Working on a concept for an Apocalyptic novel...

[DammitBoy]

why don't people grow mushrooms in their houses for food?
mushrooms would have to be more apppealing than eating some grubby homeless guy.

Funny you should mention that!

The protagonist is not a survivalist or militia member, but he and his family/friends are folks involved in the self-sufficiency movement. Not so much like the mother earth news hippy dippy ozrat types, but people that grow and raise some of their own food and are more self-reliant than the average mook.

Partly because they live in a rural area where it's normal to have things like horses, rabbits, goats, fish ponds, cows, chickens, and 1 acre food plots. Partly because it's smart to be green. But mostly to not have to rely on a system that can easily breakdown.

If you look at natural catastrophies, society breaks down in three days or less. In Haiti, they were chopping fellow victims up with machetes within three days of the quake and fighting for water. Same thing in New Orleans.

---

Thanks for everybodies input thus far, it's appreciated.

 

[DevilTakeMe]

The ending of "Escape from LA" featured a global EMP attack. Although, in that world, it's possible not a lot of people noticed too much.

If not a manmade catastrophe, there was something in the middle of the 19th century, a solar flare that caused a geomagnetic storm that wiped out many of the telegraph lines. Something like that occurring again could do much more considerable damage to today's more sophisticated electronics.

 

[eom]

why don't people grow mushrooms in their houses for food?
mushrooms would have to be more apppealing than eating some grubby homeless guy.

Funny you should mention that!

The protagonist is not a survivalist or militia member, but he and his family/friends are folks involved in the self-sufficiency movement. Not so much like the mother earth news hippy dippy ozrat types, but people that grow and raise some of their own food and are more self-reliant than the average mook.

Partly because they live in a rural area where it's normal to have things like horses, rabbits, goats, fish ponds, cows, chickens, and 1 acre food plots. Partly because it's smart to be green. But mostly to not have to rely on a system that can easily breakdown.

If you look at natural catastrophies, society breaks down in three days or less. In Haiti, they were chopping fellow victims up with machetes within three days of the quake and fighting for water. Same thing in New Orleans.

---

Thanks for everybodies input thus far, it's appreciated.

would this protagonist also happen to be in last place in his fantasy football league, by any chance?

 

[Bakura]

first of all, why does it have to be a defined apocalyptic event?
why not leave it undefined, as in the road?

You know, this is not a bad idea.With a undefined apocalyptic event,not every country would have to be destroyed.And that would open up even more storylines:say Japan surivied the event, and so did Korea, they could in blame one another the apocalyptic event.Japan and Korea do have a history of bad blood.(let me check something) *be back with useless trivia,that will be ignored.Bakura is Amazing!* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan–Korea_relations so it turns out there where abductions of japanese people by agents of Korean goverment in 1977 to 1983.There is you completely useless fact of the day.

 

[McRae]

Since it's a southern town, interracial relationships will be featured to some extent. [...]

I'm really kinda leaning to a future scenario where Iran has the capability to launch a nuke straight up about 20+ miles

Oh my god. Jericho and True Blood becoming one.

 

[Kilus]

Maybe he shouldn't write about yourself and your dream for the future.

 

[DammitBoy]

would this protagonist also happen to be in last place in his fantasy football league, by any chance?

I'm in eighth place, currently beating kharn in the asshat league. I'm also in third place, winning again this week after trouncing you last week.

I live in a city in Mississippi. The story would take place in a small rural community in Alabama. You should always write about what you know, drawing from real life whenever possible.

So I'm using the farm community ex-wife #2 grew up in as my source material for my fictional community.

I've already emailed a short story and outline to Mel Odom after talking to him about it through emails. He encouraged me to pursue actually going ahead with my idea. I was kinda surprised, I haven't written anything since college.

I was in the honors english program and I always did well in my creative writing classes, but it's kinda cool to have a famous published author take an interest in this project.

He wrote the Deathland series, Mack Bolan, Stoney Man, Outlander series and a crapload of other books. So it's really encouraged me to get started on this thing.

 

[Kilus]

Maybe when you are finished you and Mel can work on a Buffy novel.

 

[Bakura]

Good for you DammitBoy!Remember:It took J.K.Rowling almost a decade to plan out Harry Potter.So don`t rush it!And for the love of Doritos,don`t be like me:I have wanted to write Ezra since I joined NMA a few months ago!My god....those poor bearshmellow peeps.....they will never see the light of day.

 

[Hassknecht]

JK Rowling took so long to plan Harry Potter, and still her universe makes so little sense?
Damn, that's harsh.

 

[DammitBoy]

Oh, and, a scenario where Israel goes all badass on Iran is quite possible. Oil goes too high, Middle East wars, lots of dead bodies, and a town in the Southern US is eating its corn and spending the day at the local bar.

Man, would I love to read that.

Not quite. The results of an EMP would be devastating and there would be plenty of hardship, risk, death, and room for plenty of violence to overcome.

