post-post apocalypse setting

[Queshire]

I don't really know why I'm writing this thread, mostly just a springing board for my ideas I guess, but any input or advice would be helpful.

(NOTE: If you've read my other recent threads, just be aware that my story idea has undergone some revisions, it's similiar to what I had before but not the same)

My story takes place in a post-post-apocolyptic world.

Some time ago something happened which causes society to collapse, the ecosystem change wildly, and flat out kill a large precentage of the population. The survivors have since past through the post-apocolyptic "desperate struggle for survival" stage, and are now slowly started to rebuild and progress. Civilization now consists mostly of heavily fortified cities seperated by vast swathes (is that the right word?) of monster infested wilderness.

The main character was born and raised on a Sky Colony, basically space stations though technically located in the upper atmosphere instead of space, unlike the rest of the world the sky colonies avoided the worst of the effects of the apocalyptic something that happened and still retain the hi-magitech society that the rest of the world was before the apocalypse. Among the surface worlders they are considered cowards who hid in their castles in the sky while the rest of the world went to hell.... which isn't an entirely inaccurate description. The ship the main character was a passenger on was shot down and now she/he (haven't decided which it's gonna be yet) has to traverse the surface world for a way back to his/her family.

.....

Basically it's Fallout with magic and less grimdark.

O. K. question time:

1) How long after the apocalpse should this take place? I'm thinking 50 years, so that there would be a few elders that still remember what the world was like before the apocalypse, adults that lived through the desperate struggle to survive of the post apocalypse, and a new generation that has only known the post-post apocalyptic world. But I'm not sure if that time frame is realistic for global civilization to crash, the dust settle, and slowly start to pick itself up. Should I go with 75 years? Maybe 100? Of course I couldn't have the pre-apocalpse generation with the 100 years and unlikely with the 75 years, though I could probably go longer then 50 years... maybe 60? What do you guys think?

2) What should the "something" that happened be? I'm currently thinking of a world wrecking wave (see: World-Wrecking Wave - Television Tropes & Idioms ) in the form of a burst of pure, uncontrolled wild magic. Pretty much Magic Nukes I guess. Which would warp and twist the world.

2.a) What should be the cause of the World Wrecking Wave? Should it be man-made? An act of Gods? A natural occurence? I really have no idea about this, if I had to choose, (which I suppose I technically do have to do) I'd say I'm leaning towards it happening accidently when by man messing with things man was not meant to know. I imagine finding out just what happened could be a good plot point.

3) What precentage of people should the apocalpse flat out kill? I'm debating between 10%, 25%, 33.3333% (aka one-third), or even up to 50%. This would be just what the apocalypse killed flat out and not those that died in the post apocalypse so I'm leaning towards 10% which, as a bonus, lets me use decimate correctly. ^^ What do you guys think?

4) What would a post-post-apocalyptic society be like? Like I already mentioned, there would be well fortified cities seperated by monster infested wilderness. Merchants would travel in well protected caravans. I imagine there'd be elements of wild-west culture. There'd prolly be bands of bandits, savages, and mauraders. Plenty of ruins and dungeons to foster Adventurers. Anything I missed?

5) How should I handle religion? In my setting, spirits and gods are real and can allow their priests to cast magic, though it's less reliable then arcane magic as it's subject to the whims of the spirit/god. I'm thinking having cities / tribes adopting a certain god as a patron, as the cities form alliances the gods of the cities join as pantheons, furthering the worship of the gods, though with the patron god always viewed as the most important. Different pantheons would clash with each other and missionaries would be as important as spies. There'd also be indepent gods, and non-gods that insist on being worshipped as gods. What do you guys think?

any help would be greatly apreciated.

 

[JCFarnham]

Remind me to make a longer post here, mmkay. I have a very similar idea kicking around my hard drive and would like to share my thoughts and research on the matter. (I'm having trouble with the idea you see, so I'm more than willing to hand over my thoughts and repurpose the bits I do like from it for something else.)

As I've indicated before however I'm STILL not landline connected (so not only no house phone but no internet neither, and a data plan on my phone that quickly runs out and starts charging. FUN.) But I'll be back to you soon!

