What's the appeal of apocalyptic themed shows?
I think most people fall into one of two categories. The first is they enjoy it because it's not real life and different from real life. Every day, one might go to a standard job, at a standard company and perform a routine, monotonous job and wait till pay day comes to collect their paycheck; while secretly hoping and wishing something different would happen.
Such as winning the lottery, war breaking out, aliens coming down to earth or something else fantastical. If you look at a TV show like "Doctor Who", it's a reoccuring theme that the worst thing in live must be to live a dull, ordinary, boring existence and to have never 'seized the day'.
So maybe a police drama reminds us too closely to the job of a security guard we might have worked in our youth. Maybe we work at a hospital and that ER drama reminds us of our shifts as a nurse and doesn't feel like an 'escape' and we keep nitpicking how nobody would not flush their IV before adding a drip of panozene.
Post apocalyptic universes represent an escape from reality to a fictional world, that's entirely opposite from our creature comforts that makes one wonder, could we survive in the world or that place? Would we be the chump getting eaten by a monster on day 1 or survive for a month?
The second group of people, I believe falls into pessimists. In reality, we are sheep compared to our forefathers from ten generations ago or more. Where does our food come from?! The supermarket! You go into the store, pick your items you hand over currency or swipe a debit card without even having to enter a number, wait for someone to bag your items and take items to car, drive home. Maybe stop for gas if necessary and voila. Food is ascertained.
After which, you sit at home equipped with running water, electricity, a/c or heating and so-forth, with your modern day amenities including your TV and whatever you used to make your post on.
What would happen though if all the grocery stores were empty tomorrow? and the next day and the day after that and the week after that? How about the restaurants as well? In a week, when all the vending machines were raided, where would you go? How would you survive or protect what is yours? Do you know how to grow enough food to survive for a season or a full year? Do you know how to preserve food for the winter once you've grown it? Could you live without electricity (no internet, no fridge, no stove, no cellphone, etc?
For some people, they can say yes to a few of those questions. Few people can say yes to all those questions these days yet still we all hope to never have to answer those questions. Yet, if there is disease, war, famine or a number of other catastrophes, our creature comforts could be gone in a proverbial blink of an eye. So to pessimists, these shows are like previews, warnings or possible tellings of a very real future and education-entertainment to an extent.
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sandifay62
8 years ago
well said. But I also think people are interested and entertained by seeing what happens to the characters, seeing how they defeat their enemies , and how that world changes them.
There's also the interest in the monsters and bad people of the apocalyptic world and seeing how they came about and how they terrorize the main characters.
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thicket-99134
8 years ago
What would happen though if all the grocery stores were empty tomorrow? and the next day and the day after that and the week after that? How about the restaurants as well? In a week, when all the vending machines were raided, where would you go? How would you survive or protect what is yours? Do you know how to grow enough food to survive for a season or a full year? Do you know how to preserve food for the winter once you've grown it? Could you live without electricity (no internet, no fridge, no stove, no cellphone, etc?
Yep. I think this is very intriguing. There were two BBC series that did this very well, I thought. Survivors, from the 1970's (although the second season was kind of weak), and then a reboot (same name) not too long ago that was really good. Wish they had kept it going. So many BBC shows you only get a few episodes and then they're done (like In The Flesh, etc.)
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