Why The 50s?

[Manchu]

The 50s aren't especially dark, even as measured against the immediately preceding decade. To the contrary, the key is that the period was especially bright - and that, all the same, this light (ideological, technological, industrial) did nothing to banish the darkness. That contradiction generates a sense of absurdity. The notion that the source of hope and the source of disaster might actually be the same thing is manifest in the fantasy of nuclear apocalypse. Atomic power and atomic fire were one and the same. And atomic fire was itself darkness, or rather the un-light that revealed the greater darkness within ourselves. Hence the trope of the radioactively mutated cannibal raider.

In reality, the response to this absurdity was counterculturalism. The post-apoc genre itself is not coincidentally a vehicle for critique of modern forms of authority, technological hubris, and commercialism/materialism - everything "square." Certainly by the 1980s, although some artists perceived this much earlier, dystopian fiction no longer required the excuse of an apocalyptic disaster; society merely needed to keep heading down the path it was already on. You can see this theme in pictures such as Mad Max (i.e., the first film), Dawn of the Dead, Alien, Bladerunner, Aliens, Terminator, and RoboCop.

It's the squareness of the 50s - one might use that term to refer to the special tension between soaring confidence in material progress and the preoccupation with massive destruction that said progress might demand.

[Cherno]

*Which brings us back to George Miller and the Australian input. Looking back, Mad Max is an incredibly prescient film, prefiguring the HIV epidemic that was rolling across the globe but was yet to have a convenient scientific handle attached to it. All those of acres of leather clad flesh, straight from a Tom of Finland drawing, with a chisel jawed and oh so butch Mel Gibson in the lead. More homo-erotic content than a convoy of Priscillas and all set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic near future.

No kidding. Wez' partner went by the name "The Golden Youth" and the bikers were called the "Smegma Boys" 

[Machinegunkelly]

This paradox created what I'd propose to be the hallmark of the post-apocalyptic genre: wry, fatalistic humor.

I do not agree to that this is the hallmark of the PA genre. There are several different PA settings that do not share wry, fatalistic humor as its core. I don´t think that you can even set hallmarks on large genres like Sci-fi, Fantasy or PA, they are to diverse in themselves. I also think that by saying this point in history are the only point we can build a PA setting from is a bit silly. We can´t let history define the borders of our imagination (insert quote from The Never Ending Story here).
Just as fantasy has its roots in the medieval/ Dark Ages but evolves to the point that it is found in most genres, PA has its roots in our modern history and evolves from it, as we find new ways.

[Corporal Chaos]

I am finding this very very interesting. I’d like to put in my bit with no actual reference to any specific period. What I see as the PA backdrop is an extremely advanced society that self destructs. Be it the 1950 jump off point or 3950. From what I have read here and believing that the world felt it was on the cutting edge of technological developments someone somewhere dropped the ball and drove life back to the basics. Culled the human race backwards but still managed to cling to our vices and instinct to survive. 2% of the population is still quite a big slice of diversity and curiosity. Knowledge and resources will be there to be relearned and reclaimed. I hope I am contributing here and not rambling. I bet even Phil Collins CD’s will still be found 

[Manchu]

@Machinegunkelley

"Post-apocalyptic" is actually very narrow sub(-sub-sub)-genre, especially when compared to the expansiveness of a genre concept like "fantasy." Fantasy, after all, just means fiction with a fantastical premise. Even science-fiction, itself a huge category, is a sub-genre of fantasy. PA is more like "cyberpunk" as a genre. And like cyberpunk, it's rooted in a specific point of real history. As far as I can tell, PA is as inextricably linked to a certain perspective on the 1950s(/early 1960s) as cyberpunk is to the (late 1970s/)1980s.

@Corporal Chaos

Yes I think you're on the right track. If you want to replace 1950 with 3950, for the purposes of mapping out your post-apoc setting, then you need to depict 3950 as basically a future analog to 1950. It needs to be an era that would be mourned if it was destroyed but, at the same time, an era whose demise was inherent to its very worth.

[Arlequín]

All points taken onboard and very interesting they are too!

Our view of PA seems very much shaped by location, or indeed what might provide a setting. The U.S. and Australia have the benefit of land area, so conceivably and even if society breaks down, there is a future of some type. Even with such imagined scenarios as 'The Day After' providing hope.

Back in the UK of the '80s there was no such thought, as 'Threads' and 'When the Wind Blows' amply demonstrate. That said I don't recall ever losing sleep over it and most people I knew just believed we might wake up dead one day and that was that. I'm sure letters were wrote to the Times about lefty defeatism at the BBC and CND increased its membership all the same.

In contrast there was more fear during the Cuban Missile Crisis, my Mom was apparently petrified at the time, yet the '80s scaremongering didn't phase her.

[commissarmoody]

Cant say I fully agree with you as to what can be considered post apoc. The Metro series is a post apoc sociological take on post Soviet Russia.
 Where as book series such as Terry Brooks Shannara fantastical science fiction set in a post apoc setting most likely inspired by Tolkien fantasy renaissance of the 70s and atomic destruction.
Or Michal Moorcock's  Hawkmoon  fantastical science fiction set in a post apoc current era and as is much of the Eternal Champion series which deals with destruction and rebirth of many versions of earth. Of course these books fall into the 1950 and sixties youth generations views on politics and world.

Most of the zombie genre is often times a post apocalyptic setting that some times provides commentary on sociological views of the time in which it was made.  
Battlefield Earth is a post apocalyptic setting.

Hell one can argue that the old Edgar Burroughs Barsoom, Lovecraft, and Robert Howard's many settings set many of the early post apocalyptic tropes.

