POST-APOCALYPTICS UNITE!

I am *this* close to scrapping my entire idea for this year and going with my post-apocalyptic idea that has been running around in my head for at least a year.

...Haven't actually decided to do that yet, but either way, I'll be watching to see what you guys come up with. Because I love post-apocalyptic fiction, perhaps a bit too much.

This is my first year here.

OK, that said, I don't dare try coming up with any ideas just yet. I won't be able to put them aside until November.

So far, I have ended the world through global economic collapse, massive storms, and biological weapons.

Its fun, destroying the world over and over again!

I love post-apoc! Beside dark-humor alagory type stories, a good after-the-end book absolutely hits the spot for me. I'm personally not writting one, but one of my friends wrote part of one last year featuring zombies.
I've got a few ways the world could end:
-global warming floods the coasts, creating global starvation and chaos
-drastic climate change, such as a sudden reversion to dessert type terrain
-good old wraith-of-God (despit my being sevearly un-religios, i love this kind of symbolic stuff)
-meteor strikes, destroying 3/4 of basically everything on earth
Anyway, good luck!

Count me in - although I've already got my world-ending plotline primed for action. In the wireless world we are growing into, an aggressive virus gets transmitted to virtually everything from cars and cell phones to washing machines and toasters. Every attempt to clean it out gets thwarted by the multitude of appliances that can reinstall a resistant strain and start the infection over.

Finally, a last ditch attempt succeeds but at great cost. President authorizes low-yield airbursts over the US to creat an EM pulse that destroys just about every IC circuit and printed circuit board all at once. Even the stuff in boxes. The US goes dark for a long, long time.

My story begins about 7-10 years later, when the powers that be have recovered to the point where it is time to reunite the isolated parts of the country one city at a time, but some are not quite as willing to give up their hard work and self-sufficiency for a chance at returning to technology.

I'm planning on writing about a third world war where practically all hell breaks loose XD
so plenty of room for post-apocalyptic stuff there!!! :D

I'm not doing post-apocalyptic this year - just chiming in with my love for the genre! Although at the rate I'm going through plots, it's still a possibility.

Ways to end the world, #57: ennui. 99% of the world's population decides, all at the same time, "screw it, I'm going to sit here until I rot." The economy collapses, infrastructure breaks down, and there are no riots because no-one can be bothered.

Eee! *jumps up and down* Me! I have no idea what's going to happen in mine but I love, love LOVE apocalyptic stuff.

I love post-apocalyptic~ so cheerful.

Mine might be post-apocalyptic. Or it might not.

I have issues. D:

*laughs* Who doesn't? ;)

My stories always end up taking place in the immediate pre-apocalypse period. Don't really have any ideas for this year (unlike last year where i had my detailed outline prepared by this point). I do like the idea of interdimensional invaders trying to reclaim 'their' planet by setting up interdimensional exclaves, which clearly wreaks havoc.

Over the years I've been writing, if only in my head at times, it has manly been in one loosely connected world. However, I always seem to pick up the storyline as everything comes crashing down once again. The post-apocalyptic part of the cycle fascinated me much more than the building it all anew or golden age. Though my story will start at post apocalyptic, it will end in the building phase. Of course when that age falls, apocalypse will be back!

I love post-apocalyptic fiction! The only Stephen King novel that has really stuck with me is The Stand.

This is my first Nano, and I'm going to be writing a post-apocalyptic vampire novel - that's also an erotic romance. Heh. I have so many genres going on, I don't know how I'm going to cram it all in. I got my apocalypse idea from the adopt-a-plot thread, but I can't believe I've never thought of it before, because I've learned about the phenomena in a bunch of my classes at uni. Basically, every few millenia or so, there is a magnetic pole reversal (because of reasons no one quite understands.) Some scientists think that at some point during the transition there will actually be no magnetic field at all, which would do all kinds of things, from messing with birds' navigation to weakening animals' and humans' immune systems to actually reducing the earth's protection from solar radiation to the point where most people die of cancer. My novel will take place about 100 years after civilization falls due to this occurence, where nearly everyone has died except for people whose genes cause them to be fairly resistant to cancer. And then there will be vampires. And sex. Haven't quite decided how those are going to fit in, but it's gonna rock.

Yep.
Mine's a post-apocalyptic science fiction.
=3
Good luckk.

Like someone else posted, mine is after a world war. All the resources have been used/destroyed in the war and/or neutralized by climate change. People lose or find religion, governments are toppled. Then aliens arrive...

Some other ways to end it all (sorry if these were mentioned earlier):
Meteor strike
Sun dimming or getting hotter(don't know if this is possible)
Severe drought
Bacterial or viral plague
Super volcano
Unstoppable fungus wipes out all of our crops

Thanks for starting this thread! We need a forum of our own!

