I think it would be fair to say that the world is a pretty scary place, wouldn’t you? The Corona Virus, the War in Ukraine, a crashing economy and video game companies starting to think about implementing play to earn elements for microtransactions leaves a lot of us looking for some escape.
Luckily we’ve got the refreshingly upbeat blanket of pop culture to swaddle ourselves with as we rock back and forth in the corner crying at the current situation.
Well, except for all the games, movies, tv shows and books dedicated to showcasing all the spectacular ways the world can collectively bend over and stare into the brown eye of its future. Now, with that particular brown eye getting closer seemingly every day, I think it’s a good time to start planning for the future.
Obviously, all of you won’t survive the inevitable doomsday scenario (start placing bets on what you think it’ll be) which could be for the best because I’ve been doing some research and I’ve got bad news for you all. Post-apocalyptic worlds suck. There’s never enough resources, sometimes the sun’s covered by smog or an ash cloud and for some reason, the survivors decide that the end of the world is the perfect time to show off their leather fetish when they form roving S&M gangs.
Here are some of the realities from pop culture where you’re going to die as quickly as possible. Pick your favourite scenario and then get to praying because it’s all a downward spiral from here.
The Skynet/Genysis/Legion version of Earth
One of the science fiction genre’s biggest big bads has always been artificial intelligence. For years, writers, filmmakers and audiences have always been worried about the hypothetical moment in time when technology becomes so intelligent that it reaches a point of continual self-improvement resulting in disaster for humanity.
According to diabolical Canadian James Cameron, this singularity results in the human race creating a supercomputer to keep the world safe. Unfortunately, the AI decides that the best way to keep the world safe is to eradicate the human race with one simultaneous nuke strike.
Of course, the nukes don’t get everyone so the survivors form a resistance in order to fight back and take down this super intelligent computer. Naturally, this super computer develops a plethora of killing machines that… well, I’ll let Michael Biehn fill you in.
I don’t know about all of you reading this but I’ve never had to fight for the survival of the human race and I have a strong hunch I wouldn’t be very good at it. And that’s just against fellow thinking feeling human beings not the cold calculating beep boop machines with plasma rifles.
Life expectancy? However long it takes for a hunter killer to find me.
The Wonderfully Wet World of Waterworld
Another popular science fiction big bad would have to be climate change running out of control and all the fun stuff that brings. Seeing as we’re all living out this particular slice of hell at the moment, I thought it was prudent to include one of the more famous movies that tackled this issue and that is Waterworld.
Sorry, I misread that. I meant the infamous movie Waterworld. Yes, the movie that depicts the future as one of endless seas, high octane jet ski battles and pissing in jars probably isn’t the most accurate survival guide (except for that pissing in jars stuff).
The endless seas is the real thing that I want to zero in on with this movie. Endless stretches of water, salt water to be exact. I didn’t study human biology at school but I do happen to know this one simple fact. Human beings can’t process salt water, we don’t have gills so we can’t filter it.
So how do the people in the movie get water to drink? Well remember how I mentioned that pissing in jars thing?
Yeah… good thing there are a whole bunch of pirates to kill me before I have to imitate Bear Grylls too many times.
Life expectancy? However long it takes for the pirates to find me or I need to evacuate my bladder (not long). I mean it’s not like we have Kevin Costner keeping us safe with his special powers of being famous actor Kevin Costner, right? I mean he got taken out by a simple tornado in Man of Steel for goodness sakes!
Pretty much anywhere in the Fallout universe
This one might be considered cheating by you guys seeing as the Fallout series is technically a video game series but it’s got cinematics in between all the murder and death and decay so I’m including it. The series is an alternate history look at the events of the fifties onwards, diverging at 1945 from our history and somehow having everything go to hell much quicker than us.
A whole bunch of resource wars and one big old Great War later the nukes are raining down everywhere just like everyone feared during The Cold War. The survivors go underground in vaults for years only to reemerge and find everyone cosplaying as extras from the Mad Max franchise.
But you can start calling me Billy Mays because that’s not all! The radiation left behind from the nuclear fallout has mutated all the flora and fauna into nightmare creatures to the nth genre. Anyone who’s played the games for long enough will tell you that any of those monsters will ruin your day and your game, especially if you’ve forgotten to save in a while.
Life expectancy? The length of time it takes me to burn through all my ammo or get hungry and eat some irradiated plant.
So, that was an informative discussion, wasn’t it? To be honest none of those options really strike me as scenarios I want to find myself in, they don’t seem like that fun a time… If the end times come along maybe we just all line up and with a signal off the person to the right.
Which post-apocalyptic world would you want to be stuck in? How long do you think you would last? Let me know down below.
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-Rohan