Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
332
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
Posted: 10/15/2025 10:51:15 PM EDT
|
The scenario depicted in the Uber dystopian novel The Road involves some global catastrophe that involves (among other things) general volcanic eruptions, a type of nuclear winter, pervasive loss of crops… But the book was situated 7 or 8 years after the collapse. When every survivalists stock pile was gone and repeated skirmishes depleted almost all ammo… But in the first week of the calamity… Let’s place our protagonist on a business trip from his hometown on the Montana border with Canada where he runs a farm and mini ranchette with his wife… to some business ventures in Dallas TX. He just gets off the plane at the gate when… The lights go off. Then the whole airport shakes as seismic waves from a meteor impact on the city outskirts precede the blast wave… |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
333
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
The challenge of writing a suspense novel in the third person is how much or how little to describe the scene and what the protagonist does. Many authors go into obsessive detail about irrelevant details like “then he pulled out his Rock River AR15 with the 10.5 inch barrel and…” when stating “he had a rifle” would suffice. Others add steps that are designed to educate people on woodcraft or basic logistics… like our hero immediately seeking bottles of water and raiding the airport restaurant kitchen for a usable knife… grabbing extra garbage bags and rolls of toilet paper before heading outside on foot… Putting our hero in an airport means he’s unarmed, doesn’t have a Leatherman multi tool, and doesn’t have a vehicle. But he is far from helpless. Depending on his mindset and imagination he might walk onto the tarmac to obtain a radio, an airport pickup truck (keys in the ignition) and a chance encounter with a civilian on the private jet side of the airport who might have a clue about what’s happening… or we could have him join the crowd rushing out to the terminal exit and trying to find a volunteer to give him a lift… |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
334
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
Louis L’more insisted that every chapter end in a cliffhanger. And the arc was a series of discrete challenges to overcome and occasionally a side quest that proved crucial to his ultimate success. So our hero’s first challenge- getting away from immediate danger and taking stock of the situation can go on a conventional journey into downtown Dallas… or the plausible but unlikely scenario of hitching a ride on the private jet to a ranch in Texas to collect a billionaire who has a contingency plan to bug out and the jet is part of the plan… |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
335
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
The other thing is to decide whether our plucky hero is essentially ourselves (arfcom lurking slightly autistic paranoid survivalist middle income middle aged white guys who can lose 30 lbs… ) or some random Everyman dude who doesn’t know what “EDC” means and wasn’t an Eagle Scout/SF/Space shuttle gunner bro. The difference is what is plausible for him to know how to do but especially what to do/what is possible. Everyman wouldn’t think of grabbing a gallon worth of bottled water and acquiring a knife, large garbage bags (for shelter) and other stuff before joining the crowd leaving the airport. Everyman wouldn’t immediately consider commandeering a truck or even consider getting to the private aircraft part of the airport. Private pilots generally are also HAMs and are the engineering sorts of people who think linearly about problem solving…. If our protagonist was me… he’d be traveling with a basic hiker kit (Nalgene bottle, rope, Bic lighter, duct tape, basic IFAK, small eye dropper of betadyne (antiseptic that purifies water too). He’d have an LED headlamp and extra batteries. A small AM/FM radio and paper maps of the region and country… because of 20 years of Arfcom lurking… 🤓 But that’s decidedly not an Everyman loadout. So we can run the scenario through two different versions… the guy who isn’t prepared and that leads to plot points where he learns lessons the hard way… and the guy who is prepared and clever but still runs into seemingly insurmountable obstacles like sheer distance between his current shelter and home. Everyman might hop on a still functional train and reach WY before prepper dude leaves TX. |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
345
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
The Road scenario is essentially the father who is dying of something taking his 8 year old son on a desperate quest to get to the Gulf of America in the hope that there’s something alive, some change in the climate that could allow for plant life and sustainable ecosystems. The boy was born after the event. So we’re talking years after even the most paranoid prepper’s stockpiles and small farm would have been exhausted. Add a dozen desperate skirmishes and flights and you could see even the best prepared survivalist reduced to his back up revolver and 2 rounds… |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
348
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
What is a better way to get back to Montana from DFW? Try to hitchhike? Assuming you have $200 in cash because you’re a lurker on arfcom and travel with all the fixings of a GHB minus knife and gun…. Buy a bike off someone? Hop a train? Go light and fast or try to hunker down while you’re figuring things out? Assume that earth is getting bracketed by asteroids just as an X20+ Carrington sized CME is inbound. So electricity’s not coming back, random zip codes are getting obliterated by stadium sized nickel iron rocks blasting mile sized holes into the ground |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
349
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
If you were the protagonist in this story… and you were trying to get back to your well stocked ranch in northern Montana… from DFW airport in Texas in October… And you knew before the general public how permanently bad things were going to get… what would you do? Add a twist. You’re shaken out of your head by a child tugging at your sleeve: six kids trying to fly home to Omaha NE are alone as their chaperone just had a heart attack trying to figure out how to make rearrangements to get them back…. |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
353
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
