After the Apocalypse

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason One, Episode Twenty - “The Road Ahead”“Ear Wax.” The old man said. “Here we go again...” Janet rolled her eyes and lay back against the rock outcrop using her pack as a rough pillow. She arched her back like a cat, stretched her arms out over her head and relaxed to look at him. “No, seriously…” The old man continued, “How do you deal with ear wax in the apocalypse? You can’t see into your own ears…” “I’m not touching your disgusting old ears.” Janet responded, hoping this was the end of this particular conversation. They were on a bluff a couple hundred feet above the river. She looked down and across the muddy flow at the smoke rising from another burning town. The bridge spanning the watercourse was dotted with abandoned cars and trucks. The trailer of an 18-wheeler was sticking half out of the water, near one shore, jammed against a bridge pylon. ...S1 E20 - Outro So here we are my survivor friends. The end. But, it’s not the end. Think of it like those old SciFi movies where they’d put up the words “The End” and then tag a question mark onto it. Don’t worry it’s not a question. “We’ll be back.” It’s one of the strange ironies of these stories is that the more you do it the more ideas you have. It’s like a perpetual motion machine. Because I am super psyched! Really. I am so pleased with the way this season came out. I am in love with these characters and their arcs. I’m in love with this universe that we’ve created. I’m in Love with Robert’s audio performance. It really came together and beat all my expectations. And you! Nothing happens unless you show up my survivor friends. I am so grateful for your attention, especially in this attention scarce world that we live in. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just went over to A-cast and checked; we’re at 13,000+ downloads. Which is amazing. Thank you to all of you who have left a review or shared the show with your friends. I hope you’ve noticed that I’ve tried to keep the narrative smart. Not just string together action and dialogue. Assume that you folks don’t need me to explain everything. I can reference history, or philosophy or literature and you are going to get it. So, again, thank you for being a smart audience. Pat yourself on the back. You earned it. Hopefully you liked episode 20. I know it was dialogue heavy. I wanted to fill in some gaps and cement the journey of these three characters. Coming up in season 2 we’ll introduce some new characters, and we’ll raise the stakes as this universe starts to coalesce into centers of gravity. I did a fun interview with Mike from the Apocalypse Post podcast this weekend. We had a blast talking about the characters and the show. I’m going to get the recording of that and we’ll stick it on the feed here so that you can listen to it. Hey Mike, thanks for having me. His universe is more of a Mad Max universe. I remember Mad Max. I actually saw the Road Warrior first, which was Mad Max 2. It had everything a good apocalypse movie should, a good anti-hero, a dog and lots of action in the wastelands. Road Warrior was a great movie. I loved it. Mad Max was a pretty good movie too. The original Mad Max movie cost $200k to make and made $13M. That makes it one of the most profitable movies of all time. I guess there is money to be had in the apocalypse. Anyhow, Mike and a few thousand others get costumed up like Mad Max characters and go out into the desert to a festival called “Wasteland”. If any Wastelanders are listening – welcome thanks for spreading the word, have fun this year, it’s coming up in 10 weeks. I’ll give you a little fan-boy trivia. There was a role in the Road Warrior called warrior woman that was played by Virginia Hey who was also the blue skinned alien Zotoh Zhaan in the cheesy SciFi show FarScape. Next up I’m going to hit ‘pause’ on the show production for a couple months. We’re sitting at the middle of July 2021, Let’s shoot for starting Season 2 in September. So don’t’ delete us, stay in touch. In the meantime, I’m going to convert season one into a book, e-book and audio book, if I can swing it. I’ll be posting various progress reports and looking for help from readers and spell checkers on our Facebook page. Join me - “OldManApocalypse”. As always I am working to a tight budget, like the first Mad Max film! – so if you can go to the Patreon page for After the Apocalypse and throw me some money it makes everything easier. Just to be fully transparent, we are not talking about a lot of money here, but currently the variable costs per show are about double the income. As they say in the startup world – we’ve got a negative burn rate. With your help I can turn that around! That’s it for this season my friends. I feel a bit sad having to say goodbye to you for a couple months. Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to fill in some of that dead space. So chin up, one foot in front of the other, and above all else – Keep surviving! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

