What does Post-Apocalypse mean to you? (vs. Dystopian) [Archive]

rs2excelsior

2015-07-29, 08:53 AM

To me, a post-apocalyptic setting is the opposite in many ways to a dystopia. Post-apocalyptic implies a complete or near-complete collapse of society, as in The Walking Dead, Falling Skies, Mad Max, etc. Of course, there will be people who try to set up their own empires, which very well could be quite controlling with an almost dystopian feel, but won't truly be dystopias.

A dystopia is the opposite of a utopia--a society that in many cases might seem perfect from the outside, but with complete government control of society and complete lack of freedom. Emphasis on society--dystopia implies a pervasive structure that controls almost every aspect of almost every person. It doesn't have to be global, but it should be far-reaching.

I suppose you could have a dystopia in a post-apocalyptic setting, but it'd be hard to justify an organization with such high levels of control following a breakdown of all control. It'd be easier to have a post-apocalyptic society after a dystopia than the other way around.

EDIT:

For me, post-apocalyptic only means there was a world-changing event preceding the present of the setting. Anything else is details. You can pretty much tack any genre to it, from conventional fantasy (Middle-Earth has actually underwent several apocalyptic scenarios and the remnants of what-once-was are readily noticeable in many places) to sci-fi to dystopies to plain horror.

See, for me, that doesn't cut it--the world-changing event has to be prevalent. Middle-Earth doesn't feel like a post-apocalyptic setting at all. And by that definition, the world we currently live in is post-apocalyptic as well (we've had several mass-extinction-level events in the history of the earth).

But yes, that way of looking at it is, by the definition of the term, true :smalltongue:

Red Fel

2015-07-29, 09:28 AM

Dystopian does not have to be post-apocalyptic. You can easily have a highly oppressive, post-scarcity society.

This. Consider it as a Venn diagram.

In one circle, Post-Apocalyptic. This is any setting in which something has happened, resulting in the downfall of society as we know it. Maybe nuclear war, maybe zombies or robots, maybe a disease. Maybe computers simultaneously failed all across the globe, and people revolted. Maybe everyone just went insane. The point is, Post-Apocalyptic involves the lives of people after the disaster.

In the other circle, Dystopian. This is any setting in which people live in the opposite of a utopia. This could be a seemingly-perfect city-state where 98% of citizens are genetically engineered to enjoy life there, with the remaining 2% bitterly resenting the fact that everything they need is provided for them, robbing them of any incentive or drive. This could be a horrific walled complex where the leader-for-life informs the people that all that awaits them beyond the walls is death, and that obedience is the only way to remain within his safe haven. This could be a nation where books are burned upon discovery, possession is a crime, and free expression is stifled. The point is, Dystopian involves the lives of people in an inherently awful city/state/civilization.

Then there is the point of overlap. This is common, because an apocalypse gives a reason for the creation of the dystopia. In Appleseed, for example, the world's population dwindled to a fraction, so a city was erected in the wasteland, and technology was used to fill it primarily with people who were happy to live there. But the wasteland survivors who lived there as well became restless, because the city provided for their every need; as a result, many turned to crime, simply because there was nothing else to struggle for. Hunger Games is another example; something something starvation and scarcity, something something war, something something send your children to fight for our amusement.

goto124

2015-07-29, 09:32 AM

A dystopia is the opposite of a utopia--a society that in many cases might seem perfect from the outside, but with complete government control of society and complete lack of freedom.

Ah. For me, all that a setting needs to be a dystopia is to have grimdark pervade pretty much anything. In this case, your description of a dystopia is but one kind of dystopia, with the post-apocalyptic society being another type of dystopia where starving people wearing armor made of scrap metal and garbage bins clubs one another over the head with improvised weapons to get half a meal's worth of preserved vegetables.

Edit: Ninja'ed.

GungHo

2015-07-29, 10:31 AM

For me it's a matter of who the ultimate antagonist is... Is it "The Empire" or is it the environment? You can mix these, a-la Fallout 2, but Walking Dead is obviously the environment. You're dealing with scarcity, and arguably walkers are part of the environment. Hunger Games is the Empire that has set up a crapsack world post apocalypse. The enemy isn't environmental. When the environment is presented as an antagonist, it's artificially generated.

Joe the Rat

2015-07-29, 10:52 AM

Dystopian does not have to be post-apocalyptic. You can easily have a highly oppressive, post-scarcity society.

This. Consider it as a Venn diagram.
The core of it. Apocalypses can lead to Dystopias. Dystopias can lead to Apocalypses.

I think it comes down more to the balance of the themes in the setting. If your emphasis is on the wasteland and the world-that-was, you're looking for more of a post-apocalyptic vibe. If your emphasis is on the broken system, or rather the perfect system... No, the system that works as designed, but sucks to be a part of... If that's your focus, you're after the dystopian themes. But it's more of a continuum. Apocalypse may be your set-up for your society, or it might be right outside, and something you have to deal with to keep the "perfect" world working and keep the Carousel-bound monorails on time.

neonagash

2015-07-29, 11:09 AM

Post apocalyptic to me is about scarcity of resources, everyone struggling just to Survive. Usually with visual themes of the world that fell around you.

Also small disparate factions rather then medium government or larger.

Tone wise I like a strong sense of the fallen world to be pervasive, a constant reminder that things weren't always this way and we brought it on ourselves.

Brookshw

2015-07-29, 11:25 AM

In one circle, Post-Apocalyptic. This is any setting in which something has happened, resulting in the downfall of society as we know it. Maybe nuclear war, maybe zombies or robots, maybe a disease. Maybe computers simultaneously failed all across the globe, and people revolted. Maybe everyone just went insane. The point is, Post-Apocalyptic involves the lives of people after the disaster.

I think perhaps this leads into what surprises me so about how some post-apocalyptic setting get lumped into the genre, it tells me there was some disaster but that's kind of it. There was a disaster, full stop. I could put a rom com in there, a story about an Eden everyone lives in and never has to deal with the fallout of the disaster, going about merry lives. If someone pitched a game describing it as post apocalypse and then we stayed in some well to do city that survived I'd feel like it was false advertising.

Don't get me wrong, there's no one right answer to how people think of the genre, there have been some very interesting answers that help me understand the different ways to view the thing.

Aside: if anyone does have any book suggestions for post apocalypse a la Mad Max style I still need to find some new reading material for the commute.

comicshorse

2015-07-29, 11:36 AM

'A Boy and his Dog' is a short story and a comic and a film so should provide something you want to see

The Survivalist series I remember form my childhood but they are pure pulp so I can't speak to their quality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist

'The Road' by Cormac Mccarthy is apparently excellent but supremely depressing from what I've heard (never read it).

