Apocalypse Story Cliches

The Great Chandler

The Great Chandler

"Pickleless girls don't marry virgin boys"
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You know the deal, society breaks down and people fend for survival yadda yadda. Yet, we have some recurring cliches in apocalyptic stories (zombies in particular).

People are no reason pricks, incredibly incompetent government service, endless dragging of media, needlessly grimy to the point it's no fun anymore, etc.
 
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Famine and overall shortage of supplies always kind of bothered me in these stories. If there are less people because of some mass-extinction kind of event, you would think there would be an abundance of stuff just laying around.

That, and there are plenty of people who are into the "old way" of doing things, so one would expect a few Ren Faire blacksmiths and Amish farmers to survive long enough to pass down their knowledge.
 
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That the whole world is inexplicably fucked despite the fact that no matter what kind of apocalypse, be it nuclear, pandemic, zombie, or natural disasters there would inevitably be some regions untouched enough to remain a stable civilisation and begin to either aid or conquer the rest.

Thats one of the reasons I liked 28 Days Later more than most zombie concepts, since you'd think the moment world governments figgered "hmm, there appears to be a nightmarishly dangerous and infectious zombie style outbreak happening in this corner of the world" that they would do the bare minimum to contain or eradicate it for their own sakes.

That being said 28 Days Later still subscribes to a particularly annoying zombie cliche which is "once infectious zombies start biting people its game over and the whole planet/country is fucked" despite the fact that once the zombies burn their way through a town/city they are left with an expanse of empty land they have to hoof it across for ages before they reach another large settlement, and by that time even the least competent government will have started effective countermeasures of evacuating surrounding locales and napalming the shit out of infected ones.

As I have mentioned before, one of the only zombie stories which has actually reflected this is amusingly enough the Resident Evil games, which had the T Virus outbreak contained to one medium sized city and a handful of surrounding locations before being contained and nuked, and world governments and organisations reacted to the whole zombie outbreak thing with "ok...thats pretty spooky. Best combine international efforts and train our cops and soldiers to properly counter this in case terrorists get their hands on this stuff" which is probably how it would go down in reality.

Though this being said, the Romero zombie films and those which ape it's specific outbreak details like The Walking Dead do have the somewhat reasonable workaround of "its not a virus, everybody who dies for any reason at all is getting up and killing people" which makes an apocalyptic scenario at least somewhat plausible since these outbreaks would be happening in every town on the planet at the same time and would keep on happening indefinitely, and thus grinding down government responses and countermeasures far more effectively.
 
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Gasoline still working after years in storage, despite it going inert after a couple months in the real world.

Nuclear power plants not going critical and exploding.

Tinned food everywhere. Somehow, people find the time to work out to body builder level physiques despite starvation rations.

No one is able to cooperate for more than a few scenes.

Farming is for pussies; real men hunt the rampant game that are somehow unaffected by the catastrophe, or turn to cannibalism.

Despite the historical record that fortresses with walls and food inside being easy to hold against starving people with crappy weapons outside, being "trapped" inside a fortress is the worst possible scenario for our heroes, due to the somehow limitless resources of the invaders (who, for some reason, desperately need what is inside the fortress).
 
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It never seems like there's any attempt to properly fix things or build anything new, no matter how long it's been, as if almost every tradesman died in whatever calamity happened. People just move into existing structures or towns and cobble together some shitty fencing. Maybe someone finds and figures out how to use a welder at best.
 
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Hairstyles that require grooming products (gel, spray, etc) in a world where toilet paper has invariably gone the way of the dodo. So many post apocalyptic scenarios seem to imply that hairband will inevitably evolve into a phenotype.
 
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2 litre soda said:
Gasoline still working after years in storage, despite it going inert after a couple months in the real world.
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Gasoline that has ethanol will eventually absorb enough water to make it difficult to use in an internal combustion engine, but not in 3-6 months. I've left motorcycles filled with E10 in storage for over a year and they've started up just fine. It is a good idea to use a fuel stabilizer though.
 
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WinterMoonsLight said:
Food starts to run out and people resort to cannibalism in order to survive.
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And said cannibalism not resulting in Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease or other related variants of kuru.

Another stupid cliche: All good people immediately abandon religion completely. Anyone who professes a faith (almost invariably Southern Baptist, but can be any religion and denomination) is either a mindless cultist or an evil monster who is just waiting for an opportunity to rape the female lead. This, despite the historical reality that people will tend to rediscover religion in hard times, if only because it gives us comfort and courage, and only tending to abandon it en masse during good times.

A scientist has the cure, but nobody except the hero believes in her because sexism or something. She also is super-hot. Bonus points if she also does martial arts better than the men.

The black guy dies first, too.
 
