Dogs?

One thing that you'll see included in much of post-apocalyptic media is man's best friend.  Max had one in Road Warrior.  Obviously the movie A Boy and His Dog had one.  Even Will Smith had one in I Am Legend.  Why are canines so important?

Well, for one thing, dogs are notoriously loyal.  In most PA settings, there is nothing to enforce laws, and...well the general premise of "dog eat dog" (sorry, unavoidable pun) is one of the biggest rules of survival.  What better companion can you find than one that will never stab you in the back?  All that dog needs is a bit of food, water, and attention and you've got yourself an irreplaceable friend.

Let's not forget the other inherent strength of the dog - his nose.  The apocalypse usually leaves food extremely scarce, and the dog's ability to sniff out hidden goods or even track live prey is an invaluable asset for survival.

In more abstract terms, the dog can commonly serve a very important purpose of toning down the bleakness of the setting.  There isn't much happiness to be found in a world ravaged by raiders, war, and famine.  But unless you're Michael Vick, it's hard not to smile when you see a dog.  It also gives the author or director a huge opportunity to tug those heart strings in the opposite direction in an "Old Yeller" type scenario.  Seriously, even the thought of a dog dying can make people cry. 

Fallout: New Vegas

On October 19th, Obsidian Entertainment, a very well-known video game company, released the long awaited continuation of the game series Fallout.  I would explain everything about Fallout, but it would seriously take forever...alright I'll definitely make a post or two fully detailing the history of the game series.  But since you already know what this blog is about, you can assume enough about what Fallout is for the meantime.

A brief back story: Fallout is set hundreds of years after the world was nearly wiped out in a nuclear war.  Several societies have steadily cropped up from the ashes, such as the New California Republic, which is a large group of settlements banding together to reform America.  There's also the Brotherhood of Steel, which is the remnants of the U.S. Marine Corp., and they're a rigidly militaristic (and xenophobic) group who's sole mission is to salvage technology and learn how it works so that humanity may survive.  The survivors scattered across the globe are the descendants of people that took refuge in giant underground vaults, which were like fallout shelters capable of sustaining reasonably large populations.

So with that out of the way, I can give a review of Fallout: New Vegas.  The premise of the game is that you are a courier.  A group of men ambush you, shoot you in the head, and steal a platinum poker chip you were supposed to deliver to a man named Mr. House. You are discovered by others and nursed back to health, and it's totally up to you what to do from there.

The game follows a non-linear, almost sandbox style path similar to the very popular Grand Theft Auto game series.  What this means is that there aren't levels or stages like in other games.  There's just a huge map, littered with cities, enemies, non-player characters you can interact with, and you can do whatever you want.  Feel like pursuing the story line and beating the game?  Go for it.  Would you rather just explore the wastes and completely ignore the story line?  You can do that too.  Hell, its practically encouraged.

Here's a few screen shots to give you an idea of what the setting looks like.

The main draw of this game is that Las Vegas has been partially restored.  Through great effort, Mr. House has brought power and fresh water to the city so that it can flourish again.  The imagery of giant neon signs and extravagant water fountains clashing with wrecked buildings and burnt cars is amazing. 

This game is a huge upgrade over the last entry in the series, Fallout 3.  It had an awful story, a very limited range of weapons, and ALL the voice acting was done by like 4 people, which was a terrible idea considering how many npc's had spoken dialogue.  New Vegas, on the other hand, has a great story (which I'd really like to try to leave unspoiled), a plethora of options for gear which includes modifying guns and crafting things to help you survive the harsh landscape, and the characters that populate the game are interesting and seem much more fleshed out than Fallout 3.  

The only thing really holding this game back is the bugs.  There are so many things that cause the game to crash, there's scripting errors that make dialogue (some of which is essential for the story's progression) not occur, and there's a handful of graphical errors present.  The most comical form of this that I spotted was a dog's eyeballs being set to the right side of its jaw, leaving the sockets on the face empty.  Really creepy looking to be honest, and in hind sight I wished I'd taken a screen shot to post.

The funny thing is that despite these flaws, the game is still so much fun to play.  Maybe I have a bias considering my love of the genre, but it really is a great game.  The combination of conversing, combat, and exploring the map is addicting, and you'll constantly find yourself continuing well into the night just to see what you'll find next.

Oh and one thing I can't believe I almost forgot to mention.  Ron Perlman (of Hellboy fame) has narrated every single game.  His famous phrase "war never changes" will send a chill down your spine as he describes the state of the world you play in.

My Top 3 "PA" Movies

If you want to see some of the cinema that truly depicts the post-apocalyptic setting, here are 3 movies that are on the must watch list.

3.  Planet of the Apes:  Okay, so this is an odd choice, but I really feel like this deserves to be included.  Yeah, apes evolved into almost-people may be ridiculous, and there isn't the same type of struggle for survival present in other PA films.  But Planet of the Apes accomplishes ones of the greatest feats I've seen. 