DigoDragon

2015-07-29, 12:06 PM

Consider it as a Venn diagram.

My thoughts seems to agree with this. Two different concepts that can have some overlap. Post-apocalypse is the state of the environment, Dystopian is the state of the society.

EggKookoo

2015-07-29, 12:29 PM

I think it's pretty straightforward. Post-apocalypse must have come some time after an apocalypse, where said apocalypse happened recently enough to still have a direct effect on the way people live.

Dystopia is just any future setting where there's a large amount of unhappiness, oppression, tyranny, destitution, and/or the like.

They're not really the same thing at all. You could argue Luke Skywalker is living in a dystopia, at least until the Empire is overthrown, but most people probably wouldn't define it that way.

Post-apocalypse settings aren't usually permanent. Either society or the species continue to decline into oblivion or civilization reboots itself and starts back up on an upward trend. Even if neither happens in the story proper that's the implication based on the setting. And there are exceptions, but that's the common depiction.

Whereas one of the horrors of a dystopia is that the problems plaguing civilization could easily go on forever. Someone or something or some group is in power, is oppressing the masses, and it seems as though there's nothing that will alter that. In a lot of classic dystopian stories (1984, Brave New World, even Brazil), that's how they end.

Lorsa

2015-07-29, 12:52 PM

Post-Apocalypse means just what it says. It takes place after an apocalyptic event. Although I would say that the "after" must be in such close proximity that the event still shapes the world. For example, the human species has never had an apocalyptic event on Earth, and whatever happened to the dinosours is irrelevant.

All the other things like open wastelands and roving biker gangs are assosciations, but they shouldn't be part of the definition of the word. Otherwise the phrase (which is very clearly defined in my opinion) becomes too ambigous.

Now if you want to know what I assosciate with post-ap, I would say that there is less creation of goods than there is consumption. That is, people are essentially living on old goods and do not have the means to manufacture new ones. This is also the reason why I dislike playing in post-ap scenarios, unless the GM allows for freedom to start organising such manufacture again.

Dystopia is simply the opposite of utopia. It is a setting which is not a good place to live in. Therefore, I would argue that most post-apocalyptic settings are also dystopian.

Red Fel

2015-07-29, 12:54 PM

Whereas one of the horrors of a dystopia is that the problems plaguing civilization could easily go on forever. Someone or something or some group is in power, is oppressing the masses, and it seems as though there's nothing that will alter that. In a lot of classic dystopian stories (1984, Brave New World, even Brazil), that's how they end.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

Something to remember is that both dystopian stories and post-apocalyptic stories involve human horror, but of different stripes and in different amounts.

The human horror of your typical post-apocalyptic story - and when I say typical, I mean the "Mad Max" or zombie survival-style, total societal breakdown - is this: When you strip away everything that defined civilization, you discover that people are just highly intelligent, savage animals. A great deal of the drama and horror of a post-apocalyptic story comes from humans being terrible people. That said, there is also the pressure of the post-apocalyptic environment. Even if the world isn't a Mad Max-style barren wasteland, or a Waterworld-style floating abyss, there are shortages. Shortages of fresh food, of clean water, of power and information and human contact. There may be shortages of shelter, and a need to contend with the elements. There may be shortages of security, and a need to ward off wild animals or people. So while part of the drama is how humans devolve into beasts, part of it also is why - because they're all coping with something even more horrible.

The human horror of dystopia, by contrast, is more banal, and in some ways more chilling: When you let man define the future, what if you choose the wrong man? The whole concept is built around the idea that a civilization exists which is terrible, just terrible. And it is made that way, not (just) by shortages or the elements, but by deliberate human decision. And that decision wasn't simply made once; it was and is maintained. And there are so many illustrations of it, to varying degrees of chillingness. It's not always Big Brother, a single dark figure imposing cruelty on the people; sometimes it's self-imposed. For example, in one episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor comes upon a space colony of refugees. It is revealed that, upon coming of age, and once every five years thereafter, each citizen is informed of the truth of the colony's nature - that it is built upon the body of a space whale, who is enslaved, tortured, and kept alive in agony in order to maintain and propel the colony through space. Each citizen must then vote - if they choose to maintain the status quo, they will be given the bliss of forgetting their horrible decision. If even one percent of the population chooses to protest, however, the space whale will be released, and everyone will perish. This is a dystopia built upon every single citizen choosing something horrible, and doing it because it preserves the status quo.

That's the essence of dystopia, as opposed to post-apocalyptic. In the latter, people do horrible things when circumstances reduce them to it; in the former, they do horrible things just because that's how it's done.

JohnADreams

2015-07-29, 01:58 PM

"And it is made that way, not (just) by shortages or the elements, but by deliberate human decision."

That's the main difference to me. Dystopias were originally meant to contrast utopias, where one is meant to show how humanity can build the best society and the other shows how it can build the worst. Post-apocalypse is still a terrible world, but the focus isn't really on how the world came to be but the aftermath (e.g. the Fallout world isn't obsessed with the nuclear disaster that created it, the story is mainly in the survivors journeys).

Another difference is that dystopia is more of a genre while post-apocalyptic is more of a setting. In a "dystopia" story I generally know who the antagonists will be and the general arc of the story. Post-apocalyptic has a more broad choice of arcs.

Lvl 2 Expert

2015-07-29, 01:59 PM

Somehow, though, while basic survival stuff may be lacking in a post-apocalyptic setting (Food, clean water, etc), the best post-apocalyptic settings have a surplus of weaponry and guns and bullets and tanks and people to use them on.

This gets my vote. Post-apocalyptic to me means people living on the remains of a previous society. Wether it's total anarchy or a strict dystopian society, the world survives by scavenging technological remnants. Because Mad Max is awesome, the most typical post-apocalyptic settings work with more or less 80's technology, and on top of that focus heavily on vehicles and weapons. There is some truth to this idea. If society collapsed today slightly older cars would probably survive a lot longer than modern cars, computers or anything else with a processor in it, simpler technology is easier to repair. All terrain vehicles and military equipment are often buildt to be no more complex than necessary, and could thus become relatively common in a society like that (except, you know, never more common than before the collapse, they're not making anything new).

Overall, the whole idea of a setting like this is mildly ridiculous. Humans have become way too good at working together to let society as a whole fall that far back. But ridiculous is my middle name, and the setting is definitely fun.

