Working on a concept for an Apocalyptic novel...

define "jerks". In a book/story it is rather easy to come up with either black or white characters (speaking from the moral and actions I am just saying you can toss them in situations where it is easy to construe the event to lead them to the choice).

But actually regarding real people with a few exceptions aside it is extremely difficult to paint them as only "bad" or "good". It all depends on the context and view point. Alexander was seen by some as conqueror and oppressor while by others as liberator. Even the Nazis have been seen by some as "liberators" from the stalinist system - till the point where they realized that it makes no difference who they support.

As said. Speaking from history it is rather rare that an event is only bad or good. To many factors which come in to play.
 
That's what I was trying to get at. The only empires/civilizations/what have you I can conclusively call "evil" are the mongols and the Aztecs. Everything else has been shades of grey.
 
PainlessDocM said:
Any particular reason why those "shades of grey" don't apply to those great cultures?
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The mongols raped and murdered they're way through my and many other people's homelands.

And the Aztecs, while a very fascinating culture glorified and made a religion out of butchering people.
 
How is that worse than trying to structurally murder every Jew in the world?
 
Sander said:
How is that worse than trying to structurally murder every Jew in the world?
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Oh, forgot about the Nazis. Yeah they were evil too.


Although the mongols were still worse. They lasted a lot longer and nobody ever stopped them
 
Sabirah said:
The mongols raped and murdered they're way through my and many other people's homelands.
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I don't see how that is exclusive to the Mongol empire, also they often gave their enemies the opportunity to surrender and switch to their side. They are not the pure evil conquerors they are often made out to be today.

Sabirah said:
And the Aztecs, while a very fascinating culture glorified and made a religion out of butchering people.
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You portray them a bit simplistic IMO and again there were many other civilizations who made human sacrifices throughout history.
 
PainlessDocM said:
Sabirah said:
The mongols raped and murdered they're way through my and many other people's homelands.
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I don't see how that is exclusive to the Mongol empire, also they often gave their enemies the opportunity to surrender and switch to their side. They are not the pure evil conquerors they are often made out to be today.
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But we (India &The Middle East) were doing so good. We were the masters of the arts and the sciences, set to dominate the world's culture.

Then a nomadic horde of barbarians sweeps in, rapes our women, burns our libraries, murders our men, and destroys our cities. India was set so far back we couldn't resist British occupation. And the Muslim world lost all of our accumulated knowledge we had spent centuries discovering.
 
I don't seem to complain about Mongols, and they've marched through my own home country slashing things left and right. They certainly weren't evil for me, in fact, I'd say they are your average invading force of the Middle Ages, much like Crusaders.

Hell, we even had people rape, murder, burn down towns and libraries, destroy cities during both World Wars, and that's centuries ahead.

Also, what kind of people invest points and gold into art and science and not build up armies? ;)
 
" ' Row, Row, Row Your Boat … ' "

" ' Row, Row, Row Your Boat … ' "





DammitBoy said:
… if - those good people can make the hard difficult choices required to survive. …
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The bones are shaken and the perceived world from horizon to horizon is cast into the confined reality of a life boat.

Maybe you've had to endure the con's that are driven by appetite. They move among us and work their game with in the family and the greater common crowd.

How successful will the manipulators, and compulsive grafters be when the 'rules of engagement ' are limited to the here and now?

Will a smile and a shoe shine be sufficient mask to cover the predatory voodoo, and institutionalized black magic?

Life boat situation.

Tomorrow and all those previous associations are *never* again in the same soft order.

Maybe absolutes become clearer and dearer as they dwindle.

Maybe the choices appear easy, just have to negotiate, survive, the " 'hard difficult' " consequences.







4too
 
Yes, the storyline revolves around the lifeboat scenario - or in this case, a small southern town as a microcosm of what happens when civilization breaks down.

I'm going to try and avoid the typical 'biker gang' rides through town with rape and pillage on their minds. But there will be scenarios where tough decisions will have to be made about dwindling resources and self-defense of the group.
 
how about a situation like the fallout endings where if you "saved" a town it got a bad ending but if you took the evil path it ended up being better for everyone in the long run. Your protagonist could end up fucking everything up even worse than if the antagonist had succeded in their evil plan.
Anyway I vote for a global ice-age or something environmental like that. But EMP sounds interesting as well. I wish you luck on this.
 
Sabirah said:
Then a nomadic horde of barbarians sweeps in, rapes our women, burns our libraries, murders our men, and destroys our cities. India was set so far back we couldn't resist British occupation. And the Muslim world lost all of our accumulated knowledge we had spent centuries discovering.
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They also made connections between Europe and Asia which kick-started the Renaissance. :?
 
I hold to the "three day" truism.

Look at what was happening three days into the haiti earthquake disaster. Young men with machetes taking food, clothing, and drugs from survivors, som raped, some killed.

Katrina three days in was a hellhole, with police shooting unarmed civilians.

They say we are three days from starvation if there was a fuel shortage. Because all of our foods are trucked into the towns and cities. Not much is grown locally.

I like the mormon method of storing enough food to survive a long term disaster. But how much food can you realistically pack away? Wouldn't you at some point need to produce your own food?
 
DammitBoy said:
IWouldn't you at some point need to produce your own food?
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Ef that, way too much work. I'd rather kill/scavenge for it. Did you see Carriers? Technology/modern comfort is the only thing that keeps our society from "kill or be killed."

Oops, i see now you say at some point. Well in that case, it depends what the situation is. Many factors to consider. Is soil still useable for a harvest? Are animals/bugs an option? Or are they contaminated? If so, you'd be pretty screwed. Cannibalism maybe, but how long would that last? Scavenging for canned/sealed food would work for quite a while in a nomadic society I suppose. That even would depend on how many survivors are left in the world. More survivors means more competition for scavenged goods. If it was nuclear winter, I personally would attempt to peel back a 6'' layer of soul and start crop rotation like shady sands.
 
How are you going to grow crops when it's winter...?

How are you going to plow land when it's freezing all the time?

How are you going to grow good food when your land is covered in radio-active snow?
 
How are you going to grow crops when it's winter...?

How are you going to plow land when it's freezing all the time?

How are you going to grow good food when your land is covered in radio-active snow?
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Nuclear winter is the term used to describe the particulate radioactive dust that falls back to the surface after the blast. It has nothing to do with the seasons, or temperature. Still, the method I proposed would require considerable logistics to accomplish, and would probably also need to be inside a greenhouse to protect it from winds that could stir up and bring forth contaminated dust.
 
of course it has something to do with temp --- they don't call it nuclear winter 'cuz dust falls like snow, they call it that because the dust kicks up into the upper atmosphere and basically blocks out the sun, creating a perpetual winter on earth.

I think the easy solution is cannabalism, but you'd have to be somewhere where there's lots of hot girls, because I really don't like the idea of eating some fat hairy guy that smells funny.
 
You are correct, I had nuclear fallout (what I discribed) and nuclear winter confused. I thought they were the same thing.
 
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