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A somewhat less popular cultural reference could be The Road from McCarthy. Human scavengers roaming what's left, true, but mostly famished and trying to find

• Pxtl 10y ago
  I'm often disappointed in Fantasy/SF settings that completely ignore the most critical question "what the hell do people eat"?. It's one of the most basic functions of life, but because we're blessed to be removed from the frustrating process of avoiding starvation, so many works just ignore the question altogether when discussing a "life is hard" setting.
  • tannhauser23 10y ago
    I'm reading "Farnham's Freehold" by Robert Heinlein which is basically a thought experiment in how to build a pioneer-like society in a post-nuclear war world. It's not a great book, honestly, but it has a lot of material on building shelter and finding food.
    • hguant 10y ago
      Farnham's Freehold was the book that made me lose a lot of respect for Heinlein. I started reading him as a 13-14 year old - books like "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", "Farmer in the Sky", and "Starman Jones" - and ate them up. I got older and my dad recommended "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers"; I really liked reading him alongside Asimov, who did such a great job of going into __how__ people/societies would exist in the future; Heinlein was much better at going into the __why__. The ideas he put forward in "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" formed the basis for some of the best conversations I've had with friends. However. Farnham's Freehold was just ubermensch porn coupled with some really weird racism. He used more hackneyed "I can do everything" stereotypes than an Ayn Rand novel, which is something he was always guilty of but it really came to a head here. The multiculturalism and openness that was so explicitly prevalent in Starship Troopers, Stranger, and Harsh Mistress (the main character of Starship Troopers is a bisexual South American) vanishes, replaced with this weird fear of black people - "they seem nice, but they'll turn on you when they get the chance" is the message the Joe character imparts. Just a very weird book.
      • drak0n1c 10y ago
        Freehold was about trying to get into the mind of a post-apocalyptic survivalist - life in lower states of humanity and tribalistic instincts. The other books were about life in higher states of society and humanity. You can't assume that Heinlein was making a value judgement pro diverse militarism or pro racial survivalism in either book. It's science fiction. The only common attitude that his stories seem to clearly reward and respect is grit.
        • lsc 10y ago
          Point taken, and yes, that is a big difference, but specifically the actions of the black elites were super weird. More weird than you would expect from someone who just postulates that when the chips are down, we run with our race brothers. It was the weirdly sexualized race and gender based cannibalism that I think puts it over the line, not the actions of Joe, except in the context of the former. I mean I see what he was trying to do, but rather than basing his African elites on anthropological evidence, or on real white cultures that were horrible to other races, (which would have gotten his point across better, I think,) he based them on the most disturbing (and to me, last believable or sympathetic) racial fears of the time, and because of that, it is kinda uncomfortable.
          • ethbro 10y ago
            Curious to read it now, especially in the context of its time. 1964 was the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed. I imagine ideas of baser racial instincts were different when there were still lynchings and fear of sexual racial mixing. :(
            • hguant 10y ago
              Reading this reminded me of another great author who had an episode of weird racial views - Stephan King, in The Stand (which is absolutely one of my favourite books), had a chapter where he's detailing the horrors of society breaking down, and one of the events he catalogued was the mutiny of a bunch of black soldiers who then started killing their white compatriots in a grotesque gameshow. That very explicit fear of militant black men dates the book more than anything else. As someone born in the very early 90's, it's weird seeing evidence of people taking seriously these thoughts I've only seen caricatured.
    • angersock 10y ago
      So, I'd suggest a few different books on that topic--Farnham's Freehold not being one of them. Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle goes into a bit of the politics and aftermath of a comet striking the Earth. It talks about survival, civil defense, and a few other things that would be spoilers to mention. That said, it has some points that are weirdly racist when viewed decades after publication--if you can look past those, though, it's a solid read. One Second After by William Forstchen talks about the aftermath of an EMP first-strike on the US. Perhaps the one of the more interesting things is that he does specifically pay attention to both the food and medicine logistics--specifically, what happens when we lack ability to run refrigerators and move around grain. It's a bit cheerful in the end, but a good read. Warday by Strieber and Kunetka takes place 5 years after a "limited" nuclear exchange with the USSR. The premise of the novel is that a pair of researchers are traveling through the US and interviewing folks, reading documents, and generally piecing together both the initial conflict as well as the efforts to survive and recover. It's a really good bit of speculative fiction, but is pretty depressing. ~ One of the biggest things that makes nuclear war difficult to imagine today is that we have the Internet and cell phones, things which at once are utterly integral to most of the non-rural folks and which are completely vulnerable to any sort of honest nuclear strike. The lack of books, CB radios, and basic practical knowhow and repairable goods brought by the rise of technology and international trade might well yield a situation where a theoretical 2020s United States would have a more difficult time recovering than a 1980s US. At least as far as the 'net stuff goes, the short story "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Doctorow is maybe one of the only ones that treats the tech angle seriously in a modern light.