I am sorry that my thoughts are a little disjointed, but I believe that there are many ways the world could end and just as many ways that people can be inspired to live after that event.  We are just more exposed to the post atomic age and 1980s punk apocalypse do to movies and videos games. The pink mowhawk raider tribes version is just a lot easier and exciting to write about then a dissertation about how societies and people live in the new normal.
I being a kid of the 80's and growing up in a military community fallow more of the twilight 2000 setting then say water world punk pirates.  

[FramFramson]

Just going to throw this hand-grenade in: Ralph Bakshi's Wizards 

[warlord frod]

Another reason for the 50's feel to some PA settings is the influence of the many 1950's horror films like "Them" (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957) Attack of the Crab Monster (1957) The Atomic Kid (1954) On the Beach (1959) Set in Australia interestingly enough.

The reason so many settings seem to be in America or Australia I think is because both had a brief "Wild West" period in their history that has its own Mythos with roving bandits wild savages and everyone carried a weapon or two Heros anti-heroes and bad guys.

Commissarmoody - Thanks for pointing out Shannara's PA foundations most people miss that I think.

[Kamandi]

on a slight tangent, As Arlequin pointed out in the 50's the delivery method of an atomic bomb was a bomber aircraft.
Having watched some excellent documentaries on the V series of bombers (the aircraft Carlos alluded to in his post) I would love to see some sort of atomic world war III bomber wargame. Better yet a near orbit space based atomic bomber wargame with extrapolated 50's ish tech.
For me far more interesting than the aftermath.

[carlos marighela]

on a slight tangent, As Arlequin pointed out in the 50's the delivery method of an atomic bomb was a bomber aircraft.

Having watched some excellent documentaries on the V series of bombers (the aircraft Carlos alluded to in his post) I would love to see some sort of atomic world war III bomber wargame. Better yet a near orbit space based atomic bomber wargame with extrapolated 50's ish tech.

For me far more interesting than the aftermath.

Get yerself a copy of the excellent 'Empire of the Clouds' it's about the British aircraft industry in the post war years. Book Grocer had hardback copies for a fiver a while back.

I too am fascinated by the V bombers. Vulcans and Victors are dead sexy, the make the B-52 look like what it is, an oversized, tooled-up passenger jet. Macabre it might be but I'd happily play a game featuring the V bomber force.

[commissarmoody]

Commissarmoody - Thanks for pointing out Shannara's PA foundations most people miss that I think.

Which always boggles my mind! 
Hell even the teeny bopper MTV series, based off of it got that part right. 

[Tactalvanic]

Don't forget the "Black Buck" operations, a quick google brings up several documentaries, and there was an excellent book about them some years ago (ok probably more than one..)

In relation to PA settings, surely the method of achieving apocalyptic levels of destruction sufficient for the setting are as varied as our imagination desires, and although we primarily look at it from the viewpoint of the "current" modern era, which arguably stems from that pre-war period onward in its current development, related to our own destructive capabilities, it can effectively be set as suggested in any sufficiently developed society capable of perceiving the period after the destruction event as apocalyptic?

Primarily the society and structure of it, its history and current structures when destroyed will have shaped the attitudes and behaviours of its supposed survivors who would primarily want to survive and preserve something of what they new before.
- for comfort/succour/familiarity at the least.

Lets face it the Dinosaurs theoretically achieved it without actually even trying, or possibly being intelligent or directly involved beyond being present at the right time/place -  wiped out by an apocalyptic event. Job done.

I guess my viewpoint is 'what period and what society do I want to destroy, what where they like then - how would it be for those left after?' and build from there.

That's also going to be affected by where the society is and the peoples involved. For instance

http://www.sssscomic.com/

has an interesting twist, from my "English" point of view.

[Daeothar]

As Commissar Moody already briefly mentioned, Twilight:2000 is, for me, the most probable (early) post apocalyptic setting. Although we should also look at how much time has passed since 'the Event'.

So, directly after a hypothetical WW3 (cold war gone hot), Twilight:2000 would be the most realistic setting. Obviously, one could transpose such a setting to whatever period one likes, but the core is that the technology level that existed just prior to 'the Event' would still be in existence and over time be more and more sought after.

Eventually, as manufacturing and maintainance capabilities slowly erode away, technology levels would start dropping and a setting more like Mad Max or Fall Out would become the norm.

It might even be possible that, due to modern technology failing, there would be pockets of society falling back on older tech that can be maintained without modern manufacturing processes. Think the feudal knightly society in the movie Doomsday for instance (which happens to co-exist with a full blown anarchic Mad Max-escque gang further along the road.

The Mad Max tribes in said movie were bound to die out eventually, leaving just the villages and castles of the 'knights', because those could be maintained with just manual labour and some low-tech tools.

So in my mind, in any post-apocalyptic setting, there would first be a clinging on to the old technology and when that fades and becomes more dear, chaos would reign, but only briefly, as eventually survivors would settle for a lower tech setting, making do with what they have and can.

The book (and film) The Road shows us a tiny glance at the transition from the second to the third stage at the very end of the story.

Of course this would, in time, assure that society and technology levels would rise again, possibly coming full circle to the point where a new apocalypse would throw people down the ladder once more, for them to rise yet again in an everlasting cycle of destruction and renewal (which might eventually lead to the Shannara Chronicles perhaps?)

Oh, and obviously, the entire Planet of the Apes setting is a post apocalyptic setting as well, neatly supporting my above ideas of decline and eventual rise after an apocalypse (albeit with a different species becoming dominant).

[Doug ex-em4]

In contrast there was more fear during the Cuban Missile Crisis, my Mom was apparently petrified at the time, yet the '80s scaremongering didn't phase her.

Totally agree on that one - I was at school during the Cuban episode and we were very aware of the possibilities. Nothing after that really registered in the same way although Dr Strangelove (the film) did make people think twice, albeit whilst laughing a lot.

Doug