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Survivalist Fiction/TEOTWAWKI Stories?

The Last Ship by William Brinkley has been made into a ten part TV serial.

After a global pandemic kills or sickens possibly half of the world's population, the crew (consisting of 217 men and women) of a lone unaffected U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, the fictional USS Nathan James (DDG-151), must try to find a cure and stop the virus in order to save humanity.[4]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ship_(TV_series)

Pretty good so far (I've seen 2 episodes) but some cardboard cut-out Al Qaeda characters in the episode 2.

Can be found online.

http://www.thelastshiptnt.com/
 
Has anybody read What Niall Saw, by Brian Cullen? It's written as the diary of a seven year old boy in Ireland whose father has asked him to keep a diary of what happens after the whole family and their dog have to shut themselves in the cupboard under the stairs because of the start of a nuclear exchange. As time goes on, and Niall becomes more and more affected, both mentally and physically, by what is happening around him, the diary gets more disjointed and horrifying.

It's not a nice book, or a long book, but surprisingly effective in what it sets out to communicate.
 
Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign.

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/underwire/geeksguide129final1.ogg
GeeksGuide Podcast. Episode 129: Naomi Klein

“I think what these films tell us is that we’re taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted,” Klein says in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And that’s the hardest part of my work, actually convincing people that we’re capable of something other than this brutal response to disaster.”

Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, argues that only dramatic policy shifts can avert climate catastrophe, and that ordinary people need to speak up and demand emissions caps, public transportation, and a transition to renewable energy. That’s a hard sell politically, which is why dubious measures like geoengineering and cap-and-trade have been proposed instead.

“It seems easier, more realistic, to dim the sun than to put up solar panels on every home in the United States,” says Klein. “And that says a lot about us, and what we think is possible, and what we think is realistic.” ...

Naomi Klein on science fiction:

“This boom in cli-fi literature is exciting, but I think it can become dangerous if it isn’t seen as a warning, but just seen as inevitable. I think Margaret Atwood—not to be too Canadian about it—but I think Margaret Atwood’s In the Year of the Flood and that whole trilogy, that whole climate trilogy, is an example of the kind of narrative that really does serve as clarion warning, as opposed to just sort of hopeless ‘we’re on this road, we can’t get off.’ ...

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/geeks-guide-naomi-klein/
 
I don't know if it's a new phenomenon at all, or whether most folks think they are the last of their line and it all goes to hell in a handbasket afterwards, and have done since the book of Revelation. I can well remember the end of the world fiction when I was little, and it was fairly mainstream then. Call it the arrogance of fantasising the world couldn't go on without you, or fear that it's all spinning out of control, there's nothing new under the sun. Or maybe we need new ideas in fiction, and creative types are flogging the theme to death (er, so to speak).
 
Agreed. Growing up in the 80's with certain death from Russian bombs or a Nuclear Winter was ever present as was those falling tombstones reminding us not to have sex because of AIDS. It was bleak then it is bleak now. It was ok when the Berlin Wall came down for a bit, but it never lasts.
 
Goodbye World: It really is The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI). A computer virus: "Goodbye World" brings down the internet, power systems, utilities. Civilisation is a very fragile thing. Its obvious that this cyber attack is coordinated as transport hubs are also bombed.

A group of old college friends gather in Northern California where two of them own a ranch. Even in the local town order has broken down with the Sheriff driven out. Could one of this band of friends have an involvement in the downfall of technical society?

This film is reminiscent of the Daybreak Series by John Barnes with its coordinated taking down of civilisation. Also, one scene in particular brings Larry Niven's Lucifers Hammer to mind: one of the group is about to commit suicide when suddenly he hears ifs TEOTWAWKI.

Intriguing film. 7/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2352802/
 
The Blackout (aka Then There Was): Again the electricity breaks down. No explanation but its at least countrywide in the US. In an isolated hill town, civilization soon breakdsdown and the fight is on with gangs of marauders and ordinary looters.

Nothing particularly original in this film but the acting, direction & storyline is gripping and consistent. 7/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3145008/
 
I stayed at a friend's house a good few years back and his Dad gave me the first 4 of this series to read.

1785994.jpg


The first one was ok but by the third it began to drift, just googled and there was about 20 in the series. Very gun orientated, (the author used to write for gun magazines).
 
Slow Apocalypse by John Varley: A virus is set loose which turns crude oil into a sludge, intended to destroy the Saudi oilfields, but it goes airborne and spreads worldwide. The action is set around LA and Southern California as gas rationing bites then oil fields explode and an Earthquake hits LA. Civilisation begins to crumble. Survivalist skills are at a premium. 8/10.