11 Jul 202125min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason One, Episode Nineteen - “The Gauntlet”“I don’t like it.” KJ said. “Of course you don’t.” the old man said in return. “Besides the obvious answer that the world has gone to hell, why not?”“There’s too much smoke. Why would there be so much smoke this many weeks in? Who’s burning stuff and why are they doing it?” “Maybe it’s a barbeque.” The old man joked. “Yah know, short ribs, beer… It does smell like cooking meat.” “Maybe they’ll barbeque your scrawny ass, old man.” She countered. “It smells more like plastic or tires or something.” Bill sniffed at the air and didn’t seem pleased with what he smelled, but for now he could only pace and offer up an occasional worried whine. ...Greetings my survivor friends. How’s the apocalypse treating you? Special welcome to my daughter, who pitched in with the typo hunting in this episode. Thanks for the great Father’s Day card! I am stunned and amazed that here we are, episode 19. Who knew we’d be able to pull it off. This chapter was fun to write. I think we have a clear understanding of who these characters are – so I can drop them into situation and let them speak for themselves. We see our female protagonist Janet, a.k.a KJ the Killer, slipping into that ambiguity that the end of the world forces on people. We see the old man teetering on the brink of reality and sanity. We see the world thrashing about in the worst types of reactions that befall humans. The question is which way will they all slide? What will they choose? Do they even have a choice? We introduced that there is a ‘big bad’ roaming around as the world starts to coalesce around survivors. The ‘big bad’ is more than an antagonist to create narrative tension. The big bad is an alternate blueprint. He is the dark side of humanity that is always just outside, peering through that little window shaped like a porthole in the front door of civilization waiting for us to make a mistake. And that’s always the tension with humanity. Civilization is a chaos suppressant. Civilization sees chaos as evil. All our religions have a manifestation of chaos, from Loki, to the Devil, to Coyote – there’s always that tension between order and chaos, or more pedantically, good and evil. If you don’t have that tension, then the story is just action without purpose. Or horror without purpose. Or comedy without purpose. And when the narrative fiction falls into that space you lose interest in the fate of the characters and all the action in the world can’t keep it going. You need stakes. Unless there are stakes. Unless there is tension. There is no compelling narrative. And that’s the fun part of creating a dystopian, apocalyptic universe. You get to decide how that tension of good versus evil is resolved. Anyhow… enough with the ontology. And speaking of Coyote the mischief making chaos god of some Native Americans - Here’s my reading list tip for you this week. The Tony Hillerman books about Navajo police detective Joe Leaphorn? I’m not a big mystery fan, but I started listening to these on audio book when I was commuting from my home outside Boston up to an office in Quebec City Canada. It’s a long drive. I would get books on tape at the local library for the ride. Hillerman was an Albuquerque New Mexico resident and did a great job describing the Southwest US cultures, and in particular the Native American mythologies. The audio books, if you can find them, are read by Native American voice actors and the cadence of the read is amazing. There ya go – grab some Hillerman audio books for your summer vacation. In two weeks we will present the last chapter, chapter 20, in this first season. Then we’ll take a pause to turn the first season into an e-book, a paperback and an audio book. I’ve got a copy editor to work through the scripts and I’ve got a couple artists working on cover art. I’m recruiting a book launch team and typo hunters. Come over to FaceBook and join the After the Apocalypse group that can be found by searching for “OldManApocalypse” – all one word – and pitch in. I’m asking nicely. I could use the help. I’m happy with how this season and the overall format came out. We’re up over 11,000 downloads now. That’s not bad for 6 months in as an indie podcast. The format lends itself to binge listening. The short consumable episode length and consistency allow people to just queue them up and march through them. Another irony of the podcasting world is that what took me 6 months to produce takes you a couple days to consume! I can keep up with this fortnightly cadence and still produce a decent quality product. Unfortunately for you I have a full-time job and other things to attend to or I would be cranking out a season monthly! The next season we are going to add more compelling characters to the universe, we are going to add situations and institutions and threats that test our survival skills. So stick with us after the break. I hope all of you up in my hemisphere are enjoying your summers and those of you in antipodal hemispheres are enjoying your winters. As always I could use your support on the Patreon page to keep paying the bills. And I can use your participation on the facebook group at oldmanapocalypse. And of course keep leaving 5-star reviews on iTunes and keep telling your friends. And together, we will keep surviving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