 

[Bear]

I'll tell you what I did in my post apocalyptic setting to offer some guidelines. There really is no right or wrong aswers since last time I check there is no apocaylpse on record to reference unless you count what happened to the dino's.

so,

1. I used a time frame around 50-70 years or so.

2. That's kind of the fun part about post apocalyptic settings. You can kind of think up crazy ideas and run with it. Example in one of my stories the government finds a werewolf and tries to engineer a super soldier but gives birth to an airborn virus that turns people into werewolves and society collapses. The government angle is always an easy way out. My other apocalypse setting is about a genetic nightmare that runs rampant across the world. Natural disasters are good but it's all how you want to develope the story.

3. I went with alot of people getting wiped out and packets of humanity are left to deal with the consequences. It should be a large number or it wouldn't be an apocalypse.

4. I like to mess around with dystopian worlds. Usually, in these things there are mauraders or bandits and usually one stronghold that is trying to rebuild. Often things become a question of morals.

5. I kind of stay away from religion but I played around with a twelve character leadership that kind of is a hint at the twelve apostles. Religion can be tricky. There is always the religious fanatic angle.

It sounds like your on the right track. Just have fun with it and see where everything leads. One of the coolest things is when the new generation of people find things from the old world so to speak.

 

[Saigonnus]

I have a post-apocalyptic thing kicking around as well, though technically they are still in last stages of the "fight for survival" stage. In mine, it was a combination of natural factors that brought about the end of mankind. (imagine the present economic situation and make it 10x worse. People can't afford health care so the companies fall, as do the phamaceutical companies since no one can afford the drugs anyway.) with the collapse of the health care system, doctors can't treat the new viruses and illnesses that crop up from the population and it runs rampant through the human and animal kingdom. As more people die, the governments take the blame and rebellions spring up around the world until most governments fail and when all is said and done 70% of the world population is dead and leave the rest to scratch a living however they can.

My story idea centers around a ruined city that still is home to clans of people. During the tail end of the wars a foreign army was trying to take advantage of the situation and invade their enemy and sacked this one city. The forces remained to consolidate their numbers, but lost direction when the country they came from collapsed. Lost for direction, they continued to plague the area and started grabbing up what resources they could, always violently and that drove the "residents" to banding together to fight them. At first it was dozens of small clans, but as they were weak and vulnerable, they soon had to band into larger groups to stand a chance. The present manifestation has 5 or 6 clans and the numbers are fairly even so each side is trying to find a way to break the stalemate.


I think it would reallly depend on what caused the "cataclysm" how quickly the effects would dissapate. Magic, I would think wouldn't last that long most places; unlike radiation from nuclear weapons, though perhaps the "epicenter" would still have some weird magical properties (which could have some interesting effects on the story). In that kind of scenario fiifty years is probably more than sufficient for men to begin the rebuilding process especially if they have communities that survived the process. Humans tend to stick together and find things that work or give a sense of hope, so religion isn't something to be discounted since desperate people will cling to anything; moreso if the Gods are real and can grant them power to overcome their circumstances.

 

[Bear]

One thing that I didn't see mentioned was currency unless I missed it. In the werewolf apocalypse I used booze, drugs, and women as currency. In the dystopian world I didn't put much weight on the currency as people had to earn their keep and were broken down and classified when younger. I would imagine a barter system would be a good source of currency or even treasures from the 'old world'. Radios, pictures, appliances, batteries, ect...


There's also the timeframe of the events. Is it right after the event where people are scrambling for lost bits of goodies from the world they new or is it after a new system of sorts has been set up?

I should mention that writing these things can be a tad depressing.

 

[Queshire]

I mentioned currency in the thread on currency as it seemed to fit better there. Basically the major currency besides simple bartering is magical crystals the size of an average rock. They're either scavanged from the guts of the magi-technological ruins of the pre-apocalpyse or mined from areas with high concentrations of magic. Both very dangerous prospects as high levels of magic attract monsters.

These crystals are essentially magical batteries. They're used to power magitech devices, serve as ammo for weapons, get ground up and used in potions, all kinds of things.

I'm considering having rarer varieties of these crystals not used as currency but with magical properties. So far I've considered elemental crystals, so a fire crystal could heat up your home in winter or light a campfire, while a water crystal might purify water. Also I'm considering including an unstable version of the crystal which would be the magical equivilent of uranium. However I'm worried that this alternative versions of the crystals wouldn't serve much of a point in regards to the plot and would only serve to clutter up the story. What do you think?

I always can't decide on a name, originally they were shards, but now I'm considering jewels, gems, crystals, or the more punny jouwels.

 

[Bear]

Kind of makes me think of a Final Fantasy game.