An EMP would cause every plane in the sky to crash, those crashes would cause firestorms wherever they went down and there would be no fire departments to fight those fires.

Anyone with a pacemaker drops dead. Anyone in a nursing home dies, anyone on life support dies, anyone who needs insulin or some other refrigerated medication dies, anyone on dialysis dies.

Because our distribution system requires trucks with fuel, in every city in the country, food runs out in three days or less. Millions of people will starve to death. Most food is not grown locally and it takes time, knowledge and effort to grow food. Water will be scarce as there will be no electricty to run the water treatment plants.

Hordes of people would be leaving the cities, looking for food and water in the more rural areas. Conflict will arise as a result of the refugee migration. There will be no law and order, so not too many folks will be sitting in bars, eating corn.

Besides which, corn has very little nutritional value...

 

[Surf Solar]

Oh, and, a scenario where Israel goes all badass on Iran is quite possible. Oil goes too high, Middle East wars, lots of dead bodies, and a town in the Southern US is eating its corn and spending the day at the local bar.

Man, would I love to read that.

Not quite. The results of an EMP would be devastating and there would be plenty of hardship, risk, death, and room for plenty of violence to overcome.

An EMP would cause every plane in the sky to crash, those crashes would cause firestorms wherever they went down and there would be no fire departments to fight those fires.

Anyone with a pacemaker drops dead. Anyone in a nursing home dies, anyone on life support dies, anyone who needs insulin or some other refrigerated medication dies, anyone on dialysis dies.

Because our distribution system requires trucks with fuel, in every city in the country, food runs out in three days or less. Millions of people will starve to death. Most food is not grown locally and it takes time, knowledge and effort to grow food. Water will be scarce as there will be no electricty to run the water treatment plants.

Hordes of people would be leaving the cities, looking for food and water in the more rural areas. Conflict will arise as a result of the refugee migration. There will be no law and order, so not too many folks will be sitting in bars, eating corn.

Besides which, corn has very little nutritional value...

I take it you haver seen huge stockpiles of canned food?

 

[WillisPDunlevey]

I have about a months worth of food... If something bad happened, I would load up on as much canned food as I could take from the local grocery store.

Trip two, i would set fire to any place selling guns an ammo (after grabbing what i needed. There are only three places in town that sell guns and or ammo, all are big box stores:
Dunhams, Dicks, and MC sporting goods.

The people fighting over the cabelas will take care of that location as well.

 

[4too]

Tipping Point

Tipping Point





Consider a sci fi 'what if' ... electric power generation by fusion becomes practical, ... but not perfect.

A utopia in which fusion would answer all power needs and put an end to the "isms' pissing match over global warming!

At the moment of looming crisis most gas and coal plants are moth balled or downsized as support facilities while fusion takes on the world's power load.
More is ready to trip and fall than the lost dreams of cashing in on carbon use futures.

The financing to build the plants over 20 or so years may have borrowed too much from not upgrading the transmission and distribution grid.

To be sure that human hubris is well represented, perhaps the maintenance of the existing power lines and sub stations may have suffered.
Carnival con men CEO's milk and / or divert the flood of money to create a greener tomorrow, while well greased politicians nod and wink.

And ... for the 'common' touch'e ...

Past economic stagnation inspired idle hands to steal copper wiring and transformers,
that triggered replacement by steel-copper alloys which might have *issues* with a particular distorted power transmission wave harmonic.

Enter an unanticipated natural phenomenon that may be amplified and / or buffered by the political science of global warming.

Some can call it an act of god.

DevilTakeMe mentioned solar flares.

Make the solar EMP strong enough to induce destructive wave harmonics on a global scale. The solar pulses defeat the buccaneering accountants' 'creative' electrical engineering specs.

Biblical 'revelations' sight the flares as the end by fire. Hysteria 'deconstructs' some communities.

Maybe the chain reaction EMP-s could go on and on long enough for near or total catastrophic failure of the fusion technology exasperated by an unprecedented melt down of the global power grid.
Each power station adds it's own EMP fire works, and flattens another row of grid dominoes.

Maybe allow the Achilles heel of fusion facilities be a banker's engineered O-ring that fails in a critical cooling system under the excessive heat and transient voltages of induced destructive harmonics.


Wave after wave of EMP depletes the current supply of delicate electronics, before extreme shielding and grounding can be implemented.

Global visual of last satellite pictures. Exploding transformers are quite spectacular, particularly during the hot hot hotter hottest summer nights in man's history when air conditioning is at max.

Add as many local and international villains as you want that try to exploit the global chaos, and you might be able to weave a tale to an apocalyptic tipping point, much like David Brin's nuclear war / nuclear winter and civil melt down in "The Postman".

Oh boy, another survivalists' sand box!










4too

 

[Hassknecht]

An EMP would cause every plane in the sky to crash, those crashes would cause firestorms wherever they went down and there would be no fire departments to fight those fires.

