Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with postapocalyptic

Website to sort and display different mountain heights?

seasparrow — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:56:36 -0800

Is there a website that would show the world sorted by elevation? I recently enjoyed reading Plague Year, a post-apocalyptic thriller. The main conceit of this science-fiction novel is that a nanotechnology plague that kills any warm blooded animal (including humans), but the disease self-destructs at altitudes above 10,000 feet. How much territory would this be across the whole planet? I liked the book. It isn't great literature, but the author, Jeff Carlson, thinks through the ramifications of a world where most mammals are now extinct and a tiny fragment of humanity clings to a few frozen mountain-tops. Carlson also doesn't shy away or sugar-coat the realities of such a situation. He also doesn't make it easy for his characters, unlike other authors in the post-apocalyptic genre. (Yes, I'm pointing at you, S.M. Stirling.) Some of the protagonists feel guilty about the cannibalism they had to resort to in order to survive, but at least they are alive, unlike 99.9% of the human race.

So, like I said, a fun read that got me thinking. My real question for the Hive Mind is-- in all the great variety of the internet, is there some sort of geographical website that would allow me to view the world through the filter of all elevations above 10,000 feet?

Which sparks another question: Have you seen the maps that occasionally appear showing what the world would look like if global warming caused the sea levels to rise 50 or 100 feet? Is there a website that will let you do that as well? Maybe even set your own parameters on how much you want the water levels to rise or fall, and then generate a map for you?

Does anyone work in the field? Isn't is called Geographical Information Systems? It sounds fascinating. I think I might enjoy working a GIS job eventually. Questions like these linger in my mind, so much so that I'm willing to spend my one-a-week currency of an AskMe question to see what the sophisticated and cosmopolitcal Mefite community has to say about it.

Thanks for your help, and I hope I'm not the only weirdo who thinks about these things!

"Last Man on Earth" Stories

Ziggy Zaga — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:27:27 -0800

I'm looking for stories involving "last man on earth" type scenarios. Recommendations of any media will do so long as it's not on Betamax or Laserdisc. Anything on paper is ideal.

The story doesn't have to be about one person or even a man; it can be about one person or a small band of survivors of the apocalypse or something. I'm interested in the stories of how one or more people cope with the solitude and the ramifications of repopulation (if even possible) when faced with the fact that you're the last of a decimated human population.

I know about the movie "The Last Man on Earth" and the "I am Legend" series (the latter of which has dubious relevance). If I recall correctly the end of Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" focuses on the subject as well. Ellison's "I Have No Mouth..." would count too.

There were also a short series of comics called "The Survivor" in which humanity is wiped out and the world is dominated by robots, save for the female protagonist and a handful of others. Borders on smut, but it counts.

I am *NOT* looking for zombie movies. "28 Days Later" and the Will Smith "I am Legend" do not count. Aliens, maybe.

Thanks for any suggestions :)

Dear Internets: I forgot the name of this book

dubold — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:57:00 -0800

I'm looking for a book: read this at least 13 years ago. (in paperback) A teenage boy and girl are making their way through a postapocalyptic America. It was a trilogy, I believe, and I only recall reading two books in the series. I'm fuzzy on the plot details, but I think they were looking for someone's parents? or, in the grand tradition of postapocalyptic fiction, heading to safety in some miraculously untouched area? Can't recall if there had been a nuclear war or not. I'm actually considering going back to the library where I originally found it (8 hours away) to look. If there are great ways to search for books (tried abebooks and amazon), please let me know, and spare me the drive.

The Last American?

szechuan — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:20:29 -0800

BookFilter: Looking for a post-apocalyptic novel that I thought was called "The Last American" but apparently isn't. From memory it was about a guy who took his family to a summer camp and it was like a wilderness survival thing for the first year with him and his wife and sons. Then a carrier comes through and the virus kills his family but he survives and becomes a carrier as well. It then follows his travels through the post-apocalyptic states with very World War Z things like astronauts stuck in space and submarines sending in landing parties. I may have some of these details muddled up with other books. But I am sure that in the end it had him piloting a plane across the Bering Strait and Russia having to nuke him to stop him bringing their virus back to them. I could've sworn it was called The Last American but the only two by that title are futuristic Sci-fi, it's bugging me now.

Individual's survival without a society?

philomathoholic — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 22:44:09 -0800

Which books (or movies) have a similar survivalism theme as 'I am Legend' by Richard Matheson? The specific theme I'm looking for: one person, fighting to hold on to their sanity without the support of any other people. Not necessarily postapocalyptic, just a person struggling to maintain their humanity despite limited/no other human contact.

What happens to the Library of Congress when the asteroid hits?

fermion — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:24:05 -0800

What efforts are currently being made to preserve human knowledge and culture (great literature, scientific theory, et cetera) for far-future generations, or in the event of a worldwide catastrophe? I'm thinking about something with the same kind of timescale as the Long Now project. I feel there must be an archival project of this type out there, but my Google-fu has failed me on this one.

Quasimodo of the future?

antifuse — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 04:30:26 -0800

Help me identify this youth science fiction book-filter! Ok, here's the details that I can remember. I must have read it in the late 80's sometime, as I pretty clearly remember reading it before high school. The basic plot involved a futuristic (post-apocalyptic?) society where everyone was living in city-domes. Everyone has these electronic devices (for knowledge access? mind control? food? I can't remember) attached to their backs, resulting in a serious hunchback. The main character somehow ends up outside one of the domes, only to find that hey, there's a (living in huts, hunter-gatherer-maybe-farming) society going on out here as well, and nature rules, and we don't NEED those electronic devices! Wow! I think he goes back into the city to englighten everyone, but I can't really remember clearly, as it was probably 15 years ago that I read it.

Please, *somebody* must remember this book! It's been driving me nutty for years!

Pre-Apocalypse Living In A Post-Apocalypse World

cyrusdogstar — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 08:59:52 -0800

Ways to maximize one's chances of survival, or even to regain some mere semblance of pre-disaster developed-world lifestyle, after an apocalyptic event? Apologies for any incoherence, and for any overlap with previous questions. I searched for a handful of words/tags and found nothing that really matched.

I was thinking about the average post-apocalyptic scenario, and how the authors of such usually present the world and how society and technology exist afterwards.

The stories taking place long after the event show a feudal/medieval society where the old world technology exists only in a few artifacts (e.g. Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East). The ones closer to the event show people still trying to use remaining scrap, such as fighting over existing resources required to run technology, like gas for vehicles (e.g. Road Warrior).

The main reasoning behind these scenarios appears to be: current technology depends on the entirety of civilization, and could not exist outside it. For example, take a machine gun--even if you had blueprints for one, you'd still need raw materials, mining abilities, the machinery for both of those, electricity and its infrastructure, and so on and so forth.

So, given that any sufficiently "modern" piece of equipment requires a pyramid of now-mostly-destroyed technology, I wonder: just what could a sufficiently driven individual or group accomplish post-apocalypse? Consider it fairly open-ended w/r/t timeline and amount of left-over pre-apocalypse tech (within reason).