Why The 50s?

[commissarmoody]

http://www.sssscomic.com/

I had forgotten about Stand still stay silent. I have some catching up to do.

[Manchu]

To me, overlaying a [global catastrophe] template over whatever unrelated fantastical (or historical) setting doesn't necessarily result in a post-apoc setting. Cataclysms are part of many settings for the simple fact that they represent dramatic turning points, which may or may not be directly relevant to the story at hand. For example, in Star Trek, humanity lived in the shadow of apocalyptic disaster prior to discovery of warp drive/contact with the Vulcans. Yet, if you look at the way this society was portrayed in First Contact, we're not talking about a post-apoc story. In fact, it's just the reverse.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Ah, if you want Mad Max style PA in Star Trek, have a look at the first episode of TNG.

[Manchu]

Yeah I well remember Q's court. Again, point thereof was subversion of post-apoc genre.

[Arlequín]

True, but such things more usually depict a repressive dystopia (flavour to taste) as the outcome re-built society. H.G. Wells' 'Things to come' and Star Trek being two obvious exceptions where things turned out sort of nice after the Apocalypse, with TNG offering hugs and counselling on top of that.

One theme for me that did stand out for me in TNG, was the constant nostalgia for the Pre-PA Earth, evidenced by all the 20th Century themed hobbies and holo-deck programmes.

[Manchu]

And remember when Kirk and Bones are talking about how great Khan was, to Spock's consternation?

[Arlequín]

There's probably a lesson meant there. 

Venerating and revising historical personality cults is hardly unknown to us today. I think the more removed from their time we are, the more dissonant we are from their reality and the potential for them to become heroic figures rises. The opposite would also work, so a benign individual in his own time could find his legacy being a malignant one; s you might end up with the Death Cult of Ghandi for example.

I recall that in Brendan DuBois's Resurrection Day, JFK was popularly demonised for 'starting WWIII'; a war that effectively devastated the U.S. and turned it into a third world power, despite having followed his historic stance in the Cuban Missile Crisis, albeit with things not working out how they did in reality. No spoilers just in case anyone decides to give it a go.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Have a look at the output of Andre Norton. Though possibly not written in a shared universe, there are a number of novels that share a common backstory of WWW3 and rebuilding (humans are popular as mercenaries for off world masters - weapons regulation means that equipment they use varies).

The Long Night is a popular theme for star faring stories, Andre Norton, David Drake, The Great Womble all have used the concept. Traveller has it s well.

[carlos marighela]

"you might end up with the Death Cult of Ghandi for example."

Well I wouldn't call them a 'death cult'  per se, it's a carnaval bloco and one of the most popular and long standing ones at that. A lot of famous folk, including Gilberto Gil, have appeared with them. In truth, its formation does hint at the creativity and weirdness of the human mind. I suspect Mahatma would have been quite chuffed had he lived to see them.

[tinfoilknight]

Your timelines a bit off on mass movement which really kicked in during the 70s not the 50s. I would propose that this is the post apocalyptic world you're looking for and we're slowly heading towards it.

Mass movement is exactly that, any one can move any where. This means the barbarians are free to travel just as much as the civilized scholar is. And the barbarian has more of a need to travel than the scholar does, he may have a criminal record, be wanted for a crime or may just see a place he can steal better things at. These barbarians will then move into the scholar's civilized world and tear it apart piece by piece. Higher crime rates, new forms of violence not used in that area before, tribal gangs forming in order to increase power gains by the barbarians and other tribes have to band together to form their own rival groups to defend against this barbarians.

I would propose we're living in a cyberpunk style dystopia with gangs of barbarians on the loose. In my home town for example we went from having never heard of an acid attack to them becoming a regular form of random violence. Kids on mopeds driving up to people, throwing acid on them and stealing their phone. If that isn't post apocalypse behaviour then I don't know what is. And this type of violence is increasing year on year. There are literally barbarian biker gangs mugging people.

I want to make it clear I'm not pointing fingers at any single group here. I'm simply pointing out how where I live could be considered pre-post apocalypse. It's no longer the sleepy town it was where violence was all but unheard of. Now we're seeing knife attacks in broad day light which was unthinkable just 20 years ago. There wasn't some instant over night switch, it was a slow grind where one group of barbarians did something so a rival group copied it and slowly it escalated as more joined the gangs and needed increased levels of violence to deal with these larger gangs.

The short term boom may turn out to be building the slope that leads to our collapse the same way the Roman empire fell. There are many parallels and it's easy to ignore the barbarians when you have food, entertainment and they're not assaulting people where you live yet. It's like the mouse experiment where once they got too much food they simply gave up on civilization, it didn't matter what variables they tried they always fell apart when they got too many easy resources. It was like without a struggle they just gave up and let chaos reign supreme. The good mice retreated to their nests and spent all their time preening themselves while the bad mice ran around mauling each other and screwing.. well like mice until even that stopped and they just all died off.

[FramFramson]

"you might end up with the Death Cult of Ghandi for example."

Fun fact: In the Original "Civilization" video game, there was a bug which affected The Indians, specifically their game leader, Ghandi. He would be all fine and peaceable as you would expect - he began with the game's lowest aggressiveness rating - but due to an overflow programming error - once India acquired nuclear weapons, Ghandi turned into a deranged nuke-flinging maniac with an aggression rating higher than was technically supposed to be possible (it was supposedly a 1-10 range, so his rage was literally cranked to eleven!).

The fans were so amused by the bug, it was deliberately retained in Civilizations II - V (I think they finally took it out in VI, which is sad. boooooooo!)



Anyway, I guess that's yet another way you might start a global nuclear war...