EggKookoo

2015-07-29, 02:05 PM

Overall, the whole idea of a setting like this is mildly ridiculous. Humans have become way too good at working together to let society as a whole fall that far back. But ridiculous is my middle name, and the setting is definitely fun.

That's part of why I think post-apocalyptic settings are temporary. A major disaster could create a relative snapshot of human history where people live like Mad Max, but those lifestyles are generally not sustainable. People will either rebuild, or rebuilding will be somehow impossible, which means humanity is on the way out and that pretty quickly.

Cealocanth

2015-07-29, 03:03 PM

I tend to take the most literal sense of the interpretation. If the setting takes place after an apocalypse of high enough proportions to completely collapse most of modern society in the area in which the novel takes place, then it's post-apocalyptic. If the setting has since then created a dystopian empire (likely in response to the apocalypse), then it's also dystopian.

So settings that are post-apocalyptic but not dystopian would include

Pretty much every zombie game/movie/novel ever.
Fallout (in most parts)
Mad Max

Settings that are dystopian but not post-apocalyptic would include

Pretty much every Cyberpunk setting, including Deus Ex
1984
Wolfenstein

Settings that are both would include

Hunger Games
Pretty much every movie involving alien invasion
Bioshock
Some D&D settings

These two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, more often than not, they work together to create the completely ruined society that the movie industry dreams of.

Beleriphon

2015-07-29, 04:33 PM

The original Fallout (and Wasteland) are both post-apocalyptic games. The reason being is that the apocalypse is current enough in the time line to be directly relevant to the stories. Fallout is only set 80 years after the bombs fall, and by extension there are people alive that still remember the world from before. By Fallout 2 we've move to nearly 150 and is barely post-apocalyptic for the most part. Fallout: New Vegas we're at 200 years after the bombs, and the NCR isn't a post-apocalyptic society by any means they have a fully functioning standing army, trade routes, hell they have an elected government and by all accounts the rule of law in the lands they claim. In fact F:NV is more a funky retro-futurism-Western than post-apocalypse.

The single defining trait that really sells a post-apocalyptic story is the fact that people are still directly, within single generation, the effects of the apocalyptic event. Thus why Mad Max tends to be the go to example in many cases, as is the original Fallout. If the world has moved past the point where the apocalypse is a direct relevant part of the world then you probably don't have a post-apocalyptic tale and the story would fit better into a different sub-genre.

I would not ever suggest The Hunger Games is post-apocalyptic by any means. The actual apocalyptic event is completely irrelevant to the story itself. Its a means to an end to tell a story about freedom, tyranny and what actually constitutes each. Never mind the fact that its actually a teenage love triangle romance set against a horrible world. If you compare it to something like Mad Max the question isn't how far one will go to survive The Hunger Games is about how far one will go to be free. The Walking Dead is much the same one of the major themes of that is just how far Rick and Co. will go to actually survive in a horrifying world, a world where zombies are actually the least terrible thing that might be trying to kill you.

LibraryOgre

2015-07-29, 06:04 PM

I tend to see post-apocalyptic settings as not only needing the titular apocalypse, but also having it recent enough to be in the memories of living people... and maybe a generation or two thereafter. After a certain point, a post-apocalyptic world, even if the conditions don't significantly improve, simply becomes a world heavily ruled by scarcity. The Mad Max series is post-apocalyptic because, if we assume a single Max, he saw the world collapse, and still remembers the old world.

Fallout, in this case, is only post-apocalyptic insofar as ghouls, super mutants, and AIs retain their memories... most of the world has simply grown up, grown old, and died in a horrible world where everything sucks. Keep in mind that their apocalypse was 200 years ago... New Vegas takes place 204 years after the apocalypse. That's pretty much the time from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the election of Ronald Reagan.

Dystopias, in my opinion, require there to be a relative utopia which exists by stepping on a bunch of other people. An elite at the top (in the Capitol, for example) that is able to KEEP their elite status due to the exploitation of others.

ExLibrisMortis

2015-07-29, 06:09 PM

Mass migration of refugees, flooding less-apocalypsed areas; scarcity, as resource-rich areas are destroyed; major changes in global politics, as less-damaged countries become safe-ish havens; but not a return to tribal hunter-gathering. You need to have a pretty fine-grained and massive-scale apocalypse to take out all modern society; we're kind of everywhere these days. Of course, if you don't need to leave plenty of humans to interact with, you can be more thorough. Nuke-type apocalypses are very effective. They tend to destroy humans as much as our civilizational trappins, or more, which leaves an empty world - not everyone likes that.

Basically, what I'm saying is: human society and technology don't die until humans do. No apocalypse (that leaves humans alive) will leave present-day Earth without electricity and computers; they just become rarer and less networked.

Cealocanth

2015-07-29, 09:48 PM

Basically, what I'm saying is: human society and technology don't die until humans do. No apocalypse (that leaves humans alive) will leave present-day Earth without electricity and computers; they just become rarer and less networked.

I was going to say "what if the knowledge of how to make them disappeared", but then I realized how many computer parts people have thrown into landfills, and how many computer manuals people have thrown into landfills. In the right conditions, that stuff or at least the remains thereof can survive for centuries. Not all of them will, and not everywhere, but some archaeologist or scavenger in the far future will come across the key to making computers, and then it's only a matter of time. That is assuming that society isn't deliberately suppressing scientific advancement or the culture of the old world, which is possible.

Still, I think you're right. Humans are really good at rebuilding after near-apocalyptic events (See post Black Death Europe, for an example). As long as something isn't directly keeping populations down and innovation from occurring (like nuclear fallout, a rapidly mutating zombie virus, resettlement by advanced aliens, a perpetual winter, a growing society of robots...), human society should be able to recover from most apocalyptic events within a few centuries. Even in most of those cases, human innovation and technology live on, even if human civilization doesn't.

Mechalich

2015-07-29, 11:46 PM

Dystopias are often set in a post-apocalyptic world because it is a useful storytelling device to explain why conditions arose for the dystopia to come about. This is especially true if the dystopia is a relatively low-tech one that is somehow set far in the future.

Even the classic dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World are structured in this way: the new societies were put into place following a catastrophic - but entirely off-screen - WWIII of some kind.

Post-apocalyptic as a genre, however, tends to be somewhat more specific and generally deals with the requirements of near-term to medium-term survival in the aftermath of whatever the apocalyptic event was. If the event was sufficiently brief a single story can actually be about both the apocalypse and its aftermath (Lucifer's Hammer for example).

