Darn that Adams guy. He's basing in Revolution series on an idea I've been kicking around for years. Mine would only do away with one main energy source, oil, or electricity. The best use of an atomic bomb probably would be to set it off in the upper atmosphere which probably would knock out all electricity in a large area. What if something like that took out the availability of electricity forever? Watching a end of the world special on the science channel I learned that it probably would take about 48 hours after such an event for the vale of society would be stripped away returning most people to stone age behavior.
The point being that without our technology, our large populations could not survive, and most people would soon discover that we aren't as advanced behaviorally as we think we are.
Didn't "Jericho" already do something similar?
Also, I think his name is Abrams ;-)
Well the description does sound more like Jericho than what I have in mind. But Jericho still had technology and oil. People could still remain civilized. I think we would have to exist like the Amish for it to get that bad. Places like Southern Cal would not have enough water for all those people. Remember what happened to New Orleans after the flood. People started going crazy and attacking each other and they knew help would eventually be on the way. But it took a week or longer to really get things mobilized
Think about it, in short order or our pills would be gone. I sometimes wonder how long I would last without my pills. Just missing one of my depression pills for a day causes dizziness and headaches. At least my kids would probably be alright. Florida is almost as much water as land. And my son in law used to be a marital arts instructor. He also collects guns and swords. So I know they will be alright!.
More like a larger version of "The Road."
I'll never forget being in Vons many moons ago when the electricity went off and the realisation that even if you wanted to buy something you couldn't because the tills weren't working - lol!
It was one of those "shit - we're really screwed in this 'so-called' civilized world"...
Just though about a cartoon I was working on
The ending was two dinosaurs watching the meteor streaking across the sky and one turns to the other maybe we should have looked into that.
As it has been described, it's ridiculously stupid - you can't stop all forms of energy. Physics matters. So, steam doesn't work anymore? You can't start fires?
Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson is at least a slightly better version of it (a microbe is released that devours petrochemicals - gas, oil, plastics, all gone in a short amount of time).
Can somebody please explain WTF you guys are talking about.
Thank You.
I picture roaches doing a circle dance of jubilation by the light of an H-bomb going off.
The aftermath of an EMP attack has been out there in fiction the past few years -- ONE SECOND AFTER, by William Forstchen, LIGHTS OUT by David Crawford. In ONE SECOND AFTER, about 90 % of the American population ultimately dies when all electronic devices melt down after the Iranians set off two EMPs from a platform disguised as a freighter in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. I read it, and found it fairly gripping, but it seemed to be very much a worst-case scenario.
The Russians set off a megaton-sized bomb above the atmosphere in the vicinity of an urban area in Central Asia, back in the early '60s I believe. They had nowhere near our level of dependency on electronics, nonetheless the entire area was knocked off the power grid for weeks.
I'm not sure what the effect on communications was -- at that time, there was widespread dependency on vacuum tubes, which are much more resistant to EMP than transistors, chips, etc. Which is one reason why B-52s have continued flying. They're old tech, and could survive a nearby atomic blast that would drop the rest of our entire air force -- computer dependent, you see -- right out of the sky.
The way out of this is fiber optics and laser tech -- totally EMP resistant. But not very money-making at the present moment, in the air or on the ground.
"Can somebody please explain WTF you guys are talking about."
NO DON'T! PLEASE DO NOT!!
Some things are better off not known. Who was it that said, If we but knew the dangers lurking around every corner for us as we rise in the morning -- we'd be agoraphobic --? Or words to that effect.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.
"There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on."
Rod Serling
From FEAR poster available from despair.com:
"Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea."
Nice photo, too.
http://www.despair.com/fear.html
My idea probably would be involve perhaps and alien invasion where instead of the usual, the aliens just knock all the electricity in the world and watch us destroy each other. The story would be built around several families and a number of single people, how they respond, and what happens to them. I imagine that a lot extended families would try to get together, church folks might organize through the congregations, friends, loners probably wouldn't last long. I wonder how peace churches like we Brethren and the Mennonites would survive. One possibility is to cover a church youth summer camp up in the mountains, well stocked with supplies, but torn by staying there are trying to get home.
If it were me I'd tell my kids to forget me and concentrate on saving themselves and my grandkids. All the power centers of our civilization would eventually break down. Of course, those with the best survival skills, the youngest and healthiest, and those living in hard to get to rural areas, would probably fair best.
People lose their morals when the become desperate and afraid.
Fortunately I have far many more ideas than I will ever right. So if I lose a few I can still keep busy.
