Postapocalypse now

In my last post, I've talked about Star Wars, a Sci-Fi franchise set in the distant past (suprised? Thay actually say in the beginning of each episode, that it takes place "a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...", making reference to the traditional introduction to tales). This time, I'll stick to science fiction, to talk about it's subgenre that's quite different: The postapocalypse (or, to abbreviate, the post-apo).

Post apocalyptic movies, games and books show a world destroyed by some kind of horrible disaster: usually atomic war, as these works of culture tend to be fruits of cold-war paranoia.One of them is the movie that jump-started Mel Gibson's career, Mad Max, telling a story of a cop who's trying to bring justice to a mob of homicidal bikers in a world where all the order is long forgotten:

While it might not seem too deep, it was really ahead of it's times and is probably the best known post-apocalyptic movie. Fun fact: the American distributor decided that Mel Gibson needs to be dubbed for the Americans to understand him.

While Post-Apo might originate from the cold-war era fear of nuclear holocaust, it does not end with the fall of the Soviet Union. One of the better known representatives of this genre from the later period is Water World, which shows our planet flooded entirely after the melting of the icecaps. It does a better job than Mad Max in showing a panorama of a broken society, and is surely more esthetically pleasing.

Obviously, cinema is not the only branch of entertainment making good use this esthetic. The most famous depction of a destroyed civilization in a video game is, without doubt, Fallout, which won the hearts of fans and critics alike. It has the player having to make many tough, moral choices, which are usually far from obvious, and creates a world full of interesting, well-developed characters. It is also inspired deeply in the 50s and 60s  design, so the nuclear wasteland is full of jukeboxes, characteristic cars and Mad Men - era ads.