Although, in these oblique tales it’s the subliminal themes that really appeal to us: monetary problems would dissolve, it would be infinitely better than your mundane 9 to 5 and, ultimately, it would allow human beings to live rather than simply exist. If people were to go through a hypothetical, dreadful disaster, they would do so together. Everything would be stripped away. Social hierarchies would liquefy. The terms First World and Third World countries would become mere, inessential monikers. The Earth would return to the way nature intended it to be: a whole. Our world wouldn’t be segregated by the borders of countries; instead, humanity would exist on an unprejudiced, almost unsullied planet. People would be forced to connect, regardless of cultural context. Today, walking through your local metropolis, be it Belfast or New York, you realise how individuals live within their own momentary, ephemeral world. Eye contact is considered taboo, let alone interacting. But in a post apocalyptic world, things would be much simpler, precisely because the hardships the populace have gone through are so massive, it labels current worries and fears as insignificant. It’s idealistic, of course. The reality is that the probable cause of an apocalypse would ruin our picturesque planet, but perhaps the downfall of civilization would give us the opportunity to discover what it means to be fundamentally human.
Even though it has become such an established brand of fiction, the apocalypse story arc has slipped towards cliché. The film industry has snowballed extermination to the point of banality, including books, TV shows and comics, they’ve used the idea so many times it doesn’t even feel like a word anymore. Seriously, try it. Apocalypse. Apocalypse. Apocalypse. Apocalypse. Apocalypse. The force and impact of the word, and indeed its concept, has been diluted because of this excessive over-exposure. Today, it feels as though the saturation point has been reached, meaning any piece of fiction from the genre is either a clone or a reinterpretation of the same core idea: What would it be like to live in a society devoid of rules and governance? It’s one that has enticed viewers, readers and thinkers for centuries and will continue to do so, clichéd or not.
Most recently the trend can be identified as a consequence of 9/11. This catastrophe embodied the potent vulnerability of America which, in our modern culture, is seen as the most powerful and influential country in the world. In fact, when you consider it further, power and wealth are fundamentally finite entities, and all it takes is an event of this scale to soberly remind us of their brief, fleeting lifespan.
As this craze continues on a seemingly endless trajectory, and our elemental notion of destruction shifts from radical to prosaic, we become desensitised to the explicit violence and decimation. No longer is the apocalypse the sharpest utensil in an artist’s toolbox, instead, repetition has plagued the content like rust to a blade. But, as we’ve seen, there is a logical explanation for its durability in popular culture. A core, profound element that transcends the literariness of these stories: humanity has an inherent problem with comprehending the scope of time. It’s as though we fail to understand that the Earth can, and indeed has existed without us, and will continue to do so long after we have either perished, whittled away, or blown ourselves up with our shiny nuclear toys. So, rather than attempting to contemplate the age and magnitude of the universe, we simplify it through these stories because they have a beginning, middle and an end. 6,000 years is much easier to compute than 14 billion, don’t you think? Therefore, substituting the inconsequential chaos that is the universe with a simplified yet concrete narrative gives humankind a sense of comfort because, in reality, we understand almost everything as stories. A three tier structure that is neat and easy to understand, and if the beginning is the dawn of man, which leaves the lifespan of the human race as the narrative arc, then the story needs a good ol’ apocalypse for the finale.
This reliance on storytelling as a means of understanding therefore spawns from our collective inability to grasp the sheer immensity of time. Life is transitory. Human beings weren’t around for 99.999% of the universe, and unfortunately we won’t be around its colossal, rather unthinkable lifespan – cryogenic freezing or not. Subsequently, post apocalyptic fiction taps into this intuitive naivety by imposing a sense of purpose onto an insignificant race, as terrifying as that sounds. But, without slipping into a New Age-esque perspective, analysing these literary texts and their existential nature is fascinating. How they reflect real life anxieties, create hypothetical, genre-defining situations, while also tapping into the collective subconscious of human beings.
I suppose in the end – of this article, not the world – it comes down to those two words again: what if. What if it really does happen? Then again, what if it doesn’t and humankind exists for longer than we predict? Nonetheless, this unanswerable question will allow post apocalyptic fiction to exist in many forms of media for the foreseeable future, precisely because humans fear and hypothesise about their own death all the time. Even though it has smothered our mediums, we can always take solace in one thing: should the apocalypse occur anytime soon, we can’t exactly say that we didn’t see it coming.