Outpost by Adam Baker: A skeleton crew (no pun intended) are maintaining an oilrig in the Arctic when a viral outbreak strikes across the world. Abandoned they try to survive but things turn nasty when a cruise line full of Zombiesque passenger and crew is run aground. A savage tale of survival well told. 7/10.
 
Daylight's End: A viral outbreak results in Vampiric creatures rather than Zombies for a change. Its years afterward and we have a Post-Apocalyptic vision which is a cross between I Am Legend and Mad Max. A Road Warrior loner (Johnny Strong) rescues a woman from Marauders who have killed her companions. Yes, the surviving humans have problems in uniting against the main enemy. Returning to her base in Dallas she reports that she found a transport plane, using this they may be able to travel to a survivalist colony.

The "Vampires" smoke, blacken and die in daylight. They move quickly like so many modern Zombies and have Alpha Vampire leaders who appear to be developing sentience. Lance Henriksen stars as the leader of the Dallas survivors. Good Horror/Action. 7/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3007132/

Full Film:
 
Perhaps its Possible to read too much of this fiction.

A case of Life imitating Art. Although this story could also fit in strange Folk.

Warrington WW3 'fantasist' Tibor Vagai jailed over sword discovery
  • 11 November 2016
_92403067_a4ba28e9-04ec-43ba-a884-207721f35be2.jpg
Image copyrightBRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE
Image captionTibor Vagai purchased the knives after becoming fascinated with fantasy fiction
A "fantasist" obsessed with fiction about a third world war was caught with a "formidable array of weapons" including a sword and three knives.

Tibor Vagai was arrested after being spotted with the weapons slung over his back at Liverpool Lime Street railway station, the city's crown court heard.

The 32-year-old was released on bail but later stopped for a second time, when he was found with a knuckleduster.

Vagai, of Bridge Street in Warrington, Cheshire, was jailed for 45 weeks.

The court heard Vagai now accepts he had "watched too many films and read too many books" about survivalism and fantasy fiction about the aftermath of a third world war. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-37954505
 
The Decline: Preppers are always fearing the decline and fall of civilization. Some don't just make videos and vacuum pack food though. They even go beyond the bug out cabins. Alain runs a survivalist course at his compound in Northern Quebec, 500 acres in the woods and snow, far away from the madding crowds. Along with Alain the participants fear societal collapse due to an influx of climate refugees. This is no ordinary course, as well as hunting and trapping, the preppers are taught combat skills including how to make booby-trap bombs. One trainee dies in a booby-trap accident and the rest fall out on what to do. Alain fears he'll lose his compound and be imprisoned. Fighting breaks out, people fleeing through dark woods, across frozen lakes, firefights by night and in daylight. It's the preppers' society which has collapsed as they engage in a life or death struggle. Tension is well maintained throughout and the violence is startling at times.. Director/Co-Writer Patrice Laliberté delivers a taut dark paranoia filled thriller in his feature debut. 8/10. On Netflix.
 
A novel of an Apocalyptic Plague, written by Jack London in 1912.

Jack London’s novel The Scarlet Plague, first published in 1912, is set in 2073, sixty years after a deadly pestilence rapidly wiped out most of human civilization. Before the plague James Smith worked as a literature professor in San Francisco; now he lives a nomadic existence with his grandsons Edwin, Hoo-Hoo, and Hare-Lip. Concerned that he is one of the few people alive who still remembers the world before the plague, Smith regales his grandsons with stories of money, air travel, grocery stores, and bacteriologists, trying to instill in them the importance of knowledge. His grandsons, who have limited vocabularies and no concept of a world populated by billions, find his stories both difficult to understand and completely unbelievable. Here he tells them how the plague began.

The Scarlet Death broke out in San Francisco. The first death came on a Monday morning. By Thursday they were dying like flies in Oakland and San Francisco. They died everywhere—in their beds, at their work, walking along the street. It was on Tuesday that I saw my first death—Miss Collbran, one of my students, sitting right there before my eyes, in my lecture room. I noticed her face while I was talking. It had suddenly turned scarlet. I ceased speaking and could only look at her, for the first fear of the plague was already on all of us and we knew that it had come. The young women screamed and ran out of the room. So did the young men run out, all but two. Miss Collbran’s convulsions were very mild and lasted less than a minute. One of the young men fetched her a glass of water. She drank only a little of it, and cried out: “My feet! All sensation has left them.” ...