Yes. If … but if you have a well established ranchette and hobby farm in rural Montana where you have 2+ years of food storage you would probably try to get home to your family. The Road seems to be one of those “it got a lot worse as the years went on” scenarios that people can’t imagine. Going south into Mexico during a mad max scenario would also be far more dangerous in the short to midterm |
|
Originally Posted By WYPete: Yes. If … but if you have a well established ranchette and hobby farm in rural Montana where you have 2+ years of food storage you would probably try to get home to your family. The Road seems to be one of those “it got a lot worse as the years went on” scenarios that people can’t imagine. Going south into Mexico during a mad max scenario would also be far more dangerous in the short to midterm If you knew it was a "The Road" scenario, then you would have the wife get the vehicle with the most range, get as much fuel for it as you can, and drive south. You aren't going to make it 1,500 miles north to get her and that's assuming you can even contact her with no electricity from the EMP. |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
358
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
I guess the protagonist of a scenario can suspect that civilization is not capable of coming back from the collapse… but he can’t know it. Neither can he know that the southern hemisphere is safer. All he can know is what a reasonable person could deduce from public knowledge about the grid, how things work, human nature… and random falling space rocks that could turn the safest corner of the planet into ground zero… At event hour 1 he’s going on sketchy information… |
|
Originally Posted By WYPete: I guess the protagonist of a scenario can suspect that civilization is not capable of coming back from the collapse… but he can’t know it. Neither can he know that the southern hemisphere is safer. All he can know is what a reasonable person could deduce from public knowledge about the grid, how things work, human nature… and random falling space rocks that could turn the safest corner of the planet into ground zero… At event hour 1 he’s going on sketchy information… I think you need to iron out exactly what caused the event(s) that you are talking about and then get a timeline of what happens when, then you can probably create a story around that. As for the southern hemisphere, it may or may not be safer, but if you are talking numerous large asteroids hitting the earth at random, then there will be a very long winter and the best place to be is around the equator as it won't get as cold there. |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
364
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
I’m familiar with the island of Trinidad. Relatively high mountain range. The trick to surviving on Trinidad in an end of the world scenario involving space rocks landing in oceans and land is surviving tsunamis, and the ensuing desperate people seeking shelter and refuge. You would have to assume modern technology based lifestyles are liabilities and intentionally accept basic primitive level living standards and carefully husband your dwindling stockpile of modern technology. You won’t be replacing anything lost with a brand new one. I’ve thought of a script where the family is in Trinidad and the husband is in the US and his challenge is to get home… via sailboat. |
|
Originally Posted By WYPete: The Road scenario is essentially the father who is dying of something taking his 8 year old son on a desperate quest to get to the Gulf of America in the hope that there’s something alive, some change in the climate that could allow for plant life and sustainable ecosystems. The boy was born after the event. So we’re talking years after even the most paranoid prepper’s stockpiles and small farm would have been exhausted. Add a dozen desperate skirmishes and flights and you could see even the best prepared survivalist reduced to his back up revolver and 2 rounds… The boy was born before the event and the boy's mom went crazy after the event and wandered off abandoning the boy and her husband |
"Freedom is a messy business." - LaRue_Tactical
I am a sack of blood, held together by un-tanned leather. . .
I am a sack of blood, held together by un-tanned leather. . .
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
375
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
|
Originally Posted By WYPete: I'm familiar with the island of Trinidad. Relatively high mountain range. The trick to surviving on Trinidad in an end of the world scenario involving space rocks landing in oceans and land is surviving tsunamis, and the ensuing desperate people seeking shelter and refuge. You would have to assume modern technology based lifestyles are liabilities and intentionally accept basic primitive level living standards and carefully husband your dwindling stockpile of modern technology. You won't be replacing anything lost with a brand new one. I've thought of a script where the family is in Trinidad and the husband is in the US and his challenge is to get home via sailboat. My family is in Florida on a cattle ranch with lots of guns and resources. We recently had a coup d'etat in Madagascar and it got sporty for a minute. But I've sometimes gamed out what I'd have to do in some kind of worldwide catastrophe. At a minimum I'd need to get to my wife and kids, which would include begging borrowing stealing to get off the big island alive and then as close to Morocco as possible but otherwise it would be a long trip across very dangerous parts of Africa. Or a long boat trip around Africa. Either way it would likely be a years long trip fraught with danger and adventure if i survived at all. Eta: a few years ago after a direct hit from a big cyclone, the power was out and supply lines were cut off for a couple weeks. No fuel, nothing to buy or eat that wasn't local. I had my house prepared but what fascinated me was the complete lack of impact it had on the local population. They don't use electricity anyway. The closest grocery store is 5 hours away. For them it was very much business as usual while growing up in Florida, post hurricane was always a huge disruption. |
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
963
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
Joined:
Jan 2025
Posts:
1009
EE: 0% (0)
WY, USA
| The heartbreak would be surviving against all the odds and getting home only to find the entire region depopulated and empty… and nothing but rumors as to where the population fled to… and then spend years roving around looking for your family and possibly just bypassing them by a mile or their being dead and never knowing. |