26 Jun 202129min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason One, Episode Eighteen - “The Shot” (Narrator)What runs through the mind of a dog? Not just a dog, but a soldier and a veteran.FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BILL THE DOG (think of him as a soldier grunt. He speaks simply and mostly in the present tense, but with urgency:Now. It is quiet. I am alert. My pack is safe. I see them on the roof of the building. The large cat waits below. The pack is my duty. I protect the pack. I fight and die for the pack. I hold here out of reach of the cat, waiting. It is hot. I am thirsty and hungry. But I will wait. Until my new man says otherwise. The new man commands less than my soldier. The new man gives commands. But the woman acts like pack leader.There is only now. There is only the mission. I can fight. I can harass. I can run. But I must protect the pack. ...Outro S1 E18 – The ShotHello my survivor friends. How’s the apocalypse going? The is Chris your host fro this apocalyptic after-party. Thank you for showing up and joining the old man and KJ for an adventure! https://shows.acast.com/after-the-apocalypseI really liked Robert’s read of this one. I think he got the dialogue just right. I had written these two chapters about the animal farm in 2020 during the height of the pandemic while I was experimenting with this universe to see if it merited the effort of my attention. I wrote it originally as a two-parter with the cliff-hanger. This time around I tried to cram it into 1 episode but it would not be crammed so we left the original 2-parter structure with the cliff hanger and fleshed out the dialogue a bit. I think it works. We are 2 episodes away from wrapping up season 1. Like I said before, we are going to take a break after episode 20 and turn the first season into a paperback, ebook and audio book. The mechanics of this are not unfamiliar to me. I have done it before, but not for a couple years. I contracted a starving artist to work on a cover for me and another to edit it back into book form. The difference between writing for an audio read and a regular read is minor but I think it’s worth the help. When I write for audio I break up the paragraphs into smaller chunks and phrases to reinforce the cadence. So I’m having a nice lady from Jamaica go through and pull some of those back together for readability. Also she’ll delete all the audio instruction notes, look for typos and blatant grammar issues, like dangling participles. I would love to have any of you who are readers support the book launch if you’re game. I could use typo hunters. You get a pre-release of the book. Come over and join the FaceBook group for After the Apocalypse and join the team. I’ll apologize for making you work hard, but There are a bunch of Facebook groups and pages called After the Apocalypse, mine is https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldmanapocalypse/Another thing I’ll be recruiting for is a book launch team. In couple months when all this comes together I’ll need help in, for lack of a better word, marketing. Again, FaceBook, After the apocalypse. Since we last talked I’ve been reading a Robert Heinlein, retrospective called Requiem, which if you are interested you can procure on Thriftbooks for $5.29. It a collection of “unreleased” stories and other stuff. One of the stories is a novella he wrote in 1950 called Destination Moon. You may know him from his more famous works, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. This novella or short story depending on your appetite is followed by piece, penned by Heinlein about the making of a movie from the story. So I, curious as I am for the literary obscura, of course went out and hunted down the movie, which you can watch on Youtube. It’s interesting because it is such a time capsule, (pun intended), of a sort of religion of hard science that came out of American engineering culture in this post world-war 2 time. This golden age of science fiction. Heinlein was involved in the movie production and they worked really hard to make sure that the science of it made sense. That the gravity and the exit velocities and all the other stuff actually made sense. It ends up as almost a documentary of sorts. These guys were one of the big influences in turning the American cultural knobs towards space. Cheerleading, if you will, that going to the moon was not fantasy, not fiction, but science. And if the incompetent bureaucratic government would just get out of the way of industrialists and engineers it be done. And it could be done before the Russians did it! But, it’s a great example of what the sci-fi of the time was all about. They loved hard science. They thought every problem could be solved by smart, brave, independent minded engineers. It was this vision of reimagining the world as a