So I've been pondering up a new setting during work the last week or so and this is what I've come up with - A setting based here on Earth some 20,000 years in the future. Some kind of apocalypse occurred some 5,000 years from the present day. So for some 13,000 years since after that, civilization was next to none existent.
Now we're up to some 2,000 of civil development. The "tech level" of this setting would be roughly Iron/Bronze age, but obviously with anachronistic elements. The land Earth would be roughly the same shape, but be more rugged. The environment in general would be dry, desolate, and harsh - explaining the long time civilization took to reassert itself.
There will be next to no recollection of previous times. Superstition and mysticism reign. It would not be akin to Mad Max or Fallout - no jury-rigged Dodge Chargers and sawed-off shotguns. It would be more like Dune or the Hyperborian Age than tradition post-apocalyptic settings. Pre-apocalypse cities would be so old and worn that between age and rust, calcification, etc., they would seem like natural rock formations. There would be technology left over though. Maybe surviving AI would be worshiped as gods or laser rifles would be ancient artifacts called "Staffs of Light" - or something like that. So this is a YES and NO list of what may be in this setting
YES - Cults, strange religions, ancient technology, AI/machines, low tech with anachronistic elements, desolate world, slight mutations in animals and mankind, robust and foreign cultures, basically anything plausible if not possible.
NO - magic, aliens, nonhuman races, "extra planar deities", a knowledge of pre-cataclysm society, culture, etc.(extremely important
I was also curious as to what the illustrious folks at the CBG thought where either essential, cliche, inappropriate, etc. in post-apocalyptic settings. Please please shoot some feedback this way, or if you want to contribute - totally go for it. Gracias.
Setting your apocalypse in 7000 AD makes it a little difficult to estimate what sort of technologies would exist.
If you set the apocalypse in 2200 AD it might be possible to predict some technologies.
Keep in mind that recorded human history only dates back about 4000-5000 years... you are proposing 5000 more years of development :! Even assuming that things slow down instead of speeding up toward the Singularity... the extant technology 5000 years from now would almost be beyond our comprehension.
Here is perhaps a good starting point for brainstorming what technologies would be around when the world ends: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies
Well what I was thinking is that even though this would be based on out Earth, everything would seem foreign and different. Having an apocalypse in out future gives much more leeway towards introducing neat technologies and would give good reason for ruins and whatnot to look different than what they would if it happened, say, 200 years from now - no Coca-Cola billboards or bottles, no Prius's, different architecture, stuff like that.
There are also plenty of good reasons/excuses on why technology wouldn't advance. For example, after the fall of Rome, technology in Western Europe creeped to a halt. Even though its a stretch of the imagination, it's plausible that this could happen on a global scale. Through things like religious wars, global famine or plague, drastic climate change, or changes in cultural attitudes and you get a very interesting, different, and unenlightened future that would eventually cause its own destruction.
Since there's no real knowledge of the past whatsoever there's no real need to actually set a date at all, just place the setting sometime in the far future of a post-apocalyptic earth, with humanity only just emerging from the ashes.
Which brings me to my first major question: how was humanity surviving in the intervening time? We've scrapped the Fallout Vault option, but did they venture underground? Civilization was next to nonexistant for 13000 years; what was humanity doing during this time? Any of the languages or religions leftover? I mean, it couldn't have been BAM STONE-AGE, teh people who survived would remember plenty, and pass that knowledge down - even if it got garbled into myth at some point.
I'd say that the essential factors in a post-apocalyptic setting would include a sense of connection with the past, even if this conenction is highly mystic/infrequent, often tinged with either nostalgia, awe, or disdain; and a transformed world, in which either the climate or simply the human infrastructure has been radically altered in some way, even if the previous world is quite recognizable beneath. Cliches? Crazy mutants, I'd say; also, the whole Mad Max cobbled-together leather n jury-rigged cars thing has been pretty done, but you're already keen to avoid that. Big desolate deserts are pretty common but its hard to avoid them if the disaster wasn't a plague or something.
I'm shamlessly plugging here but you might want to have a glance at my major setting, The Cadaverous Earth - I think it takes a very, very different approach based on what you've written here (there's tons of magic, tons of non-human races, etc), but its also a far future/post-apocalyptic/dying earth.
Leetz- That's okay, but then I do not see any reason why the setting has to even be on earth. Everything seems to be disconnected from the present-- and even from reality?
It seems less a post-apocalyptic earth than just a dystopian world or a generic deadworld.
You may want to read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" ... I think the author there did something similar to what you want. I believe you can find it for free on gutenberg.org
In there, there was a lot of connection to the past and ideas as the monks wandered around collecting books that they did not know what meaning was contained within them.
Harry harrison also wrote an interesting story... Deathworld??? I know that's a book he read, but I probably have it confused with the story I'm thinking of... maybe what I'm thinking of was Lord Kalven in Time... (H Beam Piper?) where the adventurer ends up in a post-apocalyptic area and travels from society to society- each society has one piece of old technology that they religiously guard from the others. for example- one group has oil, another has advanced sewage systems, etc.