      • tannhauser23 10y ago
        Good suggestions, will check them out. Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed with Farnham's Freehold. I picked it up at a used book store for a dollar - Heinlein! Post-apocalyptic society! - but I haven't enjoyed it very much, and yes, it does get weirdly racial as it goes on. The other books you mention sound much better! Heard great things about Lucifer's Hammer - that'll go to the top of the list.
  • the_af 10y ago
    "The Road" has already been mentioned as a piece of fiction that focuses almost exclusively on food and starvation. Not sure it's explicitly about nuclear war, however. It's also way too hopeless for me. I can't say I enjoyed reading it. A better -- and recent favorite of mine -- sci-fi book about scarce resources and food is "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's not about nuclear war either, but not only is the actual story very engaging, it focuses on how energy is generated and stored, what people eat, and how food is delivered in a post-oil world. Bacigalupi calls this crisis "the Contraction". Warning: more than a few digs at Monsanto as well, not so much from the "transgenics are bad" angle but from the "copyrights and patents on food oppress people". Strongly recommended!
    • craigyk 10y ago
      Windup girl was an amazingly imaginative extrapolation. I do have a bit of a problem with how fatalistic most post-apocalypse works are. I think what would actually emerge would be very messy, but still far more hopeful than depicted. For example, in a The Walking Dead scenario, the first real settlement they found that was semi-secure would have probably grown into a fairly stable city-state. They work hard on that show to keep the rollercoaster going. IMO, tiring and not very realistic.
    • scrumper 10y ago
      You'll enjoy his later book The Water Knife which is exactly about a water-scarce world and the rather grim social sructures that result.
    • swombat 10y ago
      Very much loved The Windup Girl and would recommend it too. Powerful book.
    • sjg007 10y ago
      We will actually have this problem in 50 years... well the developing world will. Too many people and not enough food.
  • mrob 10y ago
    I first saw that question in MrBtongue's YouTube video comparing Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (relevant to discussion of post-nuclear war settings). New Vegas is the better game, and one of the reasons is that it actually does answer the question of what people eat. The rest of the video is also interesting, but "what do they eat?" discussion starts here: https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?t=559 https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?t=559
  • anigbrowl 10y ago
    The grimmer your story, the smaller the market. Thus even though famines are often disastrous human events that can mean the death of millions and frequently alter the course of history, hardly anyone makes movies about them because watching people starve unnecessarily is hardly anyone's idea of a good time. At least in war stories someone gets to be winner, even if it's temporary. In a famine everything gets worse and the only people likely to profit are the people who were already winning at the outset, so there isn't really a story arc. You can do movies like this (The Road, Schindler's List, Dallas Buyer's Club, Hotel Rwanda are all good examples) but if the world of the story is crushingly awful then you're basically reduced to one plot - moral individual risks/sacrifices self to provide glimmer of hope to others. Offhand I'd say you can only put out a truly grim a-list movie about once every 5 years.
    • ethbro 10y ago
      I've always thought this is one of the reasons the zombie survival genre is so popular. For all the dramatic hand wrangling over finding supplies, the survivors are essentially living in a world of plenty -- enough arms, ammunition, canned food, and supplies for a world population, >50% of which presumably no longer have an interest in such things. It's the antithesis of all that "we should compromise for the good of all, saving the planet, etc" (because how does that sound fun?).
      • anigbrowl 10y ago
        Absolutely. The physical anxiety is more than made up for by the blissful simplicity of the new moral calculus.
  • gozur88 10y ago
    From a writer's perspective the problem is a story that mostly consists of people scrabbling for food isn't very interesting, so either you ignore the question or you create a story element that allows you to ignore the question - giant roaches, say, or some kind of food-from-algae technology.
• arethuza 10y ago
  A few years back I started watching Schindler's List and I decided I wanted to watch something a bit less depressing and stumbled onto an evening on Channel 4 that was showing The War Game, The Day After and then Threads..... Edit: The War Game is worth watching - the BBC refused to show it as "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game
  • JonnieCache 10y ago
    Threads has to be the most upsetting film I've seen.
    • rmc 10y ago
      And Threads was based on an optimistic Soviet nuclear attack, i.e. fewer weapons.
      • rbanffy 10y ago
        Nuclear war is the one where "everybody dies" is the best case scenario.
        • ido 10y ago
          Not really. There are definitely scenarios (likely to more probable one) where the nuclear war is not "USA vs Russia/China nuking the entire planet". The article itself suggest a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan would result in 2 billion death (supposedly mostly around India/Pakistan), which means the majority of the worlds population will survive.