fact-based, science-based libertarianism. Heinlein is famous for the following quote: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ― Robert A. HeinleinAnd, yes, if all this sounds sort of pseudo religious, religions were founded based on this scientific-libertarianism. These guys believed that the soft-sciences of psychiatry and religion could be fed into the logically precise meat grinder of science, and that what came out the other end would be free of all the emotional clap-trap of society. I bet you’ve all heard of Dianetics which grew out of this process by golden age sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard. But, you probably haven’t heard of the Church of All Worlds a neopagan religion that was founded in California (of course, because all the crazy head for the coasts) based on the writings of Robert Heinlein. So, I guess the moral here is be careful what you imagine, be careful what you write, be careful what you believe because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. These golden age writers, by pouring their beliefs and realism into their writings made them compelling, more than stories for boys, and, quite literally, changed the world. Sorry for the long screed, but I find it all very interesting and thought you might too. Remember to make a donation at the Patreon Group, I am reading extra credit stories into audio for members there. Join the Facebook group and volunteer to be a typo hunter or a member of the book launch team. Maybe you and I can change the world. But above all else, put one foot in front of the other, confront each morning with joy and Keep Surviving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

13 Jun 202128min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason One, Episode Seventeen - “Prey”It was a bumpy and uncomfortable ride. And the old man chittered on happily behind her like old people…or crazy people do. Like when your Mom or Granma keeps an entire conversation going regardless if you are even listening. Those interminable phone calls Janet used to avoid and dread, droning on and on about the flotsam and jetsam of an old person’s life, only to surface from the lily pads every once in a while, to ask some prying or unanswerable...personal question. Janet felt a momentary pang of sadness. Maybe she should have taken the time to talk when she had the chance. Before everyone she knew was taken by the Apocalypse....Outro – S1 E17 After the Apocalypse – PreyHello and welcome back by survivor friends! So we have our two protagonists trapped on a roof in the apocalypse! Just like many of us feel most of the time! Hope you all are enjoying it. We’ve gotten up to 8500 downloads. And believe it or not we’ve managed to knock out 17 episodes, which is about 42,500 words! My plan is to find a good stopping point in the next 2-3 episodes and end season 1. Don’t worry, I won’t go away, I might take a couple weeks off, but I’ll be back. I’m going to turn the existing words and audio into a book set. If you think about it, it makes sense. I’ve already got the content built so I might as well leverage it into a book, e-book and audio book. It’s pretty easy these days to self publish and I’ve done it before a couple times, both on Amazon and Audible. Of course , you, yes you, can help. First, I’ve started a Facebook group called AfterTheApocalypse all one word. You can go there and chat with other survivors and give me some feedback. Second, while you there you can help me vet some cover ideas. Third, I’m going to need a launch team when I release the book(s) so you can help with that. And finally, as always, you can help me survive by dropping a nickel in the slot of the Patreon page and telling a few science fiction geek friends about the podcast. I have been watching and reading some interesting SciFi over the last couple weeks. First, I watched the new Netflix apocalypse movie “Army of the Dead”. I won’t spoil it for you but it was pretty disappointing. I really like Dave Bautista, especially his role as Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the galaxy movies, but he couldn’t save this one. Second, and on a much more positive note, the new season of Love, Death + Robots on Netflix was incredible. This is a series of animated shorts, but they are all incredibly robust, standalone stories each with a beginning, middle and end. The Drowned Giant, based on a story by J.G Ballard, is an amazing and thoughtful piece that speaks volumes without having to say much. Snow in the Desert, based on a story by Neal Asher was a really good apocalyptic treatment. I would pay real money and go see a movie treatment of those characters and that universe. It’s a shame there are only 8 episodes in this whole new season. Moving along down the short fiction video quality scale is a channel on YouTube called Dust. It’s a whole bunch of short SciFi videos. Some better than other. Some seem almost like trailers for the move the artist wanted to tell but didn’t have the money for a full-length film. What they lack in quality they make up for in quantity. And, if you’re really brave or bored