I love apocalyptic fiction, and most of its just for the sheer chaos and death and destruction and struggle for survival in the initial event. So, you can probably guess why I dislike works where the apocalypse is “instant”; the apocalypse is some cosmic event that hits the entire world all at once, and the only way to survive is to be underwater, underground, or in the middle of nowhere at the exact moment it occurs.
“Anyone who isn’t in a sealed-off concrete bunker twenty feet under bumfuck, wyoming will be instakilled in the first 30 seconds”
And you’d be surprised by how often it happens in fiction, especially movies and TV shows; Fox’s War of the Worlds, The Eternaut, Second Origin, Yakamoz S-245, Into the Night, and those are just the examples that come to the top of my head. And it’s understandable here because movies and TV shows have limited budget and ability to show what’s happening; and a lot of people even praise it for doing so because “it’s implied horror”, but I just don’t work that way, and I think those who do are just suffering Stockholm syndrome from cheap movies teasing them /j
You can also guess that the only circumstances that I’m willing to excuse this trope is if it’s handled really well and described explicitly, but this usually happens in literature where writers can just describe whatever they want to without worrying about their budget; thus, literature has become my primary source of apocalyptic fiction, and I thank it deeply for being unapologetically brutal and horrific
Sorry if I sound like a nerd or angry little psycho writing this, but I needed some outlet to get this off my chest, lol
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Yeah, it’s a cheap story device to get to your setting. Good writers make the fall part of the story, b/c it should be interesting AF. Bad writers think the “cool” stuff only happens after the apocalypse.
Interesting stuff can happen with any situation. Mr. Bean taught me that.
I find it wild that all apocalyptic content is about natural disasters and zombies and not like a giant secret about humanity being revealed or something
This sounds like you just dont like bad writing that you know is impossible. A zombie apocalypse that spreads across the world from just zombie bites over 30 minutes IS just unrealistic.
Have you read Dungeon Crawler Carl? Starts this way, but man, does it develop in some weird and cool ways afterward.
That’s what I liked about the first Mad Max movie; it takes place in a society that is in the later stage of slow descent into collapse.
Would love tips about other movies or tv-shows that takes place in a similar setting.