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.

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.

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 avain Dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

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 accelerates matters. For every person who is immune, can be 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. Similarly anxieties about disease are rather high nowadays given the whole global pandemic.

Global Warming (and environmental damage 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 falls in productivity considerably. Violent Storms become more frequent. Civil and political unrest mounts while governments are strained.

First of all, worries about Climate Change are plentiful today. 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 matters. 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.

Examples

• Water World
• CATastorphy

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, an "Oops" scenario when warning systems give a false positive an attack) 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. 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 hostile intent. An asteroid is simply moving it it's orbit as it has done so for billions of years. 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 economics. But a Nuclear strike is a deliberate premeditated move by humans to kill other humans en mass.

Examples

• Fallout

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.

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.