you can meander into the SciFi sorts on Vimeo. Some of these have promise but many look like high school computer graphics projects gone awry. I also finished reading David Brin’s Sundiver. This is the first novel in his Uplift series. The premise of his universe is cool. All intelligent life in the galaxy only exists because some previous, older races uplifted them. Mankind is treated mostly derisively by the rest of the intelligent life because they don’t know who their parent race was, or even worse, uplifted themselves by accident, which is unheard of. Man in turn, once they have the knowledge of these other, more advanced, alien races uplifts dolphins and chimps. Brin is in real life an accomplished astrophysicist, and this makes hie prose and SciFi nice and tight. None of that magical-fantasy crap to make things work. All the future tech is well thought out. This was a drop-back read for me. I found his second book in this series at a book sale and liked it enough to go back and read the first. Good book, worth a read, but at close to 400 pages it took a fair amount of concentration from me to get though it. That’s probably more a comment on my life and my attention span than Brin’s work! Come on over and join the facebook page and say ‘hi’. Get ready for the end of season one, we’ll have a party! But, above all else, my friends, Keep Surviving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

29 Mai 202124min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason one, Episode Sixteen, “Infected”The old man pushed himself to a sitting position, his back against the far wall of the pit. He reflexively clutched at his shoulder and massaged the side that had taken the brunt of the impact. He could hear the steady drip of water falling from the cliff face and the wind pushing dead leaves around up above. He slowly lifted his gaze to the surface level to assess the real enigma: the woman....Outro Thoughts – S1E16May 15th 2021Hello, my Apocalypse surviving friends. How are we doing this week? Are you managing to stay one step ahead of the evil undead as civilization crumbles around you? If so, in the immortal words of Bill Murray, “So – you got that going for you.” This week, 16 chapters in, we finally bring our two protagonists together. The old man and Janet. I was going to title the chapter “Meet Cute” as a satire on all the Hallmark movies ever made. You know the one’s…Somewhere in act one the slightly attractive woman who has had to go back to Christmas Valley because her family’s cupcake business is in danger of being taken over by an evil developer and her father is sick? Anyhow, somewhere in act one she stumbles into traffic and almost gets run over by a slightly attractive man who she immediately hates, but you can tell there’s a spark there? Yeah, except in my meet cute she wants to bash his head in. Spoiler alert, I’m not a big fan of shoehorning romantic subplots into science fiction. I don’t see these two ever having that kind of relationship but I’m willing to write it if you want! It would be a challenge. A couple of questions and announcements for you. First, I have set up a Facebook group for this show and I will start populating it with these outros and a whatnot. The link to find it is OldManApocalypse – all one word. https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldmanapocalypse It’s a private group so I have to accept you, I think, but if I set it to public it just gets too spammy. Go out and join up so we can trade stories and I can get some feedback. My first order of business is to post some fan art that my buddy Dave’s daughter drew for us. I think she did a pretty good job. Take a look and tell me what you think. So, I had a question, did any of you get lost in the timeline here? Meaning, I left the cliff-hanger in episode 13 where the old man gets pushed into the pit. Then I dropped back for two episodes to fill us in on what Janet’s been up too. Then I brought the timeline back together at the pit. Did I lose you? I had one of my readers get confused. Go to the Facebook group and tell me if I lost you. Also, over the last two weeks I figured out how to manage the integration of Acast and Patreon. I set it up so I can create bonus episodes and if you are a Patron you get them exclusively. I have already dropped one bonus episode from another apocalypse universe I play in called “The Dead Frontier”, and I’m dropping a reading of a early Vonnegut story “2 B R 0 2 B” which is in the public domain. I’m going to keep creating these bonus episodes for patrons so go to the patreon page, sign up as a member and get the extra, good stuff. This week I’m going to refer you to a Apocalypse movie from 1962 called “Day of the Triffids”. Based on a novel of the same name by James Wyndam from 1951. It was very big in the UK. It was remade and modernized in 2009 as a BBC series with among others Eddie Izzard and Vanessa Redgrave. You can see both versions for free on YouTube. I remember seeing this as a kid on one of the B-movie Horror and science fiction shows I liked and it always stuck with me. It’s basically a zombie