Things to consider in a post apocalyptic world.

[R.T James]

I currently started a post apocalyptic story.

I've got the culture of a few raider civilizations and a general back bone of
world set up (even know how it ended.)

But I am curious to what might need to be addressed in a post apocalyptic society. Cars are very prevalent in the story, so explaining how they get fuel or even oil is something that I felt must be mentioned. Which I did touch on.

Curious to see what people bring up. The list of things which I can thing of are Food, water, weapons, ammo, Gasoline and oil.

Only so much can be explained by 'they scavenged it'

I am asking for ideas as this is my first post apocalyptic story where the world legitimately ended. I have another one where humans abandoned the earth leaving a small population of people who stayed behind to pick up the pieces. A much different mindset, and a different approach to it.

Let the bickering discussion begin.

 

[TWErvin2]

I guess the term 'raider civilizations' as a backbone is sort of vague.

Raiding from other raiders...who are the builders, farmers, miners, etc.? Are they protected by a raider civilization. If the builder civilizations constantly get raided, what's the point of building...after a few times? I mean if they (the raiders) are the backbone, then the builders are not.

Just my initial thought, as civilization implies it's grown to be this way, in a long-term stable sort of fashion.

 

[BAYLOR]

What brought it about? Nuclearwar, plague ,Global warming,Asteroid collision ,solar flare ,alien Invasion? DIffearent scenarios can have bearing on what the most important items of survival will be and their probable availability.

It's just something to consider.

 

[Ihe]

Cars are very prevalent in the story, so explaining how they get fuel or even oil is something that I felt must be mentioned.

That's what the Mad Max world is all about. Check it out for hints, and add spare car parts to the primary needs.

Just how apocalyptic are we talking about here? Is there some infrastructure left with which to fabricate things like tires or engines?

 

[R.T James]

Some infrastructure remains in certain areas, that's actually what makes the main raider factions powerful. They control and operate critical parts of infrastructure. So one has a foothold on oil fields and uses this to keep a motorized army going and trades gasoline for things they can't get. One controls a foundry, it's the scavengers or "vultures" as they're refered too as that retained the knowledge to actually make parts, or rebuild existing ones. They're part of a recognized almost grey area of neutrality.

The MC is part of a faction that is completely neutral and is recognized by everybody as so. They do jobs for the different groups and are only agreed upon thing in the wasteland, because it helps the raiders transport goods without stepping on territorial toes, or it helps settlements get out valuables without a fear Id being raided, they also do odd jobs for these different factions which members of said faction are not able to do for various reasons.

The organization represents an almost way of order in this crazed world so much so when a new group of raiders torched the settlement their main outpost was in the raiders who control the oil refineries viewed it as an act of war against everybody.

Technology still exists it just depends on where, or even arguably when you are in the world.

Man destroyed the world, but not via war. How the world ended is critical to the story as it kind of is a major aspect of the odd bizzare things that are present on this version of earth.

 

[Ihe]

The organisation of the gangs seems pretty structured, as in Mad Max: Fury Road. IIRC, one gang had the oil, another the weapons, another the water, etc.

Be careful of treading too close to the Mad Max recipe (post-apocalyptic, gangs, cars...). You don't wanna get sued . Even if your plot is completely different, the setting seems very similar, so watch out with that, but I see you'll be throwing several curve balls in the story, so that's good. Differentiate your story from that franchise as quickly as you can.

 

[R.T James]

The organisation of the gangs seems pretty structured, as in Mad Max: Fury Road. IIRC, one gang had the oil, another the weapons, another the water, etc.

Be careful of treading too close to the Mad Max recipe (post-apocalyptic, gangs, cars...). You don't wanna get sued . Even if your plot is completely different, the setting seems very similar, so watch out with that, but I see you'll be throwing several curve balls in the story, so that's good. Differentiate your story from that franchise as quickly as you can.

Yeah I'm not going lone person against the wastes either. I'll confess there's going to be a sci-fi reasoning to why everything ended. The things that don't add up are on purpose, and even the Main character is questioning why things are they way they are when he clearly remembers a time when it wasn't like this, and he's not some old geezer.

And honestly this is a larger scale than what mad Max's world held. You have a civilization of raiders from out of state, and arguably a government system within them. The main focus isn't really on the raiders at all, but the neutral faction and the actions of the MC as he slowly cobbles together just what the hell happened. Many know the world ended, just nobody can exactly pinpoint how, or why. All they know is it ended. This is something that truly bothers the MC partly because his past before the world ended haunts him. He remembers what he was and tries to hide it even though nobody understands what he is hiding even if they saw it.

If cars and a wasteland get you sued by the franchise holders of mad max then damn what way to lock down an entire genre.

Honestly I look at most of the mad max movies as a what not to do to some extent. Cars will handle realistically in this story ( I am a gearhead so a lot of fury road made me just shake my head.)

 

[Vertigo]

They don't just need food, they also need viable seeds. Also consider medicine; without antibiotics a simple cut can be deadly.