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Judge Holden said:
As I have mentioned before, one of the only zombie stories which has actually reflected this is amusingly enough the Resident Evil games, which had the T Virus outbreak contained to one medium sized city and a handful of surrounding locations before being contained and nuked, and world governments and organisations reacted to the whole zombie outbreak thing with "ok...thats pretty spooky. Best combine international efforts and train our cops and soldiers to properly counter this in case terrorists get their hands on this stuff" which is probably how it would go down in reality.
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This. Another game that actually handles the zombie apocalypse concept pretty damn well is Project Zomboid. If you actually try to piece together what's going on by what you see on TV or listening to the radio channels in the game it's very similar to Resident Evil. Granted, you don't actually know what's happening around the world when the stations go down, but it's pretty safe to say that it takes a lot more time for people to get infected (and in fact a lot of people just outright die rather than become zombies once they get the disease). It also tackles the fact that it will take hordes a while to travel between cities in the game, and as it turns out living in more isolated areas definitely improves your chances of surviving for longer.

It also handles the trope of going out guns blazing pretty well too. Yes, guns are a quick fix, but guns make noise that will most likely get you unwanted attention - something that isn't tackled very well in most post-apocalyptic stories.
 
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More cliches:

All women become prostitutes. Their beauty is accentuated by their artful smudges of grime, and they always have a heart of gold. The female lead is probably one herself, despite having been a kung fu champion and scientist Before The Collapse.

It's wall-to-wall adults, despite that children should outnumber them. If an explanation is given for the lack of children, it's usually "we all became sterile" or "would you bring a child into this world"? The latter somehow manages to be the case despite the women all being well-utilized prostitutes with no access to contraceptives.

If there is a child, the child will have to be protected by the female lead, probably from the evil cult leader who attempted to rape her. The child will be adorable and loved by all of the adult protags, and exists solely to elicit sympathy and drive plot points.
 
Normal every day medical conditions that require constant medication magically never seem to effect anyone unless their is some form of plot line that requires it being focused on, and then after the problem is resolved it's never referred to again.

Everyone seems to have been successful in stockpiling masses of ammunition and guns and high explosives, but never had the forethought to actually stockpile food, or equipment that might be useful to have, and not be forced to take it off somebody else.

The idea of cohesive communities do not exist, unless it's to cause friction for the main characters who are just passing through, or to act in some antagonistic form.

Gardening and the raising of livestock even on a small scale are completely overlooked, even though it's the most likeliest way to ensure survival over a long term period.

The government either fails or retreats completely. Balkanization is almost never explored as a consequence of this abandonment of government and the formation of new governments.

All towns without exception will be filled with dumb low skilled hungry people, unless it's a hippy community then they live in abundance, but have no guns to defend themselves.
 
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Copy+Paste from Mad Max (desert setting, everybody wearing bondage gear, tricked out cars).

Incompetent military and soldiers with aim as good as a stormtrooper's aim, oh and they're all just heartless, evil monsters that act as cannon fodder for the protagonists

Nobody bothers trying to rebuild society, they just like living squalor or getting anally buttfucked by highwaymen.

Weapons and armor pieces made from salvaged road signs and car parts (I kinda like that though).

If it's a movie or video game, either bleach the colors out completely or saturate them. The lighting is either blindingly bright or way too dark. Bonus if you apply an ugly color filter to the game on top of all of this.

Some crazy cult that worships whatever caused the apocalypse

Nobody knows anything about guns, if this is a YA story, then make it very clear that you not only know absolutely anything about how they work, but also be able to somehow shoehorn your "guns bad" political views into your story.

To add on the last statement, stories about how all electronic items stopped working, yet somehow guns also magically all stopped working despite being 100% mechanical.

The start of the apocalypse is either: nuclear war, dwindling resources, global warming, zombies, god or satan deciding to destroy humanity, or an epidemic that somehow magically killed 90-99% of the population.

Vorhtbame said:
And said cannibalism not resulting in Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease or other related variants of kuru.

Another stupid cliche: All good people immediately abandon religion completely. Anyone who professes a faith (almost invariably Southern Baptist, but can be any religion and denomination) is either a mindless cultist or an evil monster who is just waiting for an opportunity to rape the female lead. This, despite the historical reality that people will tend to rediscover religion in hard times, if only because it gives us comfort and courage, and only tending to abandon it en masse during good times.

A scientist has the cure, but nobody except the hero believes in her because sexism or something. She also is super-hot. Bonus points if she also does martial arts better than the men.

The black guy dies first, too.
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Oh my god, all of this right here. Also big bonus is when the females die, their deaths are almost always off screen or extremely merciful for the setting (getting shot in the head, poisoned, falling from a great height, etc).

Plus you also basically summed up most apocalyptic YA stories in a nutshell.
 
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