I don't think this would happen. Planes are Faraday cages and thus pretty much invulnerable to EMP, except for their radio antennas. And since they have to expect lightning all the time, they are pretty safe.
Also, I don't think that a plane crash is enough to cause a firestorm, not to speak of the odds that a plane even hits a city that has the architectural characteristics it needs for a firestorm to happen.

Anyone with a pacemaker drops dead. Anyone in a nursing home dies, anyone on life support dies, anyone who needs insulin or some other refrigerated medication dies, anyone on dialysis dies.

Pacemakers are pretty sturdy. At least older models that are less computerized are likely to survive.
Even if they fail, pacemakers are not magical heartgenerators, they just help with cardiac arrythmia. People can survive with broken pacemakers.
Why would all people in nursing homes die?
Depending on the life support system, it's not likely that it would fail. Simple devices like iron lungs don't have much electronics/integrated circuits. Hospitals have shielded generators, when someone replaces the fuse, most should be fine.
Refrigerators don't give a crap about EMP. They are pumps, not much more. Replace blown fuse, turn on your generator, good to go.
Same with dialysis. It's barely more than pumps, and older devices are really just that. No problems. The wires and motors can manage power spikes if it even reaches them, as fuses will blow before.
The rest is fine, though

 

[DammitBoy]

An EMP would cause every plane in the sky to crash, those crashes would cause firestorms wherever they went down and there would be no fire departments to fight those fires.

I don't think this would happen. Planes are Faraday cages and thus pretty much invulnerable to EMP, except for their radio antennas. And since they have to expect lightning all the time, they are pretty safe.

Also, I don't think that a plane crash is enough to cause a firestorm, not to speak of the odds that a plane even hits a city that has the architectural characteristics it needs for a firestorm to happen.

You need to read up on EMP. A plane is not a faraday cage - it has windows made of glass. Lightining is nothing compared to an EMP event. A faraday cage must be a complete enclosure of metal with no openings large enough to allow the pulse to find a way into the structure. An antenna would allow the pulse egress into the structure where it would fry any circuit board inside.

Further, how many planes do you think are circling an airport (which are in cities) as I type? The liklihood of planes falling into cities is very high. The jet fuel burns very hot. Firestorms could easily occur, especially considering the number of planes falling out of the sky. There are usually around 2000 commercial flights in the air at any one time. Add military and private flights and we're talking 3000 planes easily.

Atlanta is a huge city and typically has 15-20 flights backed up waiting to land. It's not hard to imagine that 18 commercial planes crashing into the city would cause several large fires.

Not saying it would happen in every instance, but it would happen in some cases.

Additinally fire hazards would increase dramatically as people used fire for cooking and heating without electricity and there is no more fire department and in a lot of cases, no running water. Massive fires would breakout across the country with no one to fight them.

I take it you haver seen huge stockpiles of canned food?

I'm trying to figure out what you mean, not sure so I'll cover both possible answers;

1) Yes, I've seen stockpiles of canned food. Problem is, you'll run out eventually. Alsoplustoo - what if somebody tries to take your huge stockpile of canned food?

They also can go bad and the ruined contents could poison you. What if you have more people to feed than your stockpile can sustain for more than a week or a month?

2) Yes, I have about a months supply of food for 4 people in my home. It came in very handy when we needed it for the four weeks after Katrina hit our area. Water was a more difficult issue and we depended on relief efforts for ice. Since then we store more water.

 

[UniversalWolf]

Global Warming fanatics do something to the atmosphere that causes a new ice age. People in MS are battling the approach of the ensuing superglacier.

Otherwise I like gamma ray burst or a near miss by a rogue planet throwing the Earth out of its orbit (last seen in Thundarr the Barbarian).

Or Zardoz 2.

 

[eom]

Why would all people in nursing homes die?

old age

 

[DammitBoy]

Pacemakers are pretty sturdy. At least older models that are less computerized are likely to survive.

Why would all people in nursing homes die?

Depending on the life support system, it's not likely that it would fail. Simple devices like iron lungs don't have much electronics/integrated circuits. Hospitals have shielded generators, when someone replaces the fuse, most should be fine.

Refrigerators don't give a crap about EMP. They are pumps, not much more. Replace blown fuse, turn on your generator, good to go.

Same with dialysis. It's barely more than pumps, and older devices are really just that. No problems. The wires and motors can manage power spikes if it even reaches them, as fuses will blow before.

What part of "there is no electricity" are you missing? All circuit boards get fried. Unless your generator is in a faraday cage, it's fried. Even if your generator works, where are you getting fuel? Who is going to care for the people in the hospital or the nursing home?

No air conditioning kills thousands of elderly people every year. Do you know how many elderly people died during Katrina in nursing homes? That was just a matter of weeks.

 

[eom]

dude, those old people would've died pretty soon, anyway --- that's not much of a disaster.