*SPOILER ALERT IN CASE YOU'VE NEVER ACTUALLY SEEN THIS 40 YEAR OLD MOVIE*

The movie tricks you by not actually revealing it's post-apocalyptic!  For most of the film you're just made to believe that an astronaut crash landed on an alien planet ruled by apes, and humanity is nothing more than ignorant slaves.  Or there's the notion that it was some kind of parallel universe where one species evolved and the other didn't.  This is more classic sci-fi.  But then, the ending hits you, and Heston is sitting there staring at the remains of the Statue of Liberty, and it hits the audience that it's the FUTURE, and that we "blew it all up!"  Fucking awesome.

2.  A Boy and His Dog:  A very weird movie, with the main characters being a young man and a dog that talks to him.  He wanders around the remains of America, looting supplies from wrecked buildings and hunting to live.  All this changes when he stumbles across a cult that seems great at first, but reveals itself to be something malevolent.  I won't spoil it, but seriously, its a good quirky movie.

1.  The Road Warrior:  And here it is.  The Mel Gibson movie that made everyone actually give a shit who Mel Gibson is.  His character, Max, drives around the wastelands of Australia in a bad-ass 1973 Ford XB Falcon.  He helps a small clan of people defend themselves from a marauding band of bikers led by The Great Humongous.  What makes this film so great?  The scenery, the costume design, and the main characters all basically set standards for the genre, and this film alone is largely responsible for the genre's popularity.  Seriously, the scenery is so barren, so stark, but its beautiful.  The resource everyone is fighting for, gasoline, is something that you could really see people killing for in the doomsday scenario.  And it is a prime example of what humanity can degrade to when civilization crumbles, as Humongous' horde regularly rapes and slaughters with reckless abandon simply because nobody can stop them.  If John Hobbes were alive to see this film, he'd shit himself inside out with glee describing how everything present is what he discussed in his book, Leviathan. 

So how does it all end?

For this post, I'd like to discuss the most important facet of any post-apocalyptic setting:  The End.  The world as we know it being destroyed is the only thing that EVERY piece of PA (I'll be using this shortened form a lot, since writing the whole thing is going to get very tiresome) must include.  So what are some of the more popular forms of destruction?

1.  Nuclear Winter:  This is probably the most common form of apocalypse.  Considering how much the cold war influenced this sub-genre, it's more than understandable too.  Even today we worry about rogue nations with their finger hovering over that big red button, and in the blink of an eye everything we know could be wiped away.  Common elements of this scenario involve the many ways people avoid the radiation that lingers for so many years afterward.  This usually means people retreating underground, like living in train tunnels in the novel Metro 2033, or residing in giant vaults in the Fallout game series.

2.  The Virus:  The 2nd place spot goes to viruses.  Whether a terrible biological weapon or just some mutated, unstoppable strain of the flu, humanity has been reduced to almost nothing by it.  Examples include Stephen King's novel (and movie adaptation) The Stand, or the Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys.  The interesting part about this scenario is that there isn't really any place to hide.  The survivors of this apocalypse are usually just the lucky few that are somehow immune to the virus, or they're a group in an isolated community that has somehow avoided contamination.

3.  Zombies!!!:  Honestly, zombies are so prevalent in movies, games, and literature that they technically encompass their own genre.  But the elements of PA are usually found in them.  People still clinging to survival, the world in shambles, and an ever-present threat making life a living hell.  I shouldn't even have to list examples of media that include zombies.  The one thing of note is that a majority of the time, the cause of the zombies is rarely ever explained.  I personally recall watching Night of the Living Dead with a former girlfriend, and she was asking repeatedly why there were zombies.  All I could really do was shrug and just say "there just are."

4.  Justin Bieber:  Yep, the Canadian teen heart-throb may not be the most common reason condemning the world to death and mayhem, but he IS the most believable cause.  Don't believe me?  I dare you to look at his youtube channel for more than 15 minutes without stopping and realizing that we are all doomed.

Let's get started!

So here's a little secret about me.  I am a huge sci-fi (science fiction) nerd.  What some may not know is that there are dozens of "sub-genres" that make up science fiction.  A personal favorite of mine, is one that I'm happy to see has risen in popularity over the last few years.  This genre is called "post-apocalyptic."  In the most general of terms, post-apocalyptic is a world that has been devastated by some sort of disaster (either an act of god type scenario or something man made), and humanity struggles to survive in the new harsh environment it resides in. 

Quick examples?  Think of that movie The Book of Eli that was made last year.

So what makes this genre so appealing?  It's the amount of imagination that can be thrown in.  An author can think of brilliant ways for the world to collapse, as macabre as that may sound.  And since most of these worlds are set in the future, creative liberties abound about what resides in it, like zombies, mutants, and hell even aliens have showed up in more than one book.  But on top of all this goofy fiction, the audience can stay anchored to the reality of it all because the people in the stories are still human.  They are still guided by emotions that we've all dealt with, and there's numerous societies (like communists or authoritarians) that we are more than familiar with.  Yeah there's fantasy settings like Lord of the Rings that bases elves and dwarves under similar terms, but they're made-up races, which I feel makes them harder to identify with.

So yeah, there's the opening piece.  On here I'll be discussing things from almost all types of media, from movies to books to video games.  Enjoy!