 

[zmunkz]

Primarily-scavenger societies aren’t particularly realistic IMO. Almost everything we rely on in the modern day requires constant upkeep somewhere down the supply line. Gasoline only has a shelf life of months, maybe a year. Refined crude oil — the only sort you can realistically get without major equipment— has a shelf life of 3-5 years. Producing A/C to charge batteries is nontrivial, and few of the solar units you are likely to find on abandoned houses have the equipment to change D/C to A/C.

Guns should hold up pretty well, and certain structures.

Growing and preparing the food and water needed to survive is an all day every day job for most of the society, and I’m not sure how much the old tech would help, or for how long it would. Without modern equipment there is no way to make enough to sustain our population size, so it should not be taken for granted that everyone can just farm and eat. Having and holding farm land would be essential to survival.

Anyway, TL;DR, think in terms of shelf life to see what things become most valuable first, and don’t overestimate the usefulness of old tech or underestimate the effort involved in wide-scale subsistence living.

 

[Vertigo]

Primarily-scavenger societies aren’t particularly realistic IMO. Almost everything we rely on in the modern day requires constant upkeep somewhere down the supply line. Gasoline only has a shelf life of months, maybe a year. Refined crude oil — the only sort you can realistically get without major equipment— has a shelf life of 3-5 years. Producing A/C to charge batteries is nontrivial, and few of the solar units you are likely to find on abandoned houses have the equipment to change D/C to A/C.

Guns should hold up pretty well, and certain structures.

Growing and preparing the food and water needed to survive is an all day every day job for most of the society, and I’m not sure how much the old tech would help, or for how long it would. Without modern equipment there is no way to make enough to sustain our population size, so it should not be taken for granted that everyone can just farm and eat. Having and holding farm land would be essential to survival.

Anyway, TL;DR, think in terms of shelf life to see what things become most valuable first, and don’t overestimate the usefulness of old tech or underestimate the effort involved in wide-scale subsistence living.

You actually need DC to power a battery not AC. All those devices you plug into the mains to charge are just AC to DC converters. What's harder isn't getting DC but getting DC of the right voltage so that it's high enough to actually charge the battery (a 12V car battery is generally charged with around 14V) and not so high that it burns the battery out. That takes a little bit of tech to get right.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think Baylor's point is a very good one: different causes will have different effects. Also, what end of the "fun" scale is this on? I'd say you've got Fallout 4 at one end, with its robots and untouched goods lying about for the taking everywhere, and Threads on the other, which is just medieval misery with added radiation. Realistically, I think it would be moderately easy for technology to get back to a roughly Victorian level (even if huge amounts of death, disease and oppression occurred along the way), but extremely hard for it to approach the 20th century.

 

[R.T James]

For population any event that drastically changes a society kills off people via shock alone. It happened during the Great Depression, also people offing themselves because the world is horrible and they can't live like this. So population isn't going to be absurd, also the world gets smaller.

Contact with overseas is instantly cut off. There's no reason to give two craps about what was the U.K. If your trying to survive in the US.

Technology isn't exactly gone and people who really strictly on the old world die. It's that simple. The knowledge to maintain rebuild and remanufacture technology is a key component. Knowledge while left behind by the first wave of raiders who were doomed from the beginning is invaluable to those who know it's worth.

Industrial machinery and the ability to keep it going is what holds value. The war lords recognize this.

Also when I mean raiders I mean they started out as raiders but became an almost empire. Settlements protected by the raiders provide stability to the empire. You have networks of trade routes.

It's all primitive by today's standards but to the higher up warlords who command these societies even going to war is weighed heavy. Resources are limited and trade between 'rivals' isn't given.

That's why the MC neutral faction is such a key component as it plays a pivotal part in keeping peace between the giants.


There's no radiation, so that's not an issue. The climate changed, but it wasn't climate change that brought on the end. I'm approaching it from another angle to end a world.

Technology gets a crude point. Where you have people able to sand cast parts, or housings for things, or revulanising tires is something that is done. You have a few small groups of scavenger societies who drag away the caracases of the old world to make New from it.

One faction of scavengers the MC deals with holds the automobile and everything around it to religious attributions. However their gospel has roots in the knowledge to keep these things going. They're also very secure with this knowledge only letting those they trust with it as they can see how it could be bad.

So the comment about getting back to Victorian era is pretty accurate,

You have people making alcohol to use as a fuel source. You have electricity but those who harness it and know how to make it hold it close to their chest like the scavenger faction the MC knows well.

Knowledge is a valued resource, and forcing it out of people doesn't work.

 

[Vince W]

Another thing to consider is when the apocalypse happens. Today, tomorrow, in a hundred years. The Matrix film is post apocalyptic but their technology is still more advanced than ours is today in some respects, and a bit behind in others.

 

[Martin Gill]

And how long after the Fall is your story set? A few years and modern things may still be in plentiful supply. Three generations, well, not so much.

 

[SPoots]

Here's a vid you might like to check out.

 

[R.T James]

Here's a vid you might like to check out.

Does this person offer advice to other writing forums. I feel like he'd be at home at one of them.

Nice to know I'm doing the opposite in this story.

Gods that was hilarious.