post apocalyptic mayhem is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of human civilization. In the 1988 computer game Wasteland, nuclear war occurred in 1998 leaving a wasteland in its wake. The game centers around a player-controlled party of Desert Rangers. Its sequel Wasteland 2 is expected to be released sometime in 2014.
Fallout, an ongoing series of post-apocalyptic video games first published in 1997, focuses on a world after a massive nuclear war destroys most of the great powers in 2077. The games are usually based around "vaults," safe underground bunkers for long-term survival, and exploring the outside wasteland, in locations such as California or Washington DC.
In Metro 2033, a nuclear war occurs in late 2013. Russia was targeted with atomic bombs, causing severe radiation across Moscow, forcing the rest of the people to live underground in the metro stations away from the deadly effects of radiation. Many animals and humans left behind mutated into creatures known as the Dark Ones, who were left outside for the next 20 years. The game is played from the perspective of Artyom, a 20-year-old male survivor and one of the first born in the metro. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but some missions have the player go to the surface which is severely irradiated and a gas mask must be worn at all times due to the toxic air.This apocalypse is typically portrayed as being due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity,dysgenics, supernatural phenomena,Mary Shelley's 1826 novel, The Last Man is considered the first work of modern post apocalyptic mayhem.The story follows a group of people as they struggle to survive in a plague infected world. The story centers on a male protagonist as he struggles to keep his family safe but is inevitably left as the last man alive.In 1936, H.G. Wells adapted his novel, The Shape of Things to Come, into the movie Things to Comefeaturing special effects by Ray Harryhausen. In the movie, England is reduced to rubble by a prolonged conventional, chemical, and biological war. Survivors are depicted living under the rule of a local warlord who raids his neighbors in an attempt to get his fleet of rotting fighter planes in the air again. Eventually, surviving engineers create a technological utopia.
The 1983 ABC made-for-TV movie The Day After deals with a nuclear war between NATO and theWarsaw Pact, focusing on a group of people attempting to survive during and after the nuclear exchange.
CBS produced the TV series Jericho in 2006-2008, which focused on the survival of the town after 23 American cities were destroyed by nuclear weapons.
In 1965 the BBC produced The War Game but it was considered too horrifying to broadcast at the time; it was only in 1985 that it was shown. It portrays a nuclear attack on Great Britain and its after-effects, particularly the efforts of the Civil Defence system.
The 1984 BBC television program Threads depicts life before, during, and after the detonation of a Soviet nuclear bomb over Sheffield, England.
The Terminator film franchise depicts an artificial intelligence called Skynet becoming self-aware in 1996 and trying to exterminate humanity by instigating nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which results in the death of three billion people. Many of the survivors eventually band together to destroy Skynet and its army of robots (called "terminators"). The series follows resistance leader John Connorand his mother, Sarah Connor, and their adventures before and after the nuclear strike (called "Judgment Day" in the film series).
Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion follows the conversation between two souls in the afterlife as they discuss the destruction of the world. The destruction was brought about by a comet that removed nitrogen from earth's atmosphere; this left only oxygen and resulted in a worldwide inferno.
The 1885 novel After London by Richard Jefferies can best be described as genuine post-post apocalyptic mayhem. After a sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature and the few survivors return to a quasi-medieval way of life. The first chapters consist solely of a description of nature reclaiming England: fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns becoming overgrown, London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland. The rest of the story is a straightforward adventure/quest set many years later in the wild landscape and society, but the opening chapters set an example for many later science fiction stories.
H.G. Wells wrote several novels that have a post-apocalyptic theme. Published in 1895, Wells' short novelThe Time Machine has the unnamed protagonist traveling to the year 802,701 A.D. after civilization has collapsed and humanity has been split into two distinct species, the elfin Eloi and the brutal Morlocks. Later in the story, the time traveler moves forward to a dying earth beneath a swollen, red sun. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds depicts an invasion of Earth by inhabitants of the planet Mars. The aliens systematically destroy Victorian England with advanced weaponry mounted on nearly indestructible vehicles. Due to the famous radio adaptation of the novel by Orson Welles on his show,The Mercury Theatre on the Air, the novel has become one of the best known early apocalyptic works. It has subsequently been reproduced or adapted several times in film, television programming, radio programming, music, and video games. divine judgment, runaway climate change, resource depletion, ecological collapse, or some other general disasters. post apocalyptic mayhem is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in a non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain.Crossed by Garth Ennis is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the few humans still left struggles to survive from the people infected by a plague that causes its victims to carry out their most evil thoughts. Carriers of the virus are known as the Crossed due to a cross-like rash that appears on their faces.
Y: The Last Man comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra deals with the life of Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand after a plague wipes out all but three male life forms on the earth, leaving the whole planet to be controlled by women.
The Walking Dead is a comic-book series from IC and was written by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, andCharlie Adlard It was started in 2003 and is continuing as of 2013. The story follows a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The apocalypse in this series was brought about by zombies (here called Walkers) and it is strongly suspected that the Walkers are victims of a virus. Also called The Walking Dead is an AMC television series loosely based on the comics.
The genre gained popularity after World War II, when the possibility of global annihilation by nuclear weapons entered the public consciousness. However, recognizable apocalyptic novels had existed since the first quarter of the 19th century, when Mary Shelley's The Last Man was published.