Fallout is something of a weird case because the radiation never goes away. People are effectively still living out the apocalypse two hundred years later (often in ways that don't quite make sense), but there seems to be a lot local variation - the DC Wasteland of Fallout 3 is vastly more hostile than the Mojave of New Vegas.

dream

2015-07-30, 01:05 AM

I've been on a bit of a post apocalyptic kick recently and decided to Google novels in that vein for something to read on the commute, and I'm pretty surprised at some of the things people have placed within the genre, titles such as Hunger Games, Divergent, and a few similar that I had always considered more dystopian.

Generally when I think post-apocalypse I'm thinking of a Mad Max, a Fallout, bits of 50s style pulp thrown in. Decentralized or non existent central powers, likely in remnants. Bombed out cities, resource starved, isolated communities, maybe some mutant or nutty robots running around, warlords & motorcycle gangs, and so on. I can see putting elements of a dytopian society in there, but there is definitely a line between the two.

So what do people envision as post-apocalyptic in terms of settings? What staples do you want or expect to see? How do you think that matches up to a dystopian setting? What are the unique elements to each?
Dungeons & Dragons. The original and many subsequent settings were based on a land where a previous, advanced civilization fell. The results were the monsters and treasure hordes, plus "artifacts" that were far beyond the technology of a human species struggling from the ashes of some forgotten cataclysm. Many of the books the late Gary Gygax listed as inspiration for Chainmail/D&D fall squarely in the "post-apocalyptic" genre.

Most of the early PA elements of D&D are gone, although 3.75/Pathfinder's Golarion includes an apocalyptic event, Earthfall, which destroyed powerful ancient empires.

"Dystopian" has been beaten to death and dragged down the highway over the last decade or so. To the point where, imo, it's hardly entertaining anymore. I blame H.G. Wells.

Lorsa

2015-07-30, 01:59 AM

I find it interesting how the word Apocalypse has changed. According to wikipedia, it used to mean disclosure of knowledge, whereas these days it usually refers to the end of the world.

Xuc Xac

2015-07-30, 03:09 AM

For example, the human species has never had an apocalyptic event on Earth, and whatever happened to the dinosours is irrelevant.

Yes, the so-called "Black Death" was just a rough flu season that had little impact on society. That's why 99% of Europeans are still farmers today. If diseases were a big deal, the Aztec empire wouldn't be ruling Mexica with an iron first right now. (It's a bit off topic and I know we aren't supposed to talk politics here, but I really hope the Iroquois Confederation and the Sioux Republic can come to a diplomatic solution with Mexica that will lead to a lasting peace among the North American superpowers.)

EggKookoo

2015-07-30, 06:37 AM

Yes, the so-called "Black Death" was just a rough flu season that had little impact on society. That's why 99% of Europeans are still farmers today. If diseases were a big deal, the Aztec empire wouldn't be ruling Mexica with an iron first right now. (It's a bit off topic and I know we aren't supposed to talk politics here, but I really hope the Iroquois Confederation and the Sioux Republic can come to a diplomatic solution with Mexica that will lead to a lasting peace among the North American superpowers.)

He did say "species." Of course kingdoms/empires/civilizations fall.

Lvl 2 Expert

2015-07-30, 08:15 AM

That's part of why I think post-apocalyptic settings are temporary. A major disaster could create a relative snapshot of human history where people live like Mad Max, but those lifestyles are generally not sustainable. People will either rebuild, or rebuilding will be somehow impossible, which means humanity is on the way out and that pretty quickly.

I agree. Mad Max itself does this pretty well actually. I haven't seen the new one yet, but amongst the older movies part 1 is set in a dystopian future that leads up to the great disaster, part 2 deals with a small community trying to recapture how the world used to work and by part 3 the innovative rebuilders have enough success that they get to be the powerful villains now, while anyone still trying to live off of scraps is barely scraping by.

It doesn't show how fast the transition is. But it seems at least a few years have past since the tribe of children from part 3 got stranded (it feels longer when watching the movies, but there's no evidence to support that feeling I get from it). In real life people might be back up to the level of part 3 within months, or say a year, even with a really big disaster. After any major disaster we've seen in the real world people immediately start sticking together and getting their **** organized. It'd take an enormous blow for instance to not have a few people left who can find a garage somewhere and start cranking out combustion engines if none are still being made. Sure, there'd be some trouble getting steel and gasoline and stuff, but those supply lines also consist of a lot of little steps some survivors could probably start picking up pretty soon. Farming would most definitely restart immediately. If we don't get a harvest this year, a lot more people will die, and everyone knows it. Mad Max may get a pass here too, farming happens at the edges of the Australian continent, there's just a handful of nutjobs living in the desert. In the case of say Waterworld (yeah, I went there) people would be fishing, farming algae or seaweed or producing freshwater with the use of the sun rather than all trading in the few ancient relics there are left.

So, hooray, I guess, the Road Warrior is now officially a more accurate movie than Waterworld. Because I totally needed a post of more than 3 sentences to come to that conclusion. Still a fun setting though, finding Dryland would make for a good campaign.

BWR

2015-07-30, 08:23 AM

Slight tangent, for those who wish to read a post-apocalyptic story that isn't about how horrible things are, John Crowley's "Engine summer" is excellent (Crowley's always good). More famously, Walter M. Miller Jr's "A canticle for Leibowitz" is a PA story that shows several stages of life and society after the A (the pseudo-sequel "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild horse Woman" was not nearly as good, though not actually a bad story). These are not so much Mad Max or Lucifer's Hammer but more like personal growth or spiritual journeys.

EggKookoo

2015-07-30, 08:40 AM

I agree. Mad Max itself does this pretty well actually. I haven't seen the new one yet, but amongst the older movies part 1 is set in a dystopian future that leads up to the great disaster, part 2 deals with a small community trying to recapture how the world used to work and by part 3 the innovative rebuilders have enough success that they get to be the powerful villains now, while anyone still trying to live off of scraps is barely scraping by.

You know, I've had this discussion with other people but I always thought the nuclear war had already happened with the first Mad Max. The thing was just that Australia was never directly hit (except maybe one or two cities on the coast). So the rest of the world was blown to smithereens and most of Australia just decayed due being quickly "unplugged" from the global economy it had previously participated in. The cops in Mad Max were just doing their best to hold everything together amidst a decaying infrastructure. This is why the idea of "the last of the Interceptors" works -- no one makes new cars any more (although I guess that would work in a straight dystopia, too).

Sometime after Mad Max and before Road Warrior, Australian civilization had finally truly collapsed, and we're presented with a more convention post-apocalypse setting.

I dunno, YMMV, but it makes the whole thing more interesting to me.

