Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh, I'm afraid that's no longer true, sir. Library budget cutbacks* have forced us to eliminate anything the least bit useful in surviving in a post-apocalyptic Britain.... ahh, see-ya.


*(Not exactly true, we have a good budget. However, the new minimalist obsession in libraries means as little 'unpopular' stock as possible and empty lower shelves so the place looks tidier. My advice, go kicking down the bio-diesel fuel company's door first.)

In the original its a viral outbreak which kills 90% of the population - i think there are rumors at one point that its a biological experment / chemical warfare test gone bad but could just as easily have been bird flu.

It means that most people are dead and are around population centres (so lots of rotting corpses) i dont remember any other animals being sick so there are plenty of wild animals if you can find and catch them.

The dogs going wild and hunting in packs was quite terrifying in the original as well.

I'll be taking death then please. Find the nearest high building, end the pain.

Very !

You wouldn't spend the first week looking at fannies?

I'm not walking up to Fleetwood to look at your face. Death please.

I'm gonna hump your cadaver sooooo sloooowly.

The Rapture?

Wow, did I click on the wrong thread!

Steps slowly backwards and away from the scariness...

*Follows Mimi with a club, bonesaw and bin bags*

There was a program on Channel 4 recently about what would likely happen if the human race disappeared due to an epidemic or something. The dogs mostly end up dead, as they're too fucking thickdomesticated to work out how to feed themselves.

There was, it was Life After People and I downloaded it on your recommendation. It was about 15 minutes of good stuff and reasonable CGI special effects, which was then repeated to pad it out to about 25 minutes. The other hour or so of the program was typical American documentary bullshit.

Hahahah. Did I? Well, I only watched the first 15 minutes.

Shall I start manufacturing cyanide pills for us all?

I'm starting to think that Dimrill is in fact planning an intricate double bluff, so that when we have all committed suicide he can violate our corpses.

Poetic-FTFY.

Well there's not much point in it all is there? Really? Not much point at all. Better to shed before it gets worse.

Yeah, I could live in my shed for the rest of my life. It's a nice shed.

All your loved ones dead? Scrabbling through corpses for food? Slough off the flesh, it's for the best.

I'll stick with my shed, thanks.

I have a room at the storage place just behind it!

How fab!

So if we ever have the apocalypse, rob that place if you want a CD32

In Day of the Triffids, which is one of my super-favourite books evar! the hero says something about society basically entering freefall, and it all depending on where we can catch ourselves. In DotT I think there was less than a percent the population left, so a modern society was right out, but they managed to basically end up with the sort of victorianish society mentioned above, with a few of the trappings of modernity ( they had a helicopter near the end, presumably kept alive with spares and siphoned petrol ). But I've just read Jack London's "The Scarlet Plague" where the disaster kills much more of society, so there are only a handful of people left ( about 20 out of all of California ) and they very quickly revert to Iron Age hunters and herders. You'd have to hope that in the first few years when you have enough tinned and dried food about to keep yourselves going that you can build the requirements of a reasonably advanced life before you end up having to spend all your time growing food. If you can get a sort of agricultural revolution style farming concern going, you may be all right as that would allow for some people to be able to specialise in other areas. If you can't, well then it's another 1,000 years of subsistence scrabbling for your descendants!

The problem is that when your population number bottlenecks like that, as happened with the cheetahs, you end up with lots of genetic defects and susceptibility to this and that when you've regrown the population from such a low starting number.

there are quite a few forgotten classics that deal with the aftermath of a near total extinction event, some of which are out of print or copyright so you can probably get them from Project gutenberg.


Earth Abides by George R Stewart
Death of Grass by John Christopher
A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright

So don't worry about it and end it all. What's the point? Throttle yourself and let the next species have a go.

Dimrill please say you'll drive around the barren wastes with me on a chopper made for two and not eat death pills when the bum disease kills all the lawyers and shitty folk.

I was thinking that - The Scarlet Plague book I mentioned basically had one or two guys being grandfather to each of the existing "tribes". I don't know how long you can carry on like that for reasonably - I imagine the odd injection of "new blood" would help, but if you are the only people between the Pacific and the Rockies there ain't much chance of that.

I guess the chances of survival for your hypothetical post-apocalyptal group would be pretty heftily increased if there were other groups that could be contacted. Trade of knowledge and surplus pre-apocalypse goods would be vital.

Or you could starve to death cuddling up to the cadavers.

You're very negative Dimrill.

Every cloud has a silver lining you know.

I will look at these - thanks Mr Snappa!

Earth Abides is a great book, also the second best opening as regards a 'waking up and finding everyone else has carked it' opener. You can still get it as part of the SF 100 Masterworks line. Death of Grass is also great, and quite inventive in parts. John Christopher has been unfairly neglected by literary history says I.

