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NBC is airing a new TV series this fall, called "Revolution". From what I can tell in the trailer, it's society 15 years after a global blackout. Nothing electronic has worked since the Blackout. Little shots in the previews got me thinking about some of the threads I've read in this forum. Check it out:
I like how they converted the stereotypical American cul-de-sac into a fort. Built up wooden walls around it, and turned the street into a garden operation. Now, obviously the idea of an EMP knocking out the power grid for 15 years or more seems a bit out there (even if everything were wiped with an EMP, surely we would see power return eventually), but it's an interesting concept. Setting the show 15 years after the blackout is an interesting point of view as well -- teenagers in the show were born right around the time of the blackout, and have grown up not knowing electricity. People have returned to farming, hunting, gathering. Small tribes and warlords have developed. I found the Prius-garden pretty entertaining.
How do you think society would look, if a blackout were to last 15 years or longer?
We used to call the old Ford Taurus the "rolling greenhouse".
How would society look? Overall, a lot less people. A lot more barbarianism. And pockets of people who knew what they were doing and not only how to defend it but how to make it comfortable for all concerned, with divisions of labor and equitable shares. Think very rural areas that were less ravaged by the Black Plague, like Southern France or the Great Pyrenees.
Where there are fewer people and less to steal, fewer ways to communicate and spread any and everything from diseases to violence, and further distances that don't make barbarian behavior profitable, you'll find more pastoral settings; more barter and trade, more stoic workers. Closer to larger populated areas you'll find the warlords, the barbarians, thieves, warring gangs, the one-upmanship, the animalistic and unrestrained violence that must and can only be met or defeated with greater violence.
Such a show would definitely appeal to a relatively narrow demographic based on JUST the premise. In order to appeal to a wider audience they'd really have to spread out into larger themes, which can get pretty difficult when one is trying to set up a particularly narrow scenario in hopes of just exploiting lots of underlying potential.
This show had loads of potential BUT was forced to try and appeal to as large an audience as possible, leaving them floundering for the first few shows as they tried to jam in as many "stories" as possible in order to find that appeal, and then simply didn't have the writing to keep it all afloat.
Frankly, I think they'd have done better if they'd stopped with introducing some of the stories and focused on people attempting to survive just a bit more primitively -- certain modern amenities allowed, given the premise. Being able to "control" a time-crossing even to a moderate degree would indicate they'd be able to take SOME tech with them, but it could have been realistically limited. Here's an idea, writers: Hard implements and living tissue can cross but any circuitry more technical than a turnip gets fried in the already-fictional "time-field", limiting manufacture on the other side, allowing some things, forcing characters to rough it nevertheless.
Alas, too little, too late.
A show like this (post Pulse, let's just use the popular sci-fi term for inexplicable EMP stuff) has to rely on STORY in order to thrive.
The Walking Dead proved that such a thing IS possible. The question is, can NBC pull it off?
The Walking Dead proved that such a thing IS possible. The question is, can NBC pull it off?
I love The Walking Dead... Though, I don't see a Zombie Apocalypse as a very possible SHTF event.
From what you can see in the preview, though, I think this new show captures, relatively fairly, what life would be like years after a permanent blackout-like event. The city areas (they mention Chicago) have warlords / violence, while the main characters, who lived out in the suburbs before the "event", have turned towards a more basic farming society.
Interesting show. Only missing are ZOMBIES! lol. i love zombies. I too was surprised Walking Dead went successful. Guess im not the only 1 nuts about zombies.
I love The Walking Dead... Though, I don't see a Zombie Apocalypse as a very possible SHTF event.
From what you can see in the preview, though, I think this new show captures, relatively fairly, what life would be like years after a permanent blackout-like event. The city areas (they mention Chicago) have warlords / violence, while the main characters, who lived out in the suburbs before the "event", have turned towards a more basic farming society.
Yes, I think for all the hype even the most hardcore "preppers" don't see the Zombie Apocalypse as anything more than a way of expressing post-SHTF times. Me, I'm still wondering...
If a zombie meets a necrophiliac, who chases whom?
Have you ever checked out the Change novels by S.M. Stirling? While I don't care for the wiccan/mystical nonsense, there were aspects of it all I could see as realistic, at least in the FIRST Change series. After that... it just got all about hoo-doo and heroes suffered from the Natty Bumppo effect, all perfection save for those pesky snapping twigs.
Nevertheless, it does make for some interesting speculation.
Some time back the Discover channel or the History channel did some "Life after" kinds of shows, and one of them followed a small family (a bit, at least) during a societal breakdown kind of scenario, kept fairly loose. It was exploration of the concept rather than a drama, but it could have been done better.
The "ending" for the guy who was head of the family was grossly over-dramatized, since he was the town's answer to a physician to demonstrate the failure of medicinal supplies BUT cut his own hand tending fields and died of a simple infection... while the town was celebrating the arrival of traveling traders by breaking out the booze.
They could distill drinking alcohol but it never occurred to anyone to put some of that on his hand before he was dying? What, the PUS wasn't a clue, or the inflamed redness?
I know it was meant to show in the simplest fashion how given that kind of scenario people would go back to dying the way they used to, from commonplace things, but still -- come ON! Just as vast numbers of folks would clearly perish in the aftermath, so would smaller bands do their best to join up and SEEK tech and medicine, try to create more stable societies within the scope of their limitations.
I DO think, depending on the nature of any given "disaster", bands would form, and some of them would invariably be raiding parties with zero vision of any "future". For them the future would be NOW, living like hillbilly kings, taking what they could and society be damned. I think we have some of those in this very forum.
However, it's in the very psychology of people to generally band together. We're a tribal specie at our core, and so long as FOOD is in adequate supply, peace is maintained. The Pacific NW tribes had the lowest rates of warfare of all other North American native tribes, and it was due to the comparative plentitude based on salmon and caribou.
In a post-Apocalyptic scenario elsewhere..... yeah, things would get TOUGH, especially in the highly-urbanized East.
Again with the intent to entertain rather than educate. I suspect we will see NBC paint a certain segment of society in this soon to be released Fall series as some flavor of crazy.
Maybe airing "One Second After" in a made for TV movie format would at least get Americans to ask why our grid is not yet hardened against an EMP event or other; and, why we have lacked the forsight to retain the manufacturing of components critical to the survival of our energy distribution systems here in the USA.
This NBC product, I don't see as doing anything worthwhile. YMMV
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I love The Walking Dead... Though, I don't see a Zombie Apocalypse as a very possible SHTF event.