EggKookoo

2015-07-30, 08:54 AM

Xuc Xac

2015-07-30, 10:07 AM

He did say "species." Of course kingdoms/empires/civilizations fall.

Oh, well, that would be the Toba catastrophe then. A prehistoric supervolcano eruption knocked human population below 10,000.

Try googling "human genetic bottleneck". There have been times when we almost went extinct (some estimated bottlenecks were as low as a few hundred individuals).

EggKookoo

2015-07-30, 10:22 AM

Oh, well, that would be the Toba catastrophe then. A prehistoric supervolcano eruption knocked human population below 10,000.

Try googling "human genetic bottleneck". There have been times when we almost went extinct (some estimated bottlenecks were as low as a few hundred individuals).

AFAIK the Toba one was the worst, but maybe I missed something.

I think Lorsa's point -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- is that since we developed civilization, we've never had an apocalyptic event that's threatened the entire species. If Toba erupted today, the impact would be severe but much less deadly to us as an animal. We'd need something bigger, like a giant asteroid or a ridiculously large solar flare. Or perhaps a massive gamma ray burst that would come out of nowhe.....***

Gnoman

2015-07-30, 10:42 AM

Aside: if anyone does have any book suggestions for post apocalypse a la Mad Max style I still need to find some new reading material for the commute.
Both are fairly mired in 1980s political viewpoints and are a bit right-wing, but the Wingman and the Endworld/Blade (two series by the same author in the same universe) series are pretty good in a pulpy sort of way, although Wingman gets weird several books in.

Brookshw

2015-07-30, 11:03 AM

It'd take an enormous blow for instance to not have a few people left who can find a garage somewhere and start cranking out combustion engines if none are still being made. Sure, there'd be some trouble getting steel and gasoline and stuff, but those supply lines also consist of a lot of little steps some survivors could probably start picking up pretty soon.

Personally I'd assume steam engines would be more practical given the drilling, refining man power investment when food production is probably a priority (not to mention the shelf life of gas). Presumably the nature of whatever disaster would have a huge part to play in determining practical fuel sources.

Lots of interesting questions come up in these types of survival situation I suppose of practical skills today and what would be practical post apocalypse, especially when devoid of a useful infrastructure and logistics chain.

Also, thanks for the book suggestions gang, I'll look into some of those, Engine Summer sounds especially interesting, the whole adapting to a new world is, for me, an interesting element, "do you stay 'good' in a world where justice costs a bullet and the only justice is living to see another day" sorta thing in some sense.

Strigon

2015-07-30, 11:05 AM

For me, there are some nuances that can make it one or the other, but a good Litmus test is this.
Is anyone in control of the setting?
Yes = Dystopian
No = Post-Apocalyptic

Lorsa

2015-07-30, 03:02 PM

Yes, the so-called "Black Death" was just a rough flu season that had little impact on society. That's why 99% of Europeans are still farmers today. If diseases were a big deal, the Aztec empire wouldn't be ruling Mexica with an iron first right now. (It's a bit off topic and I know we aren't supposed to talk politics here, but I really hope the Iroquois Confederation and the Sioux Republic can come to a diplomatic solution with Mexica that will lead to a lasting peace among the North American superpowers.)

I've always been under the impression that apocalypses has to be global. There are certainly civilizations that has come to an end (although the Black Death hardly meant an end), but the human species has been going strong for quite some time. :smallsmile:

Lvl 2 Expert

2015-07-30, 05:19 PM

Personally I'd assume steam engines would be more practical given the drilling, refining man power investment when food production is probably a priority (not to mention the shelf life of gas).

Sure, but same thing. There may be fewer living experts on steam engines, but the technique itself is if anything simpler and the cylinder, while interesting in design, doesn't need to be made with quite the same level of precision due to the lack of explosions. Either way, we're going to be producing new powered machines about as soon as we realize that there is no outside world left to come and help us and we're going to need to get on this.

Brookshw

2015-07-31, 10:04 AM

Sure, but same thing. There may be fewer living experts on steam engines, but the technique itself is if anything simpler and the cylinder, while interesting in design, doesn't need to be made with quite the same level of precision due to the lack of explosions. Either way, we're going to be producing new powered machines about as soon as we realize that there is no outside world left to come and help us and we're going to need to get on this.

Absolutely agreed, any post apocalyptic world should be working towards rebuilding. One acquiring food can be done in a manner that allows time to be spent on producing tools people will start making them, at various levels of complexity based on surviving knowledge, resource availability, etc. Eventually specialists would emerge trade starts up again, there's a barter town, we ask the question "who runs barter town" and progress continues. So when does the social rebuilding tick out of a post apocalypse setting into some thing else? Maybe dystopian, frontier life, a new industrial age. Any of these could overlap with the Post Apocalyptic setting certainly as different areas progress in different manners. Is it no longer post apocalyptic as soon as we're no longer directly experiencing or having to deal with the direct repercussions of the apocalypse?

Tangent: as to the Fallout games I'm very curious how things will have developed in 4. A large part of me feels they can't let the world recover too much with out shedding a significant part of the tone of the games. Sure, irl society would probably have mostly recovered after 150 years had passed, after 50 years (or less) maybe depending. But for the sake of maintaining the game setting and tone I think we need a bit of suspension of disbelief.

Hyooz

2015-07-31, 01:03 PM

The two can definitely co-exist, as I feel they're modifiers of different parts of the setting as a whole. To borrow from FATE, I'd say Dystopian is an Aspect of the Society, and Post-Apocalypse is an Aspect of the World. Something like Hunger Games definitely takes place in a dystopian society... but I read those so long ago I forget if there was some kind of apocalypse used to set up the dytopia. Equillibrium is dystopian but not post-apocalyptic. Something like Mad Max doesn't really have an over-arching society, so the world is more anarchic post-apocalyptic with some dystopias scattered in there for good measure.

Xuc Xac

2015-07-31, 08:28 PM

Wasn't "Equilibrium" explicitly set after World War III?

ScrivenerofDoom

2015-08-01, 08:29 AM

Beleriphon

2015-08-02, 09:53 AM

Interestingly, "utopia" actually means "not a place"; it does not mean "a good place" as many assume. (Similarly "apocalypse" means "revelation/uncovering"; it as figuratively come to mean some sort of major disaster but that is not its literal meaning. [And by "literal" I mean the dictionary definition of that word.... Ahhh, the English language. We have it in common, and we also do not.])

As for the difference between post-apocalypse and dystopian, it really comes down to who is using the term and what he or she thinks they mean. I'm more likely to refer to something by linking it to a piece of IP - Gamma World, Mad Max, Fallout etc... - which gets around the issue of different words having different meanings to different people.