Well, I've just watched the pilot of Survivors and I think it's good. Not great, but good. The cast is pretty good, standouts being the kid, the rich bloke, Patterson Joseph (yay!) and the beady eyes bad man. My fondness for this series will largely rest on:

A: Will Patterson Joseph kick arse and save the survivors in a cool, sarcastic, mannered voice way?
B: Will beady-eyes bad man have a redemptive arc? Or will he inexplicably try to rape everyone and steal things? Every team needs an Avon after all. (Was it Avon? I've never really seen more than three eps of B7.)
C: Will we have misjudged pop music soundtrack? I liked the footie on the road but it kind of spoilt the 'emptiness' feel a bit.
D: Will they bump across anyone who's seen the original series/read John Wyndham and listen to him/her and PLAN ACCORDINGLY?

Highlights were the tense montages and the chaos sequences, which had me pacing about. I liked the opening for rich guy. Some very good photography, such as clouds, long shots, the car in the empty supermarket car park. The affable bloke at the activity centre. Freema defying expectations.

Not so good bits were people acting a bit too complacent and chipper. Adults of seemingly above average IQ not immediately twigging that this was it and that it's a bad idea to go back to the cities. Slightly generic script at times and obvious plotting. Needed more big sinister firestorm clouds on the horizon. Let there be somebody saying something like, "That's Manchester burning..." in the next episode please.

However, it was decidedly post-apocalyptic and it didn't make any big mistakes. It felt sure-footed and if things seemed a bit easy at times, the cast were generally charismatic and the pacing good. Also, it's going to be a bloody relief seeing a TV show where people aren't either yapping into mobile phones urgently at each other, accessing computers to find key plot-solving things or spending nights out in the same generic identi-kit nightclub that the Beeb thinks everybody goes to. I mean seriously Beeb, does nobody go to indie, Motown, hip-hop or rock nights in your verse, eh?

"This is my petrol!" could become a catchphrase.

Verdict: 4/5 and worried side-glances at Dimrill. You will find me worshiping our new Gods, the Pylons.

Surely back in what could be termed 'pre-civilised' times, settlements were small enough and travel difficult enough that interbreeding would have become a problem then, if it ever would? We seemed to have turned out OK thousands of years later.

Why condemn your offspring to more struggle and pain? No point. No future.

There is always hope Dimmers. And stockpiles of drugs!

I have no offspring - I just want to rule a post-apocalyptic future civilisation.

*gets on the back of Crasters Bike*

*Attempts feebly to run alongside Craster's bike, waving arms for attention*

if the apocalypse were to happen and it was loot-me-do I'd eat all the bananas I could, because no-ones going to be growing any more, that have a very short shelf life - best eat as many as you can whilst you have the chance.

*Shoots Nervous Pete with crossbow and cuts him up into meal size chunks and sticks him in the panniers*

It's a fairly well-regarded theory that mankind was once reduced to between 10,000 and 1,000 breeding pairs in the Toba catastrophy, about 70,000 years ago.

No room for hangers-on on the bike ride to the future.

*When the blade slices in for the third time, begins to feel useful at least*

Everyone becomes useful. Your intestines will make great spare inner tubes. Or balloon animals - there's no consoles in the bleak, dark future so evenings are dull.

Apparently there's a secret warehouse with 30,000 unsold Commodore 64 GS's in it. Games might be a problem though.

It's all well and good postulating about all this self sufficiency shit in these circumstances, but the sad fact is that you'd probably starve to death in tremendous pain as your crops wither with blight and you limbs succumb to gangrenous infections. Any children you have would do well to survive past their fifth year, that's even if they survived the birth. No point in trying, end it easier.

Nah.

Plenty of tinned stuff on them shelves. Rats and Roaches after.

This would explain Norfolk.

That and all the banjo shops there.

OK so watched episode 1. It's alright, although it does seem like there are to many people around. + the test track used as a motorway seemed abit obvious. Needed dirtying up really.

Nice touch to include a old wardrobe on wheels style Volvo (as used in the original series) and then throw Tom Price out of it

Not going a bundle on the whole government conspiricy thing. With the original the opening titles told you all the background you needed to know,

I noted on the preview of episode 2 they've lifted the whole supermarket confrontation from the original series including the hanging looter.

I'm sure lots of people enjoyed it. I'll award it a normal person rating of 862 bananas, but a Chinny rating of 747 bananas.

I didn't realise that the new Doctor was actually the space commander from Hyperdrive. Why didn't someone say?


There's an episode guide for the original series below if anyone is interesting in tracking how the new series is following the old plotwise (or not).:

http://www.survivorstvseries.com/Episode_Guide.htm