      • pmoriarty 10y ago
        Indeed. There was a great article which I can't find now about all the missiles still pointing from the US to Russia and vice versa, where after the fall of the Soviet Union a General formerly in charge of the Soviet arsenal met his British counterpart and assured him that in the Soviet nuclear war preparedness plans, the entire UK was a complete overkill zone.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• aaron695 10y ago
  Pretty sure the Road didn't state what had happened specifically because it has nothing to do with a nuclear war?
  • gaius 10y ago
    Also, The Book Of Eli.
    • senorjazz 10y ago
      no, just no. This was a terrible film. Does not compare at all to the book or film of The Road
      • madenine 10y ago
        SPOILERS: The premise revolved around there being no copies of probably the most printed book on the planet, yet there other books. Even a collective, whose mission is to find all the books and knowledge it can (someone read Asimov), can't find a bible. They found a Torah, but couldn't find a bible. Awful film.
        • jlengrand 10y ago
          Because as part of the plot, it is explained that those were specifically burnt for years (if I remember correctly, because religion was what started the war or something)? Movie's still not great, but there are reasons they don't find Bibles :)
      • gaius 10y ago
        I enjoyed it :-) But in this context I am talking specifically about the post-apocalyptic world, the way the few remaining mass-produced items from before, are now valuable commodities (he says something like, people will kill you now, for something we used to just throw away before The Flash), the barter economy (eg. how he gets his battery recharged), the water, the hand-shakes...
  • grive 10y ago
• overcast 10y ago
  The Road was either a super volcano, or meteor impact, given the scale, and description of things.
  • s_kilk 10y ago
    Yeah, I can't dig up the source now, but I remember a super-volcano (probably Yellowstone) being widely accepted as the most likely source of the disaster.
    • wlkr 10y ago
      That's very interesting, I read the book a few years ago and then watched the film after. Both have stuck with me, particularly some distressing scenes from the book, and yet I never put too much thought into what could have caused the disaster. Given their plight I suppose it didn't matter.
    • astrodust 10y ago
      Compared to a super-volcano, even the worst nuclear winter is brief and pleasant.
    • TheGRS 10y ago
      I remember a scene from the book where he recalls bright lights in the distance? I thought it was a subtle hint that it was nuclear war, but its been awhile. That was my initial interpretation at least.
      • s_kilk 10y ago
        You're right, there's a bit about (paraphrasing) the clocks stopping at 11.30, bright lights in the distance and several low concussions in the ground. Having said that, in the movie the protagonist awakes at night to an orange glow outside, implied to be wild-fires on the horizon. He rushes to the bathroom to begin filling the bathtub with water.
  • brandonmenc 10y ago
    The nature of the disaster was left ambiguous. Only humans survived. No other life. Not at all realistic, but that wasn't the intent.
• Chris2048 10y ago
  > With Trump elected > could mean the end of the non-proliferation treaties So could the US running out of money/power.
  • astrodust 10y ago
    Then that leaves China in charge and I'm not sure that's a good thing.
    • Chris2048 10y ago
      Doubt it, China seems mainly interested in its own borders, Russia might be the one to watch...
      • RandomOpinion 10y ago
        >"China seems mainly interested in its own borders, ..." Yes, clearly they're building those island bases in the South China Sea just because they feel like they don't have enough oceanfront real estate. /s https://www.google.com/search?q=china+island+bases+map https://www.google.com/search?q=china+island+bases+map
        • Chris2048 10y ago
          South China Sea.
          • RandomOpinion 10y ago
            Didn't even bother to look at the maps, did you? Some of those bases are inside territorial waters allotted to the the Philippines by UN rules, within spitting distance of the main Phillippine islands, and also within easy striking range of Malaysia and Brunei. Here's a diagram for those who are interested: http://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/5464158/data/south-china-sea-map-slide-4-data.jpg http://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/5464158/data/south-china-sea-map.... Note how close the China claim line extends to various other nations.
• golergka 10y ago
  > With Trump elected, Europe is turning to itself for its defence Are you really trying to say that Trump, and not Putin, is the primary reason for this? Also, I thought that political threads were banned on HN now; aren't they?
  • usrusr 10y ago
    > Are you really trying to say that Trump, and not Putin, is the primary reason for this? Sure. The NATO of old was facing off against much stronger opposition than Putin today, without even the slightest trace of doubt in commitment coming up. Trump is certainly not the only factor that erodes trust in NATO deterrence (Brexit, Erdogan and NATO overexpansion are other important contributors to the general uneasiness), but he is the most visible one. Visible cracks are bad because there will always be people (on all sides!) who see personal incentive to widen them and if they succeed, the mere thought that limited scope wars could be possible will endanger peace.