The word was specifically chosen by Sir Thomas More for his book because it implies that no such perfect society exists, literally his perfect society is No Place. However, eutopia does mean good place in Greek. Mind you both are pronounced the same in English so they essentially mean the same thing. Apocalypse while literally meaning lifting the veil on hidden knowledge the current idea of an end-times scenario comes from John's revelation (in the Book of Revelations) that good wins over evil, but only after a battle of quite literally Biblical proportions.

Most fiction produced after the Second World War that deal with the end of the world are probably more post-nuclear holocaust fiction. Fallout certainly is, but the term apocalypse has been linked to the end times scenario revealed in the Bible so its kind of hard to delink the concept from the word. In much the same way we look at Armageddon as a state of being, when in reality its a hill in Israel where the Final Battle will be fought.

SimonMoon6

2015-08-02, 11:55 AM

My favorite post-apocalyptic setting is the World of Ooo from Adventure Time.

It's like 1000 years post the apocalypse. And lots of weird stuff happened.

But there's only one human left (more or less), though plenty of mutants and goblins and "people" of various types (candy, machines, animals, and miscellaneous weird stuff).

Gritmonger

2015-08-02, 09:53 PM

I don't think humans as a species have to end for it to qualify as an apocalypse. It's the end of a grand society - the fall of the Egyptian empire, the fall of the Roman empire - both of these were collapses of major civilizations in a manner catastrophic enough that the civilization did not survive, no matter if the individual people did. Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, as is Latin (sure it's used, but there is no line of unbroken speakers, and so as languages go it qualifies as dead) and there are parallels in other societies (all over the place, really).

Post-apocalyptic, for me, means dwelling in the ruins of a great civilization, regardless of its cause of collapse - whether it be the Mayan empire or the ancient city of Catal Huyuk. That break of the chain of continuity is key - the people of before, their life and day-to-day, often their language and form of writing or communication, is lost. Other civilizations can rise, sure - but very often with large reminders (sometimes monolithic) of the culture that fell before, always casting a shadow as a warning or ghost saying "this could be you!"

Dystopian, for me, means civilization on a curve that it cannot escape, for whatever reason. Civilizations that practice human sacrifice are dystopian - the sacrifice becomes commonplace, until a disaster shows up and ends up either throwing the old practice into chaos or into stark relief as the only solution to human sacrifice not working seems to be "more human sacrifice!" Very often, regardless of have and have-nots, you have people that have taken the horrific and made it commonplace, acceptable even, because that is how it is done, and it very often results in a quite organized society. It is often the outsider who notices the horror, due to it not being normal or commonplace for them.

caden_varn

2015-08-04, 04:16 AM

I don't think humans as a species have to end for it to qualify as an apocalypse. It's the end of a grand society - the fall of the Egyptian empire, the fall of the Roman empire - both of these were collapses of major civilizations in a manner catastrophic enough that the civilization did not survive, no matter if the individual people did. Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, as is Latin (sure it's used, but there is no line of unbroken speakers, and so as languages go it qualifies as dead) and there are parallels in other societies (all over the place, really).

Post-apocalyptic, for me, means dwelling in the ruins of a great civilization, regardless of its cause of collapse - whether it be the Mayan empire or the ancient city of Catal Huyuk. That break of the chain of continuity is key - the people of before, their life and day-to-day, often their language and form of writing or communication, is lost. Other civilizations can rise, sure - but very often with large reminders (sometimes monolithic) of the culture that fell before, always casting a shadow as a warning or ghost saying "this could be you!"

It is really more the technology level for me - if a grand society falls, the neighbours will move in. The neighbours need to be working on a lower overall tech level to get the 'dwelling in the ruins of the ancients' vibe.

Re. people quickly getting combustion engine production running again - I read somewhere that the main issue with this is likely to be the source of fuel rather than the engines. We have used up the easiest to find/extract deposits of gas and oil (not so sure about coal), so you need a good technology base to actually find and extract/process new sources of fuel. Not sure how true this is, but it makes sense.
This is probably not so much of an issue if you start up again in living memory of the old processes, so you can at least preserve some of the knowledge, but if the apolacypse is sever enough to wipe out pretty much all the knowledge of the technology it is much less likely that it will be rediscovered.

illyahr

2015-08-05, 02:10 PM

As Red Fel said, dystopian could be anything where a definite power structure exists and controls the populace. However, there can be many kinds of dystopia. Judge Dredd is an example, as is Demolition Man.

Post-Apocalyptic is when something massive happens and destroys the established power structures. A dystopian society could rise from this, but for a time there is nothing holding any form of control. The Dragonlance Campaign setting is an example of a high-fantasy post-apocalyptic scenario. After the Cataclysm (read: gods dropped a giant meteor on a population that viewed themselves as more Good than the gods), the predominant powers of the land, i.e. the temples and religious groups, were hunted down and destroyed. The survivors blamed the priesthood so everyone had to restructure without them.

Templarkommando

2015-08-13, 12:35 AM

I tend to be kind of literal. The word apocalypse comes from the Greek word ἀποκάλυψις or apokálypsis if you want something more phonetic for an English speaker. What it literally means is an uncovering. Sort of like the lifting of a curtain or a veil. Something that was once hidden is now clear for all to see. This can take the form of a man-made apocalypse which would reveal how very murderous (unkind, uncaring, wolf-like) humanity is to itself (i.e. nuclear apocalypse, mass genocide, chemical, or biological apocalypse are just a few examples). It also includes a natural apocalypse - asteroids, plagues, floods, fires, severe storms, drought etc. This would reveal the true dangerous nature of... well nature. You can also include some kind of supernatural apocalypse, which could include events caused by space aliens (ala X-COM or War of the Worlds), pan-dimensional beings, and I understand certain popular D&D themed web comics include deities in this category. These paranormal events can reveal any number of different concepts dependent upon what story the writer is trying to tell.

Then there's post which would mean after, so post-apocalyptic refers to the events that occurs after one of these apocalypses.

Then there's Dystopian, which is again from the Greek. δυσ-τόπος or simply an anti-utopia. Utopia is a perfect society or a perfect place (sort of like Plato's concept of a Kingdom ruled by philosopher sage-kings), thus an anti-utopia would be an imperfect place or a undesirable place. Now, this definition is fairly broad, so I like to narrow my personal definition a little bit. A dystopia is a place that thinks it's Utopia, but there's something a little twisted about it.The Enclave in Fallout makes itself out to be an ideal place to live, but as the plot unfolds you discover that maybe it's not all its cracked up to be.