Like someone else posted, mine is after a world war. All the resources have been used/destroyed in the war and/or neutralized by climate change. People lose or find religion, governments are toppled. Then aliens arrive...

Some other ways to end it all (sorry if these were mentioned earlier):
Meteor strike
Sun dimming or getting hotter(don't know if this is possible)
Severe drought
Bacterial or viral plague
Super volcano
Unstoppable fungus wipes out all of our crops

Thanks for starting this thread! We need a forum of our own!

Wow can't believe anyone mentioned this one.

Zombie Apocalypse!

Seriously though I enjoy just about any post apocalyptic world story. Don't know If I'm going to write one though.

So many ways to end the world, so little time!

I don't know what I am going to be writing next month, but my muse seems to have some ideas. (I won't let her share them with me yet, though.)

Hell yes! I'm glad to see so many post-apoc'ers again this year!

I wrote a post-apocalyptic western last year, complete with unscrupulous cowboys and slightly unhinged law-men. Kind of like "Firefly" meets "Mad Max", only in Utah. This year, I just had to write the genre again. Though this time around, it's alternative history steampunk post-apoc. So I'm dabbling a bit in the steampunk thread, too.

My catastrophic event that plunges the world into delicious disarray is the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera. Red skies, falling ash, toxic wind- mix in some corsets, steam-powered whatnot, trains and gas-mask-lookin' devices that suck your soul out! It's roughly 100 years after the event.

Last year, my main character was a serial killer with amnesia and no tongue. This year my supporting character is a serial killer with a blood disease. I think I'm going with a theme here. Come to think of it, three of my four NaNos have been post-apocalyptic, since the one I wrote in 2004 was a during-and-post zombie epidemic featuring video store clerks as a band of survivors.

I just finished reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. If you like post-apoc- and you must, since you're here- I *highly* recommend picking it up. It's easily one of the most disturbing, haunting, beautiful books I've ever read. Completely different in the realm of creative apocalyptic stuff, because the world McCarthy presents is painfully, utterly desolate and sparse.

That is an awesome idea, RA Uscher!

Have other countries used EMP blasts to knock out the electronics? Or did they deal with it a different way? Is America isolated as a result? I'm really curious how your story is going to play out!

I just ordered The Road!

I actually have an urban fantasy idea that I've been working with for the past two weeks... but today after seeing "30 Days of Night," I was struck by a vague concept for a post-apocalyptic novel... Dilemma... scrap the old idea and run with the new... or set it aside for post-nano playing.....

Awesome, you will not be disappointed. It's an amazing book.

Always such a difficult decision! I had four plots all vying for my attention and ultimately settled on this one- which was funny because for the past two months I'd been planning on writing a Literary Fiction novel and then this other idea- from about four years ago- snuck up and pounced on my poor brain.

What's your concept for your post-apocalyptic story? Is there any way you could combine that one with the urban fantasy?

Mostly I was struck by the violence of the movie and it made me think of the recent trend of 'torture porn' movies - a la Saw and Hostel.... and wondered what if the Earth's population became more increasingly violent until apocalypse - world war destroying civilization as we know it... There was also an advert for Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem, and I've always loved Ripley from the original Aliens series... a female hero with her brand of practicality strikes me as fun to write for a month. :)

It's not really a fully fledged idea - I've never really given post-apocalyptic fiction much thought before! But as you say, it is possible I could consider ways to merge it with elements of the urban fantasy concept.... *wiggles nose* Much to ponder in the next week and a half.

I think I've finally settled on an idea for my first Nano, and I suppose you could call it post-apocalyptic...sort of. The idea in its infancy: A severe climate change or meteor strike makes the entire United States, outside of the southeast, unlivable. So thousands and thousands of people are forced to migrate to the South.

Chaos, fish-out-of-water, cultural clash, social commentary. The ridiculousness is inherent, so there will definitely be a lot of humor addressing how Southerners view the rest of the country and vice versa. I'll completely fail at the logistics of the ramifications on the economy and government, but otherwise I feel like it gives me a good chance at 50,000 words.

I am having *such* a hard time coming up with this year's plot.

I have discovered how the apocalypse comes about... and have a couple of vague MCs... but that's about it. I'm so lost and overtired and I'm starting to panic because November is just over a week away... I wanted to be so dedicated this time but now I don't have a computer... or much of a story!

/rant

I love this thread... I love this genre! The absolute best there is. I even studied utopian/dystopian fiction in University, it ended up being the best class I took.

As for what I do have for an idea, I think it's going to be Frank Miller's Sin City-inspired... with reminiscences of the Resident Evil movies, Jeremiah, and I don't know what else.

