Jericho is a pretty good post-apocalyptic TV series, and it does exactly what you're asking for- how do people pull themselves back together in the months after some apocalyptic event.
Optimistic Post-Apocalyptic stories
- Thread starter RoJoHen
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I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned David Brin's The Postman, so far. (And the movie version, despite its stupidity).
It's good, but does it really count as optimistic? It got incredibly dark at spots and as I recall ended on a pretty gloomy note.
Waterworld, kind of
Postman, definately
Independence Day
Deep Impact ends on a happy note.
Actually, most of the ships were hovering pretty low over the earth so they wouldn't be crashing at very high speed. I doubt the destruction would reach very far from the immediate area. As for the Mother ship, it was seen to be in a pretty high orbit. Radiation from the explosion would be stopped by Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. Debris might be a problem, it depends on the size of the chunks I guess.
Doesn't matter. Momentum is mass times velocity. A huge mass striking at low velocity can cause as much damage as a smaller mass striking at higher velocity.
The fall of each of the World Trade Center towers registered as a 2.1 to 2.3 on the Richter scale, enough to qualify as a minor earthquake. These ships were thousands of times bigger -- at a rough estimate, given the claim that they were 15 miles in diameter, they'd have a volume more than 1.5 million times that of either of the WTC towers. Giant flying saucers are probably made of denser stuff than office buildings, so let's call it 3 million times the mass. And going by publicity photos, let's say their centers of mass were maybe 8 times the height of the WTC's center of mass, which means their velocity at impact would be maybe 2.8 times as great. Momentum is mv^2, that's 24 million times as much momentum upon impact. That would correspond to maybe around a 7 on the Richter scale, on a par with the 2009 Indonesian earthquake -- or, since it's all delivered at the single moment of impact, it would be as much energy as a half-megaton nuclear bomb. And there are 36 of them at once around the world? At the very least that's going to cause nuclear winter, damage the ozone layer, and wipe out a huge percentage of the survivors.
It was also said to be a quarter the mass of the Moon, so it should've caused severe gravitational and seismic disruptions just by being there (and could not possibly have been hidden).
Not an explosion that size. Not the destruction of something explicitly stated to be the mass of a dwarf planet. An explosion of something that size would be trillions of megatons. The Earth's atmosphere wouldn't be able to absorb such an immense amount of energy without being blown away. Hell, it would probably melt the side of the Earth that was facing it.
The stated dimensions and mass of the mothership would give it an average density 20 times greater than lead. Since most of it was hollow, it would've had to be made of degenerate matter. The debris would be devastating.
Bottom line, Independence Day is one of the most physics-illiterate movies ever made. There's very little in it that's remotely possible or defensible.
LOL, that really annoys you, doesn't it?
Red Matter, protomatter, metaphasic fountain of youth radiation, subspace, dilithium crystals, warp speed, beaming, transwarp beaming and galaxy-threatening FTL supernovae anyone?
If you're going to criticize the physics of ID4, at least get the math correct.
If the ships were 8 times as high as the WTC then they would hit ground at 4 times the velocity(vf^2=vi^2+2ad). Also momentum is MV, not MV^2. So the total momentum would be 12 million times more. Also, any engineer would think about it in terms of potential/kinetic energy, not momentum. Potential energy = mgh. So the ship had 24 times as much potential energy. At impact that all had become kinetic energy.
So your numbers weren't terrible, but the explanations were way off. Which is why writers should either ignore the science and write a good story, or hire scientists to get the science right. Trying to do both ends up looking even worse.
But to get back to the topic at hand, Jericho and Survivors(BBC) both tried to do an optimistic rebuilding of the world story. The problem is both shows got bogged down in the conspiracy theories of the destruction.
Sorry, I meant kinetic energy, not momentum. Slip of the tongue. And I got the velocity by d = (1/2)at^2 and v = at. If d/d' = 8 and a is constant, then t/t' = sqrt(8) = 2.8, so v/v' should also be 2.8.
Considering they beat the HIGHLY ADVANCED aliens using a computer virus (created by Earth tech) transmitted from a laptop (also earth tech) realism has already gone out the window by that point.
Software and hardware of our computer systems were based on what they found in the alien scout, so this isn't too far fetched. The aliens also hacked into Earth's satellites, so Goldblum also had a good starting point there.
Good example.
And one of my "secret favorites", too.Damnation Alley (the movie) ends on a sickeningly sweet finale.
The book-not so much.
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm ends...optimistically, sort of.
Logan's Run (movie) seems to think it's being optimistic.
The book and its sequel(s) take a more realistic view of the struggle to survive.
Alas Babylon is very optimistic. It actually predicts both survivors and
a winner to the war
I Am Legend-Will Smith's version seems optimistic.
Lucifer's Hammer was just dark, IMO.
Footfall was more optimistic.
The Postman certainly qualifies.
I'm sure others will spring to mind....
Yeah... from what I remember of it, it was basically a lower-budget Genesis II, with an RV instead of an underground bullet train.
Yeah, that sums it up more-or-less. It hasn't aged too badly. Picked it up on DVD awhile back (along with Space Academy and Jason of Star Command). Ark II features some pretty intelligently written stories, even though written mainly for children, and some cool guest appearances by Jim Backus and Jonathan Harris, amongst others.
Yeah, that sums it up more-or-less. It hasn't aged too badly. Picked it up on DVD awhile back (along with Space Academy and Jason of Star Command). Ark II features some pretty intelligently written stories, even though written mainly for children, and some cool guest appearances by Jim Backus and Jonathan Harris, amongst others.
And now I'm off to AMAZON....thanks a lot!
This is just a ST fanfic, but a most excellent one at that. Posted right here on this board. AFAIK, there are plans by its author to turn it into a full length novel.
It is post-apocalyptic in the sense that it's set after Trek's World War III, and a few decades before Enterprise:
First Contact: The Iron Horse
It is post-apocalyptic in the sense that it's set after Trek's World War III, and a few decades before Enterprise:
First Contact: The Iron Horse
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