And I also recommend you look at Steerpike's setting-- it may help you with some images and ideas. :)
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That being said... I was looking forward to more on your Heavy Metal scenario.
[blockquote=Light Dragon]You may want to read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" ... I think the author there did something similar to what you want. I believe you can find it for free on gutenberg.org[/blockquote]Excellent book, and has some definite similarities with what you're doing, Leetz. So, seconded.
what's important with post apocalyptic settings is the question: what was the apocalypse? climate shift? pandemic? meteor strike? nuclear holocaust?
the last two severly limit the survival possibilities for anything bigger than a cockroach and the follow up to them isn't an arid wasteland but a world choked by dirty snow under an eternal black sky.
also, you won't have to worry about architectural relics - modern day rebar inforced concrete will decay in 500-700 years and after the first millenium, there won't even by scrap metal left.
mutation is tricky. depending on how far you want to take realism (and again depending on what coused the end), radiation doesn't give you telepathy, only vestigial fingers, hair loss and leukemia.
one of the cults that is a staple of post-apocalypse is the tech cargo cult, like the brotherhood of steel in fallout or the mechanicum in warhammer 40k
another good source of inspiration for a different sort of post-apoc world are king's dark tower books.
Erasing knowledge of the past can be difficult if you're insistent on having AIs survive the disaster. If a sentient AI was capable of communicating with humans to the point of being worshiped by them, why would it not instruct them to recover lost technologies?
While I could see a sentient AI from a super-advanced age masquerading as a divinity because it serves it's interests, I cannot see it deliberately keeping it's subjects to such a backwards state where they would be useless to what ever goals the AI may have. Logically it should help them advance at least enough to become actually useful assets.
Of corse, there's the option of an irrational, emotional AI that just likes toying with the simpletons. But (assuming there aren't thousands of AIs around) you can't really have much more than one instance of such before it becomes lame and undermines suspense of disbelief.
Like scholar said, pretty much no tech will survive 5000 years left unattended.
Now you said that after the Roman Empire technology ground to a standstill. Well if you plot technology growth through all of recorded history its an exponential graph. Some people say we'll have hit the Singularity in as little as 40-200 years. That means there would be post-human tech, which is by definition beyond human comprehension.
The way I see it, the post-human thing is a possible route to go, all kinds of tech was abanded when like 90% of earths population became post-human and using post-human tech essentially disappeared. Leaving just a few people left. I think there's a book similar to this.
I'll comment more after work (on lunch atm).
I would say technological growth stopping after Rome is a misconception. Some was lost, and the growth slowed, but it never stopped. Some advances continued and created the Renaissance (not the other way around).
And I agree with Scholar--if you distance the setting so far from the past that neither knowledge of the past exists nor is the apocalypse itself important...Then what's the point in saying post-apocalyptic at all?
Is this a side project from your main setting?
Well, one route out of the technology would be to simply rule that in this reality processers just never get fast/compact enough to achieve hard AI. I tend to be swayed more by post-humanist arguments for the possibility of Singularity, but there are lots and lots of counterarguments, so perhaps in this world we just don't have the proper tech to create a self-improving intelligence and/or truly post-human tech as typically defined.
AI seemed to be one of his original tenants. And one of the only reasons to even bother saying this is post-apocalyptic.
But a further thought on the matter:
After a certain (undisclosed) number of years following an apocalypse, a setting ceases to need the descriptor "post-apocalyptic." The descriptor implies society recovering from (or dwindling because of) an apocalypse. If the apocalypse is so far back as to have no effect on life, it may still have happened and thus be background, but it does not become a defining factor of the setting.
I agree. If the apocalypse was so long ago nobody even remembers or has historical knowledge of it, and technology hasn't been recovered-- or whatever does still exist isn't understood and seems magical-- then you might as well just call it straight fantasy, because that's what it really is. ;)
Those are all great points, but what if the apocalypse really isn't a single big-bang, but a long whimper?
I was thinking that X years into the future, mankind had exhausted Earth of everything that fuels technology as we know it - primarily heavy metals, fossil fuels, and water (and obviously not ALL water, but the amounts that are required to sustain large populations, heavy industry, etc.) So, they decide to leave. But not everyone got to go.
After this exodus, the Earth would have fallen to vast desertification, and without the resources required to advance or even maintain a certain level of tech, things would recede until they reached a point that could be sustained by what was left. No doubt large conflicts would happen both before and after the point of decline, probably reducing Earths population to a fraction of what it is.
The only problem I see is trying to explain why mankind would totally give up and forget about Earth, which I think time could give some belief to - after thousands of years, Earth would probably be forgotten in favor of newer, more vibrant and healthier worlds. Or maybe great machine-AIs where left to protect Earth as some kinda of pseudo-holy ground and now they are worshiped as "gods"?
Plus, having lots of time pass would give you leeway on some neat technologies that would be plausible, but border on "magic".
This kind of setting would obviously be focused on developing rich and believable cultures with a little "what if" twist on real historic cultures.