"My idea probably would be involve perhaps and alien invasion where instead of the usual, the aliens just knock all the electricity in the world and watch us destroy each other."
I saw that Twilight Zone episode. "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" w/Claude Akins. It was very good, as I recall.
Wrote a book on that "Behold the return of" and it will not take and invation just something we don't understand coming at us and we would destroy ourselves.
Mitchell
Actually that is exactly where I first got the idea.
@Calvin
did you read my book?
Which brings us back to the definition of an ORIGINAL idea...
It's been done on TV. It was done in dozens of movies and SF novels.
It's ... been... done.
FOX came up with "Fringe" based on what they thought was an original idea... Fringe science... probing the outer limits of scientific knowledge in quantum mechanics and computers that think faster than humans... but then the smart guys left and the writers got bogged down with crime of the week.
ScriptShadow had a review last week...
Well my friends, consider yourselves enlightened. Here are 10 possible reasons people are bored with your script.
Your movie idea isn’t interesting - This one seems obvious and yet it's the most ignored piece of advice I give. Writers simply come up with uninteresting ideas. They want to write about a man coming to terms with the death of his mother or a woman’s road trip to discover the meaning of life. There’s no CONCEPT there. There’s no ironic component to make you sit up and notice. You need a SPECIFIC INTERESTING IDEA to explore or else we won’t care. So please, for the love of all that is holy, test-drive your idea with a dozen people before you write your script. If nobody seems that excited (beware fake excitement – which friends and family are good at) then move on to a better idea. It doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are if your idea is boring.
By the time an idea has been on TV... let's say 20 episodes a year over a 4 year period... it's BEEN DONE.
"I don't think people will be confused in the slightest watching it," he says. "For some reason, all forms of energy and power go out. Fifteen years later, people are trying to get along and trying to figure out how to reconnect and how to form new societies without any of those benefits. We cut back and forth a little bit in time, but it's all pretty linear and very easy to follow and highly entertaining."
Burke, who says "'Revolution' is my favorite thing I've done in a very very long time," explains that his character is a former member of the military "forced into coming back to fight for the cause."
When one young woman's father is murdered by the militia, she sets off on a
Also see "The Postman" with Kevin Costner
Not even close to the Postman. This is about a situation far worse, End of the world. Only the world doesn't end. Present day civilization with all our modern stuff, immediately finds itself back in the stone ages. We have come to rely on technology to assist us in thinking and doing almost everything. But what if all that disappeared because there was no electricity to run it?
Much of our modern knowledge useless because we don't have the tech to assist us. Once the bullets, and medicine run out, our most advanced tech would be fire for many people. The world would be in complete breakdown.
No Andy, the kernal of the idea came from the The Twilight Zone 40 years ago, but I have never seen this done this way. Which is why I say there really are no new ideas, just ideas that, looked at in a different way, offer new possibilities.
The Monsters Are Due On Main Street - 1959
Of course there are new ideas.
Quantum mechanics, a particle being in two places at the same time...
I was posting some thoughts, but didn't get to the basic one.
There's a huge audience out therre for concepts that grab the imagination...
If you need an example, use a TV show to launch a career in the music industry. Instead of just playing the music, have the contestants compete for a recording contract where they are paid real money.
The TV industry today has discovered that spending a bit of cash to put quality on the screen will pay off in advertising ... Ryan Seacrest just signed a contract for $14 million to host...
Writing isn't a difficult job. You don't have to carry packs up a mountain, or clean out a sewer... all you have to do is come up with an idea that people want to watch.
The power goes off. That's ONE episode, maybe three. After that, it's just the power going off.
I'm really disappointed in the pilots chosen by the networks this year... but, I was last year, too.
Nobody brings back Bonanze. The Cartwrights on the Ponderosa. Or MASH, black humor in the Korean War.
NCIS is popular. Why? It's about a man who lost his wife to a Mexican drug lord, who has taken two substitute daughters under his wing. One's a lab tech named Abby, who likes Goth music and dates odd men... and the other is Ziva, a Israeli agent. A... and Z. Opposites.
The story is about the people.... not the gimmicks.
And the problems here on the Forum....
If you want to talk about ideas, if you want to discuss "12 Princesses" before you apply for the Writing Assignment... there are four or five people who don't have a single original thought, who don't have any interest in screenwritng, but they are childish enough to mock and insult you... and hten, there are others who have hate in their hearts, and they post a number to complain to an employer...
I know adult behavior when I see it... this ain't. it.
