QUOTE(totallyserial @ Jun 5 2007, 04:16 PM)
Well, speaking for myself, I feel there is an inherent "What if?" aspect to people, which is most strongly evident in roleplayers. I mean, that is the general concept of fantasy and scifi, exploring human issues that are completely the same while everything else is different. That sort of constrast brings to light a lot of things that the average person takes for granted.
Before I go on I would just like to say, I hope I don't offend anyone, I've been up for 20 hours and I'm a bit out of it. For me, personally, I like the post-apocalyptic setting because it's tough, and if you are weak (not just physically, but mentally too) you perish. I would say it has to do with evolution, there is not much natural selection going on in most industrial nations, as just about ANYONE can breed and pass on their genes. In a PA environment that is obviously not the case. Sometimes a good example for me, is if humanity were in some sort of long-term competition with an alien race, would you consider that we were winning / making significant progress as a species? Interesting facts like that in the past 2 millenia there were only 4 years that did not have a war somewhere on the planet speak to no.
Thanks, you got to the core of what I was asking.
What you mention is certainly one aspect of what's unique about a post-apocalyptic narrative. While I can't say I 'enjoy' the Weak-are-Culled and Strong-Survive aspect (it's a little too... umm, pardon me for saying, a little too Third Reich for me to actual pleasure in), it's a bloody fascinating scenario to explore. It's a return to some more primal, brutal state of humankind, all our modern preoccupations and social heirarchies overturned and and leveled in favor of who can best throw a spear. Fallout quite accurately portrays a world run by the most brutal, just as the world was once run by warlords and their muscle. It's not a place I like to see, but damn if it isn't engrossing as fiction.
I guess I take to the "What if" aspect in that, not that I expect us to actually blow each other to shiznitch (well... maybe), if we were to start again... and not just renovate the house, but build a new one because you burned the last one down.... if society as we know it came to an end and those left behind hard to start anew, would we make the same mistakes? Would we really change as a species having witnessed the end of our ancestors' cultural and ideological trajectory?
Fallout had guns, gangs, extortion, greed, alliances that become rivalries, religious cults and all the vices and entrapments that led to the world as it became for its inhabitants. Not even the apocalypse can change that.
I kinda see the whole setting as an interesting metaphor for the world we leave for our children, and how no matter how much they may hate us for what we handed them, they'll grow up to be just like us.