Sigreid

2015-08-13, 07:31 PM

I think perhaps this leads into what surprises me so about how some post-apocalyptic setting get lumped into the genre, it tells me there was some disaster but that's kind of it. There was a disaster, full stop. I could put a rom com in there, a story about an Eden everyone lives in and never has to deal with the fallout of the disaster, going about merry lives. If someone pitched a game describing it as post apocalypse and then we stayed in some well to do city that survived I'd feel like it was false advertising.

Don't get me wrong, there's no one right answer to how people think of the genre, there have been some very interesting answers that help me understand the different ways to view the thing.

Aside: if anyone does have any book suggestions for post apocalypse a la Mad Max style I still need to find some new reading material for the commute.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, also known as Blade Runner is very different from the movie. After essentially destroying the earth mankind has gone to the stars leaving the unworthy to struggle for survival on a contaminated world. Not mad max, but very good.

Ravian

2015-08-14, 12:03 AM

Really the two represent entirely different things, even if they often interlock.

Generally Apocalypse means following a collapse of civilization. Some things may still be trudging along from before ala the Enclave from Fallout, but for the most part any society that follows is only nominally linked to what came before. For example you can find an example of a post apocalyptic real world event in the fall of Rome and the Dark Ages. Some aspects survived such as the Byzantine empire and the Christian church, but for the most part the Dark ages were filled with warlords and fractured kingdoms attempting to emulate what came before (like the Holy Roman Empire)

Dystopian is merely an oppressive, flawed society, which can certainly arise after apocalypses (either from remnants of the old government buckling down control or a new element taking over and ruling with an iron fist) However it's not an absolute requirement, since all that's really required is that a government find an opportunity or excuse for absolute rule. (One could call post-revolutionary France during the reign of terror dystopian, or some of the more oppressive dictatorships out there, most of which seized power after a revolution or coup.

Generally though I find that Dystopian elements tend to override post-apocalyptic ones in most stories that feature both. Largely because Dystopias require a society be in place while Post-apocalypses require a society to have collapsed. Thus even if a dystopia is post-apocalyptic, it's often difficult to realize due to the control being exerted by it. The one exception I can think of is if the dystopia arose very quickly after the apocalypse and much of the lawlessness is still in direct conflict with the society. For example a zombie apocalypse that involves a disproportionate government response (such as The Last of Us) mixes the two rather well. The society has overstepped its bounds, but since the zombies aren't part of that society you still have much of the violence nad lawlessness of post-apocalypse mixing with the fear and controlled exerted by the dystopia.

Broken Crown

2015-08-14, 12:21 AM

Re. people quickly getting combustion engine production running again - I read somewhere that the main issue with this is likely to be the source of fuel rather than the engines. We have used up the easiest to find/extract deposits of gas and oil (not so sure about coal), so you need a good technology base to actually find and extract/process new sources of fuel. Not sure how true this is, but it makes sense.
Steam engines work just fine on wood-fired boilers, though, so absence of fuel shouldn't be a problem. It might put a limit on how much power technology you can use before you can get access to new fuel supplies.

This is probably not so much of an issue if you start up again in living memory of the old processes, so you can at least preserve some of the knowledge, but if the apolacypse is sever enough to wipe out pretty much all the knowledge of the technology it is much less likely that it will be rediscovered.
A big problem is how much knowledge and technology is dispersed: A lot of experts are really only experts in a small part of a big idea or process, and a post-apocalyptic society probably would have trouble getting all the right people in touch with each other. Likewise, a lot of industry is scattered around the world, with raw materials from one country being used to make parts in other countries, which are then assembled in yet another country. I imagine that for a few generations, it would be necessary to make do with cruder and simpler solutions that can be done locally. Once civilization gets back on its feet, though, I expect that archaeologists will be digging through old textbooks and technical documents in search of better ways to do things; unless all the libraries get wiped out, I don't think much knowledge would be lost forever.

Segev

2015-08-14, 11:30 AM

I think a part of the confusion is that there are degrees of "post-apocalyptic." I don't mean based on the level of the apocalypse; we can assume that "post-apocalyptic" refers to a time after some cataclysm that really did cause utter and complete breakdown of all real infrastructure and anything that truly depended on it. Communications are down, manufacturing is reduced to local work done with local material, and subsistence farming is going to be the only way to produce food for your community for a while (though harvesting well-preserved stores will help).

But the degrees are chronological.

Mad Max is fairly immediately afterwards. Civilization's gone, you're seeing maybe some dregs of it still struggling to stand or continue on...but witnessing that their reliance on the old infrastructure means they will inevitably fall, too. New structures are arising; they're led by warlords, because the story of the immediate post-apocalypse is that of what men do when they need to survive without the guarantees of civilization (both guaranteed level of plenty and guaranteed punishment for and protection from violence and theft). The warlords are the strongmen who can protect what they and their followers have, and often who can take from those who will not follow them. New civilization hubs are dramatically reduced, using jury-rigged and repaired systems to divorce from the old interconnected infrastructure and provide what can be done locally. These valuable resource centers are warlords' homes because, if they aren't, one will move in to take them over. They are valuable because their low-quality, jury-rigged goods are better than the nothing everybody else has.

D&D is decades if not centuries (but probably not millenia, except for the fact that we're told it is) after the fall of civilizations who have nonetheless faded into myth. Few to none remember what pre-apocalypse life was like. Civilizations have rebuilt into actually civil structures, and (in D&D at least) the medieval level of sustenance has been achieved. The greatest of the new kingdoms often have some aspect of the fallen empire - artirfacts of the ancient days - which help them do things they lack the technology to reproduce otherwise. There are those who understand the tech, but they don't have the infrastructure to truly improve it. Instead, they've focused on making it work well with what they do have. Things are no longer jury-rigged, but are simplified and still less grand than "before."

Dystopias tend to arise in the Mad Max style ones simply because it's hellish. Warlords are not, generally, nice people, and the scarcity of resources and the lack of experience people have producing things without the infrastructure means that harsh choices are required.

The high-tech dystopias that arise after-the-end tend actually not to really be post-apocalyptic stories. Infrastructure wasn't lost, just repurposed.

Imagine if the United States of America vanished from the world. Maybe wiped out by a sudden detonation of vast nuclear stockpiles for reasons nobody can figure out, but literally wiping out every major city and shutting down all technology beyond Amish-approved levels anywhere within the continental US.