 

[Queshire]

As for timeframe, the story is basically Fallout meets D&D, so the world's still stupidly dangerous, but there's well fortified cities, wild-west esque villages, and so on. They're starting to rebuild but don't have anything bigger then the occasional city-state.

EDIT: Fallout meets Final Fantasy would also be an accurate discription.

 

[Saigonnus]

Even the "dangerous" aspects among known elements now are used for something (or at least we try and think of something to use it for.) So danger isn't really a factor to consider for human behavior.

Maybe the corrupted crystals come from those areas of wild magic left over from the cataclysm and can have unforeseeable effects depending on where they come from and how close to the "epicenter" they are. A normal fire crystal could be useful to heat homes, make flamethrowers etc. What if the corrupted crystal near the edge forced the crystal to shoot wildly out of control and one near the center cancels out the effects of other similar crystals nearby. A particularly corrupt lord with knowledge on how to control a corrupted crystal could easily extort money from his subjects for a "restoration" of those heating powers in the dead of winter.

 

[JCFarnham]

Stuff it I'll post using my phone.

In fact remove the magic and replace it with scifi and you'll find my post-post-apocalypse setting is really rather the same (the difference being the plot isn't your fallout meets ff but something more like a "jovial the road" (if you can imagine that ridiculous thought hah) meets all good space opera... And probably final fantasy.. I'm playing ffxiii-2 so, you know how it is.)

I've found with regards to the cataclysm (typical nuclear fallout naturally) either no one really knows or the people who do know are trying to keep the rest of us from panicking. To this end we are in the unique position of being able to make it up... As long as we pay attention to half lives (shorter half life = more active being the rule there as far as I can tell).

On the research side of things I had a research forum thread I believe. Been too long since I checked if it was on this site and not elsewhere then you should check it out if fallout cataclysms are your thing.

The currency issue is an important one. In the case of any event like thus the economy would probably be utterly knackered.

The second important thing to think about is disease. Thyroid cancers in the case of fallout. Viruses if that's your cataclysm of choice. Make sure you work it through. Think of the strain on the health care system.. if they still have one.

It's a big area and depending on the plot you'll need to think about things more or less given context and tone.

I want to say more but I'd need my notes.

 

[Struddles]

1/3. Anything 50-70 years would be best imo simply because you can have the disaster for a good chunk and a much smaller portion as a rebuilding. 40 years of terribleness eventually led to 10 years of rebuilding society or even longer up to you really and how much you actually destroy. Like something that is capable of wiping out a massive portion of your population say 70% would take much longer to recovery then something that destroys 15-20%

3. 10% of the population is not very much I'll use us as an example there are like 7 billion people on earth give or take. At 10% you would be killing 700 million. May seem like wow huge numbers but that's roughly half the population of a country like China or India whilst leaving the rest of the world virtually unaffected. Even if you took 10% of every country in the world it would be somewhere around 30 million people in the united states alone which is quite tragic yes and would classify as an epidemic but would society collapse and completely fall apart. I doubt it especially if it wasn't the fault of the government or wasn't due to some form of war of some sort. I wouldn't really consider 10% apocalyptic but more of an epidemic..... Just a personal opinion but anything that wipes out half of a population is apocalyptic!

4. I can't really see society being any different then you suggested. Especially if peace and rebuilding has just recently begun to occur. Outsiders would generally not be welcome especially when recolonizing is occurring. With any significant loss of people those that are generally not always the kindest of people are usually the ones to survive. People that do whatever it takes to survive live and those that can't will die. It's Darwinism at it's finest.

5. Handle it however you want. There will always be people that agree or disagree with it but it is your own world to create that you can fill with whatever you want. I would be careful with how its done as generally fighting based on solely religion can be quite tricky. Yes it has been done in real world situations but I myself look at those people laugh and call them absolute morons. Anyone that kills because their religion commands them to is, and I can't stress enough how this is just my opinion, an absolute psychopath. Religion generally came about to give people a sense of what comes after death. No one wants to believe that you live and then die and that's it. Life would be unbearable if that was the truth and everyone knew it. Religion and gods were created to explain what people couldn't understand and to give them hope in something greater or beyond death besides being home to all kinds of bugs and such. I personally could give two shits about religion since I feel it causes more issues then it resolves but if that's going to be the main driving force behind your story its absolutely perfect since people will literally go to war over the dumbest stuff and religion is right at the top of that list!

(And that's not a shot at people who are religious I'm speaking entirely on a fantasy basis of how I look at it.)