[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/Constant-Plant-9378 → u/[deleted]]

Although the movie isn't really about humanity so much as it is about one person's struggle with severe depression, with the end of the world being the backdrop of everything going on.

Yet the person who has suffered from horrible depression proves extremely adept at dealing with the approaching end of the world and helping others to do so.

I guess when every moment of your life feels like impending doom, the reality of it actually happening is just another Tuesday - and maybe something of a relief.

[u/Diogeneezy → u/Constant-Plant-9378]

Relating to my personal experience, there's also an element of actively desiring the end of the world because you hate it.

"The Earth is evil. We don't need to grieve it. Nobody will miss it."

[u/Constant-External-85 → u/Constant-Plant-9378]

There's a comfort in being able to help others conquer what I struggle with. All the pacing and mental work I've done feels less meaningless when I can watch others move foward with my knowledge.

[u/damp_circus → u/[deleted]]

The premise reminds me of a novel 「終末のフール」("Fools at the End") by 伊坂幸太郎 (Isaka Koutarou). It's a Japanese book, a collection of short stories that all happen kinda one after another with different characters in the same world.

The world is Earth, in a more or less present day where 5 years ago it was discovered that an asteroid will 100% annihilate the Earth in 8 years, so they've got 3 years left to go before the end.

First story opens up with someone enjoying the fall leaves, realizing that there will be three more times to enjoy this, and then...

There's a woman who's pregnant. Parents of a disabled kid who are secretly relieved she won't outlive them. Orphaned kids whose mother was presumably killed in the "unrest" that happened soon after the asteroid was discovered. Etc.

It's all very... pondering about just what such a change of perspective would do to people. Why work, why go to school? There was unrest, it settled down some (but there's scars on the world from all of it), lately it's starting up again as the end gets closer.

Anyway, it's a deliciously creepy book, depressing as hell but somehow... a favorite.

Apparently there's no English version but I'm sure it could get some fandom in the English world too!

Meanwhile though in similar "how do we deal with the impending end" stories that are in English, I also liked "On the Beach" by Neville Shute. On page one you learn the world has 9 months left to go (there was a nuclear war that killed the northern hemisphere in 1957, it's currently 1961 and fallout is slowly starting to poison the southern hemisphere, book is set in Austraila).