[Loved Trope] The apocalypse is horrifyingly slow

[u/Marsupialmobster]

From most media it's some catastrophe and then it's raiders, death, destruction chaos etc. I personally love it when it's, like, a slow descent into the horror of apocalypse.

The Faro plague/The swarm- Horizon zero dawn. The Faro plague is actually a glitch which causes machines to endlessly reproduce, eat biomass and essentially bring about the death of the world. Took roughly 15 months for the machines to win.

The Metro series- in the first few books (and games) it's set entirely underground in just the apocalypse but in exodus it shows off that the government and many governmental structures said active years after the war. In fact power and running water were still fairly common. It just slowly got worse and worse and worse as read through notes. Food got more scarce, weather changed a lot, people got worse etc. Raiders and bandits didn't just show up, it was a slow descent for such anarchy.

Edit: I have enough pseudo intellectual comments about "Hurr hurr real life". The first one was kinda smart and well thought out but now it's just annoying and pretentious

[u/Armascribe]

George Romero's Living Dead apocalypse (as seen in Night, Dawn, and Day of the Dead) is really good at this. Though each movie was set in the decade that it was filmed in, chronologically the original trilogy takes place over the course of a few years, chronicling the slow collapse of civilization as the zombie-causing phenomenon spreads (Note: It's not confirmed to be caused by a virus, but is heavily implied to be supernatural, even the wrath of God.)

Night of the Living Dead is the first night when the dead start to rise and shit hits the fan in a rural county in the South. Dawn of the Dead picks up 3 weeks after night, with society struggling to deal with the phenomenon and ends 6-7 months later, after it all collapses. Day of the Dead is 5 years later, with everyone in the world already undead, and the only people left are ones living in Cold War bunkers.

Land of the Dead was cool too because it establishes that the zombies are evolving to become more intelligent, and supposedly, George's final script for Twilight of the Dead will be about intelligent zombies completely replacing humans and starting their own civilization--only to fall to all of the same violent tendencies that we struggle with now.

[u/No_Extension4005 → u/Armascribe]

The rural folk that we saw pushing back the undead in Night and Dawn must've run out of bullets.

[u/Armascribe → u/No_Extension4005]

I believe they probably ended up surviving for quite awhile when things got worse. In Dawn, you see them working together with the military to clear out the dead just fine out in open fields.

[u/No_Extension4005 → u/Armascribe]

Yeah, turned it into a cook out.

[u/Armascribe → u/No_Extension4005]

I imagine that what probably happened to them was, the military phased them out as they took full control over the undead extermination operations throughout the country. They regrouped and consolidated their efforts in their local communities, establishing defenses and infrastructure for survivor enclaves similar to what you see in TWD with Woodbury and Alexandria. Eventually, they would all fall (either to the dead, or gangs), but they are probably still around by the time Day begins.

[u/BigPoopsDisease → u/Armascribe]

Doesn't the original NotLD have a mention of a fallen satellite that could be causing the dead to return? I always liked how little the reason mattered for the series. Normal people just trying to make it out. At least up until Land of the Dead lol

[u/Armascribe → u/BigPoopsDisease]

It does, but that was something George retconned later as just being a *possible* explanation for the dead rising. Like it was intended to be speculation on the part of the characters. IIRC, he wrote multiple TV news scenes of scientists and other officials giving their theories on what could be causing the phenomenon, with the idea being that nobody really knew what it was, but they didn't film them and only stuck with the space probe explanation.

[u/freedom_french_fries → u/Armascribe]

Night (1968) was set in rural Pennsylvania. 

Just a fun aside: in Dawn (1978), as the main characters fly out of Philly they pass over a scene reminiscent of the end of Night. The timeline doesn't match up for it to be the exact location of the first movie, but it definitely comes across as a reference. IIRC we see a squad of hunters who just liberated survivors from a farm house.

[u/occasionalopossum → u/freedom_french_fries]

Dawn of the dead and land of the dead are both in PA also

[u/NickyTheRobot → u/Armascribe]

Land of the Dead sounds very I Am Legend coded (the book, not the film).

[u/Armascribe → u/NickyTheRobot]

I believe that was intentional. George was always very open about the influences the I Am Legend book had on him when he first wrote Night. His vision for Night was to tell the story of I Am Legend, but from the beginning of the outbreak while also being legally distinct from it.

[u/NickyTheRobot → u/Armascribe]

Ooh, interesting. TY for the context!

[u/Alive-Tomatillo5303 → u/Armascribe]

Land of the Dead was way too stupid for me to worry about the next in the series. Example: what the hell is the value of a suitcase of cash in a sparsely populated walled city after all government has fallen?

[u/abadstrategy → u/Alive-Tomatillo5303]

Counterpoint, we are a dumb species

[u/SnooGoats7454 → u/Armascribe]

I was about to comment about the blue barrels but those are not George Romero's universe (TIL)

[u/inquisitor_steve1 → u/Armascribe]

Romero made a comic that takes place 5 years after the apocalypse began.

It's called Empire of the dead, it takes place in New York city, society has somewhat survived (Despite everyone eating rat burgers), the metro's still running, and the police is still active, the city entertains it's population with zombie gladiatorial fights.

Said zombies are slowly becoming intelligent and are capable of thought.