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Dear Internet people,
Anyone that likes apocalypse fiction want to help with my essay?
Why do you like it? What appeals to you?
From books like War of the Worlds and Day of the Triffids to films and TV programs like 28 days later and Walking dead, and even games like Left for Dead and Dead rising.

My essay question is "Why does western society have such a fixation with apocalypse and post apocalypse fiction?"

I expect 3000-4000 words from each of you. I shall select the best answer and hand it in.

Jim wrote:I expect 3000-4000 words from each of you. I shall select the best answer and hand it in.

That even after the world has ended, a scantily-clad sexy woman survives.

*insert 3000-words of padding*

You are both NOT being helpful at all. As such you will not be invited into my post-apocalypse sanctuary.

Jim wrote:You are both NOT being helpful at all. As such you will not be invited into my post-apocalypse sanctuary.

I believe most people are fascinated by the genre, partly because we have a morbid desire to witness these events, but also because we have the hope that even after society has been destroyed, there is still something after it.

I guess similar to our fascination of death: a fear of the unknown, but a hope that there is something more.

Plus the obvious benefits of the genres: blood, guts, gore, action, adventure, heroism, - an apocalyptic setting allows for them to be fully explored more easily than a romcom

Since a picture is worth 1000 words...

Its the post apocalyptic bit humans are interrested in.

Its in our nature to be fascinated by such things, imagining a world totally ripped from current reality where lawlessness, destruction and havoc are the everyday way of life in contrary to a safe 9 to 5 desk job. (or school)

Nostra wrote:Its the post apocalyptic bit humans are interrested in.

Its in our nature to be fascinated by such things, imagining a world totally ripped from current reality where lawlessness, destruction and havoc are the everyday way of life in contrary to a safe 9 to 5 desk job. (or school)

I think it's more than that. (the following is poorly edited and should never be used for a paper)

tl;dr = Paranoia, fear, and thrill seekers.

Writers enjoy extrapolating on the fears of the public. War of the Worlds was a part of the invasion genre that was created in England in the late 1800s (I think somewhere in the 1970s...?). All of the novels created in that time had invasions from foreign powers or aliens, and each one used the fears of citizens to entice readership. They had anything from the best war tactics their country should adopt to a failed national security system that left the country open to attack. All of these stories were published leading up to WWI. After that, I'm sure the genre boomed (mere conjecture), because what these authors wrote came to fruition in some form. Okay, so Wells may have used martians instead of Germans, but readers tend to stretch their imaginations.

People like to be scared, and western society has been spoon-fed that the world will end if we keep doing ______ or if we don't do ______ or if ______ or _______. I mean, it's almost all we hear about during times when the news doesn't have a war or conflict to talk about. Global warming, illness (Zombieland turned MadCow into the Zombie virus), alien encounters, etc. And then you have the people who like to be prepared. How many times have people been asked, "Do you have a zombie plan?" Conspiracy nuts, people just waiting for the millions of ways the world is going to explode into tiny pieces (If Yellowstone blows up, I'm toast. Plan or no plan).

what appeal to most of us when we watch movies like 'resident evil' and 'zombieland' is that there are no more rules. we are not forced to follow the rules of society, we can live like savages as our ancestors did. I think the novelty of the change in rules appeals to us and provides us with a short term pleasure in thinking about our life in a a place like 'zombieland'.


^this part can be your thesis, and then you can go into describing what kind of the rules of society that we don't like and give examples of people breaking those rules in your texts. and you can conclude your essay by saying that we enjoy post apocalyptic fiction because it let us do what we are meant to do as animals!

I'm too lazy to write up a large essay, so I'll make it short.

The Western civilization is so obsessed with the apocalypse and post-apocalypse is because of two reasons. One being that it brings in a steady cash flow of people wanting to see another version of what their world could possibly look like if an unthinkable scenario happened, and the fact that they all know they will soon come to an end.

let us know which u think is the best

or you can probablly combine some of the ones posted here and make a nice thesis