Any ideas you guys would like to see?

*gets on her knees and begs*

it's funny, i was working on a post-apocalyptic story before october and it has been delayed for my nano, but i do wanna include some post-apocayptics elements on it, the atmosphere growing darker as the story progresses.

I think I'm writing one o.O Not sure.... I'm weird that way LOL.

I'm writing one where its a war torn future and a group of teens are fighting against a new evil.... a club called The New Age.... Completely random lol.

Anyway, just wanted to post here, I'd like some pointers.... Its going to be a supernatural story :3 GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!

10 MORE DAYS =3

I'm doing this too. I wasn't going to kill off nearly as much as humanity as I will be, but the I read "The Road" and decided most of humanity had to go!

And there will be superheroes!

I'm writing Post-Apoc, but I can't decide which plot idea to follow. I have so far

-Rapture with a Twist : people are raptured but solely on the basis of having done good works, not faith (or lack thereof or a particular flavor). The Anti-Christ leads the remaining "christians" on a crusade to "pacify" the world, which works because they follow him, because he's not preaching peace so he [i]can't[/i] be the Anti-Christ.

-Interstellar War : five terraformed planets in another solar system are colonized by religious groups (a la Plymouth), some Christian, some Muslim, some Hindu, as well as economic interests (a la Jamestown) particularly mining. Unfortunately, another group of would-be colonizers, now dependent on raiding passing space ships, eventually end up invading. The incipient war balkanizes the system, turning the different religious groups on one another, eventually turning a would-be invasion into a century-long civil war, with complicated nuances between three religious factions.

-Fractured Space Time-Continuum-Thing : this universe and another "collide" causing some interesting things to happen. People who exist in both sort of explode, since they attempt to absorb both worlds experiences and locations, causing their bodies to rupture. Everyone else (a majority) is trapped on a broken earth, where Himilaya-esque mountain ranges now rise out of the Torres Straits, an entire section of the Pacific Ocean's water disappears without reason, much of Saudi Arabia's empty quarter turns to glass, and other incomprehensible, unpredictable disasters occur. Did I mention that a slow but steady magnetic "tsunami" is threatening to blast the planet's surface with EMP putting us back in the Dark Ages for good?

-Continue Last Year's Nanowrimo : it followed the escapades of a young girl in a small rural country unfortunately located between two bloodthirsty empires. In addition to proxy wars, she has to deal with "minor" genocides, political oppression, environmental degradation, and the general deterioration of society in that region.

-Same World, Different Locale : I could also write on a seperate area of the same world I've come up with. The biggest issues are where and when. I leaning towards writing about a slightly later period in a nearby region, when it slowly crumbles during a drought. To summarise it briefly, the farmers then demand more land, and end up taking it from the hunter-gatherers, and when that's not enough end up scapegoating the surviving ethnic minority leading to genocide. Compounding the issue, the empires mentioned above exile political dissidents into this region, destabilizing it, ultimately leading the empires into "murder marches", or military expeditions into the area, while killing everything in their path, and then the exact same procedure going out. This keeps the noise down for awhile but eventually just makes things worse. I could also do the beginning of the world, when the would-be colonizers failed to successfully supplant themselves, and ultimately resorted to cannibalism to survive. Y'know the fun stuff.

-Akkad : I also tossed around the idea of a story that weaves together the collapse of a remote Mesopotamian village during drought and extreme deforestation, and the geopolitical problems of the modern middle east, using the ruins site as a springboard into both. I was thinking of ending with a proxy war leading to the destruction of most of the world's access to oil, and an incipient mass panic/collapse.

Ideas? Halp!

Oh man, I can't wait to get started. It figures I'd be between jobs in October instead of November :-p Ah well, at least I've had plenty of time to outline.

I suppose mine is post-apocalyptic. I don't think I'll fully explain what happened at any point in the story. There's some foreign army groups that are stuck and can't go home due to their countries being bombed. There's a disease that was released in all the cities during the war, but because it's wiped out so many people by this point it's been mostly contained so the survivors aren't concerned about it anymore. And then, there's a brutal religious group who think it's their moral duty to repopulate the earth by any means necessary. So, the world's not really ending, but humanity might be.

The story's less about all those things, though, and more about the main character desperately trying to hold the remnants of her family together (but her brother will betray her in the end).

ohdearyoucouldnt: Lots of great ideas there! I like the fractured space time continuum one the best - nobody has any control over what happens, and anything could happen.

I was thinking of doing a steampunk apocalypse scenario in London. I am just not sure what could have caused the aforementioned disaster. I want to avoid the religious thing, I was thinking global war, or maybe a steampunk terminator scenario? What do you think?