Ideas that we may have put aside in the present day, sans Apocalypse, may suddenly find new life. This is the dynamic sort of world that allows an author to experiment with the "modern day" application of various sorts of ideas, writ large. In a post-apocalyptic world, slavery might make sense. Religious extremism may provide stability instead of conflict. Independence and Freedom may seem to be expensive ideals to live by. This is what an apocalyptic world is made for. It hosts a unique blend of modern contrivances in extremely primitive settings. In short - Society breaks down and mankind rolls the dice on any number of ideas in order to attempt to restore stability. That's your playground in a post-apocalyptic story. A pretty exciting place to write in, isn't it?

As far as the "struggle to survive", your characters don't have to be obsessed with that. Take "Farnham's Freehold" by Heinlein. Heinlein starts them out in a semi-post-apocalyptic world and then, not content to try on some new social ideas in that particular setting, he shunts them off to the far future where mankind has restructured an entirely new, and distressingly different, society. True to a "Time Machine" sort of story, the far-future is sugar-coated poison... But, the characters in that book did not have to "struggle" to survive. They just had to be compliant and.. tasty.


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## Jagunco (Oct 20, 2012)

I've never been a great fan for the genre (if post apocolypse can indeed be called a genre) but reading this had me thinking about all the the different apocolypses we've had over the year....

Nucelar War
Ice Caps melting
Some army experiment going ape
Robots taking over
Insects taking over
Plants taking over
Demons coming up from hell and taking over
Vampires taking over
Aliens invading
Zombies
More Zombies
Society going ape
Zombies
Disease (Read the Dag star.... worth it)
Normal war
Over Population
Fighting over delepeating resources


ummmmmmm I think I got them all....


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## Jagunco (Oct 20, 2012)

Oh nearly forgot.... captialism going mad and the rich getting richer and everyone else living in squallar


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## FleshEater (Oct 23, 2012)

I see Whisper is on a 3 day ban (In assumption...gotta love the debate section!)...however, I just finished John McCarthy's The Road (per Squidtender's recommendation). This story is now the story of all stories for me concerning "Post Apocalyptic" themes. The emotions captured in this are perfect. It's also a true post apocalyptic story. For those of you that haven't read it, you're never given any knowledge of what exactly happened before hand. Your literally tossed into a gray ashen world and very little is discussed of the events leading to the new hopelessness. It works flawlessly...you never really care what happened.

Just tossing that recommendation out there for anyone considering writing a post apocalyptic story at great length. The Road will have you convinced.


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## Motley (Oct 24, 2012)

I'm a great fan of post-apocalyptic tales, rather than disaster stories that pertain to immediate survival and the trauma of some catastrophic event. I lean more toward life stories within a post-apocalyptic setting rather than the fact that the world ended being the main plot point. 

The things that make a good PA story are the same things that make any good story: sympathetic, interesting characters stuck in a difficult situation that forces them to change.


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