Optimistic Post-Apocalyptic stories

[RoJoHen]

I went and saw "Battle Los Angeles" last night, where the world pretty much gets its ass kicked by a bunch of aliens. Most major cities are leveled, and thousands (millions?) of people are dead. One might consider it a mini-apocalypse, of sorts. Sure, the human race survives, but at what cost?

That said, it ends on a very positive note, and it got me thinking. Are there any positive, optimistic movies/books about rebuilding society after a huge apocalyptic event? Most of the time we see post-apocalyptic worlds where everyone is living is ruin, and there are goofy monsters running around, and everything about it makes the audience want to kill themselves. Is there enough drama to make an uplifting story about a post-apocalyptic world?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Futurama.

 

[js]

28 Days Later

 

[Christopher]

Star Trek. It's always been the assumption there -- first implicitly in the original series, then spelled out more overtly in TNG -- that the Earth would go through a cataclysmic war worse than WWII before it could rebuild into the enlightened society we see in the Trek era.

A more direct example would be Gene Roddenberry's 1970s pilots Genesis II and Planet Earth. These involved a 20th-century scientist, Dylan Hunt, waking up on post-apocalyptic Earth and joining a group called Pax that was dedicated to rebuilding civilization with more idealized values. Allowing for some discrepancies of timing and detail, it could perhaps be considered a direct illustration of the rebuilding process that Roddenberry referred to after the fact in his Star Trek scripts like "Bread and Circuses" and "Encounter at Farpoint." And of course, more recently, the premise was reworked in an outer space setting as Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, which could also count as an optimistic post-apocalyptic story, at least until the showrunner was canned and the storytelling lost its original direction (and quality).

 

[RoJoHen]

Andromeda is a decent example.

I'm thinking more about stories that take place almost immediately after the apocalyptic event and show us what the world does to save itself. Sure, Star Trek tells us that WWIII happens and that humanity grows stronger out of the ashes, but we don't really see much of it (except maybe a little bit in "First Contact").

 

[Starscape]

The 1970's version of the UK TV series "Survivors" deals with the rebuilding of society within the first few years after a plaque wipes out most of the population of Earth. Some of the stories are quite dark, but there is an overall sense of optimism.

There's a modern remake too, but it doesn't really deal with the issues to quite the same depth. It's more about adventures set in a post-apocalyptic world.

 

[Miss Chicken]

The 1970's version of the UK TV series "Survivors" deals with the rebuilding of society within the first few years after a plaque wipes out most of the population of Earth. Some of the stories are quite dark, but there is an overall sense of optimism.

There's a modern remake too, but it doesn't really deal with the issues to quite the same depth. It's more about adventures set in a post-apocalyptic world.

I was going to suggest the original series of Survivors. I have recently rewatched it. I haven't yet seen the remake.

 

[Christopher]

I'm thinking more about stories that take place almost immediately after the apocalyptic event and show us what the world does to save itself. Sure, Star Trek tells us that WWIII happens and that humanity grows stronger out of the ashes, but we don't really see much of it (except maybe a little bit in "First Contact").

Which is why I cited Genesis II/Planet Earth as my primary examples. That's basically what they were about, although it wasn't immediately after the war. But for some reason, they're the only ones of my examples that you didn't acknowledge.

 

[Starscape]

The 1970's version of the UK TV series "Survivors" deals with the rebuilding of society within the first few years after a plaque wipes out most of the population of Earth. Some of the stories are quite dark, but there is an overall sense of optimism.

There's a modern remake too, but it doesn't really deal with the issues to quite the same depth. It's more about adventures set in a post-apocalyptic world.

I was going to suggest the original series of Survivors. I have recently rewatched it. I haven't yet seen the remake.

I found the remake disappointing. It's a little like BBC's Outcasts, both shows put their characters in a hostile environment and then overlook the hardships of survival by focusing other outside threats.

I'd have thought the trials of surviving would be enough of a source of drama.

 

[Greg Cox]

The Chrysalids (aka "Rebirth") by John Wyndham is good example.

Wyndham, in fact, specialized in "cosy catastrophe" books in which survivors coped heroically with various scifi disasters.

The Day of the Triffids, When the Kraken Wakes, etc.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm thinking more about stories that take place almost immediately after the apocalyptic event and show us what the world does to save itself. Sure, Star Trek tells us that WWIII happens and that humanity grows stronger out of the ashes, but we don't really see much of it (except maybe a little bit in "First Contact").

Which is why I cited Genesis II/Planet Earth as my primary examples. That's basically what they were about, although it wasn't immediately after the war. But for some reason, they're the only ones of my examples that you didn't acknowledge.

Because I haven't heard of them before. Kinda hard for me to discuss them.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, it seemed to me you were asking for examples of stories that fit the description, and I gave you two examples and explained how they fit the request, and you responded as if I hadn't given you any examples that fit the request. I find that puzzling.

 

[RoJoHen]

My response was just kind of general, not meant specifically for you.

 

[DrCorby]

I've always liked Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It involves multiple pieces of a comet striking the Earth, and a group of survivors struggling to rebuild civilization afterwards.

And I'm currently reading Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (yes, for the first time, though it's a late-50s classic). The back cover blurb and intro by David Brin describes it as an optimistic take on post-nuclear holocaust America. But I'm only a few chapters in, so I can't confirm that yet...

 

[The Wormhole]

This thread got me thinking, does anyone think having a movie about the aftermath of an alien invasion on the scale of what we saw in ID4 or Battle LA would be a good idea?

 

[DarthPipes]

I'd love to see something like that but I don't think it would get greenlighted for a movie unless it had some kind of action in it. Rumor had it if they did an Independence Day 2 it would have been them battling the aliens who survived the ships going down.

Something light that could probably get greenlighted on TV. HBO perhaps.

 

[RoJoHen]

This thread got me thinking, does anyone think having a movie about the aftermath of an alien invasion on the scale of what we saw in ID4 or Battle LA would be a good idea?

That's kind of what got me thinking about this. After I left "Battle Los Angeles" last night I was thinking, "What if there was a movie about the months following the attack?"

 

[The Wormhole]

Something light that could probably get greenlighted on TV. HBO perhaps.

Actually, I could see the idea working perfectly as a TV show, or even just a 10 episode mini-series. Focusing on the year after the alien invasion. That way there you could tell all kinds of stories, goverments being rebuilt, countries putting aside old rivalries and working together out of necessity, beefing up the space program to prepare for the next time aliens show up, reverse engineering alien tech, maybe dealing with aliens who survived and are hiding on Earth. Shit, if only I had connections...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Are they still fixing to do a TV series sequel to that batshit awful 2012 film? (2013, natch)

 

[Christopher]

This thread got me thinking, does anyone think having a movie about the aftermath of an alien invasion on the scale of what we saw in ID4 or Battle LA would be a good idea?

Realistically, the aftermath of ID4 would be the end of the world. All the energy released by those huge spaceships crashing would've been comparable to a series of asteroid strikes, not to mention that the radiation and ejecta from that moon-sized alien base blowing up near the Earth would've probably devastated the planet's atmosphere and killed every last living thing that survived the ship crashes.

But a story that begins with the end of a more plausible invasion and explores how the survivors put the world back together? Now, that's an interesting idea. Would work better as a novel or TV series than a movie, though.