New York City and Chicago were in chaos. And what happened with them was happening in all the large cities. A third of the New York police were dead. Their chief was also dead, likewise the mayor. All law and order had ceased. The bodies were lying in the streets unburied. All railroads and vessels carrying food and such things into the great city had ceased running, and mobs of the hungry poor were pillaging the stores and warehouses. Murder and robbery and drunkenness were everywhere. Already the people had fled from the city by millions—at first the rich, in their private motorcars and dirigibles, and then the great mass of the population, on foot, carrying the plague with them, themselves starving and pillaging the farmers and all the towns and villages on the way. ...

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/apocalypse-then
 
An interesting selection, I've read 15 of them and will definitely seek out many of the rest.

The 50 Greatest Apocalypse Novels

The end of the world is never really the end of the world—at least not in fiction. After all, someone must survive to tell the tale. And what tales they are. Humans have been pondering the end of existence for as long as we’ve been aware of it (probably, I mean, I wasn’t there), and as a result we have a rich collection of apocalypse and post-apocalypse literature to read during our planet’s senescence.

I’ve done my best to limit this list to books in which there is—or has been—some kind of literal apocalypse, excluding dystopias (like The Handmaid’s Tale) or simply bleak visions of the future. We could argue all day about what actually constitutes an “apocalypse”—2020 is checking a lot of boxes, as you may have noticed—so for the most part, I’ve gone with my gut.

Of course, there are plenty more great apocalypse and post-apocalypse novels that didn’t fit on this list, and I haven’t read enough books in translation in this genre, so as ever, please add on your own favorites in the comments. ...

https://lithub.com/the-50-greatest-apocalypse-novels/
 
MrRING said:
The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald is a racist work that (if I recall correctly) influenced Timothy McVey and others, about a post apocalyptic future that is supposed to be coming...
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And puzzlingly was published by a Jewish publisher Lyle Stuart, supposedly in support of free speech.
 
Yithian said:
And puzzlingly was published by a Jewish publisher Lyle Stuart, supposedly in support of free speech.
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That is completely baffling.
The other completely baffling thing is why such a smart guy as William Luther Pierce would write such a book.
 
Songbird: Film made in 2020, set in LA in 2024 where Covid still wreaks havoc, it gone up to COVID23, 56% mortality rate. Most people are in lockdown, indoors, immune (munies) couriers deliver stuff. The Department of Sanitation maintain order with paramilitary squads. You check in through an APP every morning, if it gives a bad result then Sanitation comes to get you, drags you off to a Quarantine Zone! Naturally there is corruption. Story focuses on an immune courier and his girlfriend who is in lockdown, a couple who trade in fake immunity bracelets, the head of Sanitation, a disabled vet etc. Some good action sequences and vistas of deserted streets, derelict areas. The satire is a bit heavy handed at times but it's worth watching. Directed by Adam Mason, who wrote the screenplay with Simon Boyes. On Netflix 6.5/10.
 
Vesper: A Dystopia. set after an Ecological apocalypse, bio-engineered organisms got loose and devastated an already damaged environment. A dark existence outside of the citadels where the elite live. Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) is a young teen girl looking after her ill father Darius (Richard Brake), the power she uses is provided by biotech as is her father Darius' medical aids. She is attempting to grow useful organisms, to modify the seeds sold by the Citadels which only provide one harvest. Her uncle Jonas (Eddie Marsan) exploits children he "looks after" selling their blood to the Citadels. Darius accompanies Vesper on her journeys through a devastated landscape mind-linked to a drone. A Citadel flyer crashes, Vesper rescues a young woman, Camellia (Rosie McEwen) and everything changes. Surprises and plot twists ensue. A bleak film, there seems little hope at times for the ordinary folk outside of the Citadels, scavenge an existence, be exploited by a literal vampire. There are also vampiristic plants which prey upon the ill and injured, artificial humans - jugs, which are used for labour and perhaps - it is implied- eaten. A fight against Biotech overlords but also against more mundane exploiters as well as being constantly being at war with the environment in which you exist. There is some back story supplied, more suggested, this might have worked better as a series but is certainly worth watching. Directed & Written by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper. On Netflix. 7.5/10.
 
A dystopian novel that I enjoyed very much was Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It is told from the point-of-view of a political exile... Sent off along a far-future river to a prison floating on a lake in an essentially alien jungle, far from the one surviving human city and it's decaying culture. Great stuff.
 
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