apocalypse but instead of zombies there are carnivorous plants walking around England. In the original novel the plants were created by the Soviets and kept in thrall because they produced Oil. In the 2009 version the Soviets are replaced by mindless corporations. The interesting twist in this movie is that there is meteor shower that makes 90% of the population go blind. You get this interesting apocalypse with wandering killer plants and disabled people. This move had some of the classic apocalypse tropes that you will recognize in more modern tales. The first one being the ‘waking up in the hospital and everything has gone to shit’ trope. This is where the protagonist has been unconscious or otherwise waylaid in a hsptial bed and misses the events at the opening of the apocalypse. Think Walking Dead and 28 Days Later the awesome 2002 Danny Boyle zombie film – both referenced this device from Triffids. Another device here is the ‘hey we survived the apocalypse let’s have an orgy!” trope. I don’t think I’ve watched or read an apocalypse treatment that doesn’t’ have a scene where the survivors figure the best response to the apocalypse is to have a big party/orgy. Usually, it’s the army guys. I guess that says something g about human nature because I can totally see that being a response. Another theme pioneered here is the uprising of a abused sub-class to overthrow their masters. In this case it’s the plants who turn against their masters. But, this is a deeper theme, and especially in 1962 England, where there was real fear of the peoples the British Empire had colonized turning around and taking over. Anyhow, I’d recommend ay and all of the Trifid pieces with a bottle of beer, a bag of salty snacks and a comfy couch on a rainy afternoon. Those are my thoughts for the week. Remember to like us, leave a review, forward to your friends and enemies. Go forth and join the ‘new’ Facebook group so we can trade ideas. And above all, Keep Surviving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

15 Mai 202126min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason one, Episode Fifteen, “Not-So-Innocent” A sharp wind evaporated the sweat from Janet’s arms. She felt a chill, like a passing ghost. Her heart settled from a hard drumbeat in her chest to a low rhythmic thump as she walked, recovering from her run. She felt cleaner now. Refreshed. The familiar ache of bone and muscle comforted her.She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and looked ahead at the vehicle in the road. What was going on with this overheated camper van? It was an older, boxy model. The hood was propped open, and she could smell the metal of the overheated radiator. Janet could hear snippets of argument as she cautiously approached. It was hard to get all of it. The wind was gusting, creating white noise that washed out the voices, making them fade in and out like a bad phone connection. She approached the van on the opposite side from where the people were arguing. Better to stay unnoticed. Was this even something that she wanted to get involved with? ...Episode Commentary Season One, Episode Fifteen – “Not so Innocent”Hello and welcome back my survivor friends. How are we all doing? How’s the apocalypse treating you? What did you think of the episode? Frankly I struggled writing this one and my editing team helped A LOT! Thank you Duane! If anyone wants to help with writing or editing please feel free to reach out. I didn’t want to just have action. The action turns into “he-said-she-said” type motion-without-meaning after a while. And that get’s boring. There are no stakes. Not snakes, stakes. You always have to ask and answer that question: what are the stakes here? On the flip side you don’t want to bulk up with too much exposition and emotions – because that gets boring too. The key is to marry the exposition and stakes with the action. Have what the characters do and say make your points for you. Language is a powerful thing. Story telling is a basic, human, powerful thing. So – long story short (pun absolutely intended) I had to wrestle with that in this episode. I wanted to make sure that we were understanding the motivation of the characters and moving the broader narrative forward and even exploring some deeper themes. And, as it turns out, this is a common theme in apocalyptic literature – how does your current pre-apocalypse skill set translate into a post-apocalyptic world? It’s not just preppers and backwoodsmen who will do well. It’s also the resilient, the fast, the smart and those willing to lead. And to show this we take individuals out of the real world and drop them int the apocalypse – in our case Janet the type-A lawyer and the old man, a disgraced doctor turned ultra-runner. That’s the theme that I’m trying to play with. And that’s what makes science fiction so much fun. Because you can create these mashups and play with them. What would a pre-school teacher do in an alien invasion? What would the ballet-teacher do in an alternate universe? I don’t know but you could write that story. One of my favorite versions of this is when Rod