The impact to the world would be catastrophic, but not apocalyptic. Some nations may well take the economic hit caused by this and have to restructure, and maybe dystopian nations could arise. Particularly if demogogeury caused whatever freedoms the tyranical leaders wished to stamp out to be blamed for the American Apocalypse. But the key to these "high-tech" dystopias is that the infrastructure is still mostly intact, just repurposed. Europe and Asia are only impacted economically, not by direct loss of all resources. Scarcity is not paucity, here, and the authority structures of civilization in places other than the USA do not break down. They may be changed, but they still exist. Civilization, perhaps more tyrannical, perserveres.

That is the essential difference, I think: dystopias do not presume a true collapse of society, but only that something has enabled a particular ideal to take hold and engineer society towards itself. These ideals are invariably, when the propaganda is stripped away, anathema to human nature, which is why they do not work even when imposed.

Honestly, Soviet Russia was a pretty iconic dystopia. So is N. Korea. (I will stop there; I think I'm safe with those two, but further discussion probably veers into politics.) Both are clear failures to produce happy and healthy and wealthy societies, and both had all the classic dystopic elements to the peasantry's societies, and both are founded on, in theory, a particular ideal that should have made a "perfect" society.

Neither came about due to an apocalypse, unless you count revolutions as such. I think revolutions are not generally quite damaging enough to all infrastructure for that to be a valid comparison, however.

illyahr

2015-08-14, 01:14 PM

The impact to the world would be catastrophic, but not apocalyptic. Some nations may well take the economic hit caused by this and have to restructure, and maybe dystopian nations could arise. Particularly if demogogeury caused whatever freedoms the tyranical leaders wished to stamp out to be blamed for the American Apocalypse. But the key to these "high-tech" dystopias is that the infrastructure is still mostly intact, just repurposed. Europe and Asia are only impacted economically, not by direct loss of all resources. Scarcity is not paucity, here, and the authority structures of civilization in places other than the USA do not break down. They may be changed, but they still exist. Civilization, perhaps more tyrannical, perserveres.

I think the society from V for Vendetta qualifies as dystopian but not post-apocalyptic. Sure, bad things happened around the world and a few bad things happened at home, but everything still functioned. The fear generated, however, allowed an extremist to take control and alter the government so that he had a total dictatorship.

gadren

2015-08-14, 02:33 PM

Ever since I saw this music video, it's the first thing that comes to mind whenever someone brings up post apocalypse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iw8sfRQmV0

Cluedrew

2015-08-14, 08:30 PM

For me, besides some other factors that have already been mentioned, it the presence of "Human vs. Nature" as a conflict. Even if it is not the main conflict, or even part of the background, characters struggling for survival is a very important feature of post-apocalyptic stories that dystopian stories lack.

Dystopian stories usually have a sole focus on the battle for freedom/enlightenment and are usually ultimately about the society they are in, these are all things that are not part of the post-apocalyptic story (unless the story is both).

Also, I feel the aesthetics of a post-apocalyptic story are rather important. It just doesn't fit if the world doesn't feel broken down and battered from the end of the world thing.

Grinner

2015-08-14, 09:10 PM

To add more noise to the discussion...

There's an anthropological method of categorizing societies, ranging from the "band" at the smallest to "civilization" at the largest. Each category is typified by certain characteristics such as centralization of political power, the presence of formal ranks, methods of procuring food, etc.

The Hunger Games...I've only seen the second and third movies, but judging from the infrastructure seen in the third, the society, whatever it's called, seems like a high-tech chiefdom. There's the one capitol city orbited by a small number of impoverished towns, and I never noted any mention of other nations. The scarcity of human settlements indicates to me that, regardless of the uprising which led to the institution of the Hunger Games, humanity has clearly seen even worse happen.

Edit: To answer the actual question, I'd peg the difference between dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction as being the state of society as we know it. If it has been transformed into an outright totalitarian state (or something like that), it's dystopian. If it has been destroyed outright, it's post-apocalyptic.

Kami2awa

2015-08-16, 11:42 AM

Dystopias usually have overarching civilisation, and it's the civilisation that's the problem. Post-apocalyptic settings lack overarching civilisation, and that's the problem.

Put in D&D terms, dystopias have too much Law, post-apoc settings have too much Chaos.

Having said that, plenty of dystopias are post-apocalyptic in the literal sense; the dystopia is what the world became following a disaster. Examples are England under Norsefire in V for Vendetta, or the WH40k Universe (though the latter is more probably post-post-post-post-apocalyptic).

Segev

2015-08-18, 01:35 PM

This brings to mind another interesting contrast: Colonies/homesteads vs. post-apocalyptic settings.

Both have, if you strip away the cause, similar man v. nature stories. Both are isolated from and/or lack civilization.

However, post-apocalyptic settings are characterized by the echoes of broken-down civilization all around, and the need to rebuild with what you have access to; they are filled with a sense of loss and hopelessness. Colonial/homesteading stories carry the hope of a bright new future built with one's own hands, and typically the only civilizing marks are those brought by the colonists.

Many of the challenges are the same, yet the tone is entirely different. A significant part of that is the preparedness - both material and spiritual - with which the central characters went into it. A colonist brought as much in the way of supplies and "seed goods" as they could for erecting civilization to the greatest extent they could as quickly as possible. They are there because they want to be, and they expected something like the challenges they face. Even when surprised, or dispirited because things are harder or more unpleasant than they expected, there's a sense that there's hope and hard work to come.

A post-apocalypse survivor wasn't prepared, and had to compete with everybody else who had the same amount of foresight for goods and materials. The colony has relatively few people, so while there may not be enough for everyone at times, even the scarsities are less; in the post-apocalyptic setting, there are thousands to hundreds of thousands of "local" survivors, competing for resources which have suddenly become too few for even several hundred (at least, not for very long).

It is this much greater population density, I think, which leads to the post-apocalyptic setting having more emphasis on violent raiders. There are enough people that most you meet will be strangers, and every band is trying to fight for far, far fewer resources than will sustain them. In a colonial situtation, you probably do know most of the people you'll meet, and while crime and raiding may well occur, there just aren't as many people there to BE hostile to you. (And being part of the colony makes for more of a unifying element in the face of potential native hostility.)

It's probably been done, but it would be interesting to see a story set where colonists leave a burgeoning empire to found a new homestead, and then, as they're arriving to start their new lives, an apocalypse occurs "back home" and creates a post-apocalyptic setting. Having the narrative jump back and forth and show comparative tales would be illustrative, I think. Because again, the challenges of man v. nature are overall similar, but the challenges of man v. man tend to be different, and I suspect htat's at least half due to theme.