I only enjoy post-apocalyptic movies and books to a point. Eventually I get frustrated and start to rant. It goes something like this:
“OK fine! Almost everyone died when they dropped the bomb/loosed the menace/opened the magic vault. It was exciting and scary when the zombies/vampires/aliens were pounding on the door. But now it’s act three and you’re just wallowing in the tragic backstory. Dragons/infections/space Nazis are officially part of the world so man up and quit pretending it’s an extended campout.”
For example, if you want to engage me in a discussion of “The Walking Dead” I’ll lose it. I watched a half dozen episodes and tuned out. I wound up yelling at my TV:
“Nobody asked me if I wanted to live in a world with shitty features; frozen plumbing, rattlesnakes, and the AMC Gremlin. I just live with it. We all just handle it. We fix pipes, kill snakes, and burn an AMC whenever we get the chance. It’s no biggie. If there were zombies I’d handle them just like raccoons in the chicken coop. So would everyone else who didn’t die in the first two months. Mankind is a damnsight more innovative than a Hollywood hack’s limited imagination. We live in the world we’ve got and leave the wishing for hippies and John Lennon songs.”
Surely I’m preaching to the choir here. At some point in the zombie epidemic it’s time to build a goddamn anti-zombie fence and get your ass back to work. I give it a few months before we’d accept that the walking dead is merely an unpleasant part of the environment; like taxes, real estate agents, light beer, and speed traps.
I’ve a deep and unshakeable faith that homo sapiens is a creature born to be bad ass. (I duly note exceptions and pathological weakness in nutless twits who expect “trigger warnings”, “community organizers”, Republican party apparatchiks, people who give me shit about gluten, and pretentious jazz aficionados.)
In the long run the rest of us (lets call it “non-bullshit humans”) have overcome everything. Shit got real and the survivors figured it out. Otherwise the planet would be ruled by something more adaptive; maybe marmosets?
In my next post I’ll explain why Norman Borlaug is a super stud.
Welcome back. Nice to see that you survived.
Hollywood has little concept of what really ingenious people are capable of. They play the scene for the emotional roller coaster ride. But they forget part 2 of basic survival. First you survive, then you thrive. Not everyone is a useless, blathering idiot totally dependent on Starbucks, cell phones, and free wi-fi. Unfortunately, the people who write these TV shows and movies rarely have a chance or the inclination to rub elbows with the folks from flyover country. Take your average redneck, give him a toolbox and set him loose in a proper junkyard (not a landfill) and I guarantee that miracles will happen.
Ray
It’s true, and that’s amazing. How can there be thousands of post-apocalyptic books about surviving and thriving and overcoming everything conceivable and some things that aren’t, and Hollywood always uses the same tropes? It boggles the mind…
for a good zombie book where they eventually start WORKING on fixing the damn problem, try John Ringo’s “Black Tide Rising” series, fist book is Under a Graveyard Sky.
I’ll second Ringo’s “Black Tide Rising” series. And if you can find a copy,his “Road to Damascus”.