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Are you really trying to say that Trump, and not Putin, is the primary reason for this? If Trump is part of the mechanism, Putin is still the reason.
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>Also, I thought that political threads were banned on HN now; aren't they? No, the "ban" was temporary, and lifted only a few days after it was put in place.
  • Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    > Are you really trying to say that Trump, and not Putin, is the primary reason for this? Not sure why you're being downvoted, it's a good question. The way I see it, it's an overall pandemic of malaise, a regression to a more primal state, affecting the "West" primarily, but certainly influencing the whole world to some extent. Brexit is a symptom. The Trump madness is a symptom. Le Pen is a symptom. Putin has been a symptom and an instrument and an agent for a long time. ISIS is an example outside of the West of the same thing. Fear and lies. Facts don't matter anymore, truth is being trampled into the ground, and the world's state of mind is gradually turning dark. Where violence has an opportunity, it breaks out. Fortunately, not much of this has been translated into material consequences (except for ISIS and so on), but at the psychological level it's really bad. If it stays mostly on that level, then perhaps there is a way out eventually.
• ComputerGuru 10y ago
  I must watch Threads given all the talk about it in this thread, but I guess I'll be the lone dissenter that will come out and say that The Road was an absolutely horrible movie. I found it so drawn-out, boring, interminably long. I realize it was presenting life in a post-apocalyptic future, but that's no excuse to have no plot to truly speak of in its 111 minutes of runtime. Then again, I hated Mad Max and only sat down to watch it at the theater because of the ridiculously-good critical reviews it had amassed. I found it a pointless exercise in hedonism and a testosterone-fueled car chase filled with gore and nudity for their own sake.
  • cjslep 10y ago
    I think many would agree that The Road movie isn't good, which is why I highly recommend reading the book. McCarthy's unique writing style lends itself to the material in a way movies can't capture.
  • pimlottc 10y ago
    The film was an adaptation; The Road was originally a novel.
  • dawnerd 10y ago
    I'm glad I'm not alone in hating Mad Max. When the credits rolled I was left wondering what the plot even was. It felt like nothing more than an excuse to blow stuff up and chase around cars. Absolutely no idea how it got such high marks.
    • TheGRS 10y ago
      I feel a little silly needing to defend it, but the plot is pretty simple IMO. Max himself is more of an observer of the plot than an central character, which is a little confusing, but everything else is a pretty straight-forward hero story. What didn't you understand specifically?
      • dawnerd 10y ago
        That's the thing, I don't know what I was missing. I'm usually a perfect audience for sit back and enjoy the ride kind of movies but in this one, I just didn't connect at all.
• derivagral 10y ago
  For anyone curious like me, Threads [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads
• sehugg 10y ago
  Japan has wasted no time in partnering with India (not a member of the NPT) on nuclear energy: http://www.eurasiareview.com/29112016-india-japan-nuclear-deal-setback-to-international-non-proliferation-efforts-oped/ http://www.eurasiareview.com/29112016-india-japan-nuclear-de...
  • wbl 10y ago
    Japan also has a plutonium stockpile sufficient for a bunch of nukes.
• pmoriarty 10y ago
  Threads was definitely the most terrifying film I've seen about nuclear war. Highly recommended.
• dublinclontarf 10y ago
  "Europe" aka the EU currently has the UK and France. The UK is leaving and France has no appetite to be responsibe for the defence of the EU.
• sweetjesus 10y ago
  > With Trump elected, Europe is turning to itself for its defence... wait, what?... Europe wasn't paying for its own defense before Trump, because why, they just liked the US presidents?! Was it something about them, or were they just these big suckers and Europeans were like "hey free defense!"? Quite frankly, you're making Trump sound better.
  • conception 10y ago
    Europe does have its own defense, but Germany does not because of the whole Nazi thing. Also, strategically, the US has lots of valid reasons to be want to be the dominant military player in the area. We much rather be fighting a shooting war on that continent than ours. If you take a very shallow view, we are "paying for" or "subsidising" European defense, when in fact we are doing what we always do - engaging in what's best for us. The dollar cost is insignificant next to the value theater access and regional support.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  > With Trump elected, Europe is turning to itself for its defence, Wouldn't it have to turn itself more to defense if the other candidate was elected, who didn't seem to mind setting up No-Fly zones for aircraft for a country which has more than 1000 nuclear warheads ready to launch (not counting those in nuclear subs).
• Something1234 10y ago
  I've always liked Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. They focus on food, and it really captures the terror the people were feeling and how a community might end up forming.