Serling dropped a book loving bank teller into the apocalypse in episode 8 of the original Twighlight Zone titled “Time Enough at Last”. First aired in 1959 and based on a story by Lynn Venable. In this episode Henry Bemis played by Burgess Meredith,. loves books yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. (You know Burgess Meredith as the original Penguin in the Batman TV series and as Rocky’s crusty old coach Mickey in the Rocky movies.)The episode follows Bemis through a post-apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, and the difference between solitude and loneliness. In the end he breaks his glasses so he can’t read the books even though he’s the last one alive. This was one of the most popular episodes of the original Twilight zone. Anyhow, that’s an example of how you can make an episode compelling without much action at all. …Congratulations to all of you my surviving friends in the apocalypse. We are over 5,000 downloads strong now. Let’s push it to a million! Tell some friends, keep it moving. Post the link to the show in your social. You my friends are our personal agents of chaos spreading the apocalypse love. I do need more of you to join the patreon page as members. I want to be able to keep the storygoing. And you can help me survive with your support. As Patreon Members you get full access to scripts and show notes. But I am going to sweeten the pot. If you go and join Patreon at any level I’m going to give you special, members only episodes. https://www.patreon.com/AftertheApocalypse?fan_landing=trueStarting with this one here from one of my other apocalypse universes. Insert clip here. So if you want to hear more of that, and get other shows I’m going to drop go join the patreon page so I can keep the show going. Thank you all very much and until next time…Keep Surviving! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1 Mai 202123min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason one, Episode Fourteen, “Run”Janet ran......and the obscenities pouring from the man she had just left bleeding in the dirt faded away…like the man himself. He was nothing. He was a threat that had been dealt with. Like she always dealt with threats. She had the hard skills, built up over years of practice. She could dominate most situations. Her force of will bent others to her path. And if they didn’t bend, they got run over or shoved aside. KJ the Killer. ...and she ran. ...Outro S1E14Hello my fellow survivors. How is the apocalypse treating you? This is Chris your host. And a fine Saturday morning it is up here in New England. We had a storm fly through yesterday with wind and rain and snow. I was worried about our friend Tim who has been helping with the story ideas and editing. He’s been out on the Appalachian trail for 2 weeks. He’s currently passing through the area near where Janet and the old man are struggling to survive the apocalypse in our story. Imagine if a storm like this hit out in the Smoky Mountains while they’re out in the trail? I’ll have to see if we can work a storm into the story. When I was a teenager, I spent a week hiking in the Joyce Kilmer National Forest which is near there, a bit south. It would have been this time of year. I remember we did get an ice storms a couple days, but you just crawl into your tent and wait it out. I remember waking up an hitting the plastic tarp overhead and the ice shattering and sliding off. But we survived. I would have been 16 and just rolling out of wrestling season, so stupid but indestructible. …Speaking of hiking adventures in the wilderness, my wife forced me to watch a movie called Into the Grizzly Maze from 2015, mostly because she likes to look at the actor James Marsden. I’ll be honest it was a silly movie about an angry Grizzly bear who likes to eat people. For some reason they talked some A-list talent into it. Billy Bob Thorton is underused as the bear hunter, think Quint from Jaws. Thomas Jane was one of the main characters, who is one of my favorite actors, you may know him as detective Joe Miller in The Expanse, which is one of the best hard space Scifi shows to come out recently. Or, for you Marvel fans, Thomas Jane was the original Punisher who went after John Travolta in 2004. God knows how these actors got caught up in the hot mess that is ‘Grizzly Maze”. I suspect a paycheck was involved. …Looking out my office window this morning, the forsythia is out and my cherry tree is about to bloom. What did you think of this week’s story? Janet is discovering or rediscovering her strength and how it can help her in the Apocalypse. … I’ve been reading through a SciFi series called the Lost Fleet over the last year. I’m about to crack into the 8th and final book. It’s a Space Epic but I also realized last night that it parallels Xenophon’s Anabasis. Bear with me, here. Xenophon was a Greek mercenary with a force of 10,000 other Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to help him seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II, in 401 BC. Note this is before Rome, and a70 years before Alexander the Great. Anyhow, they march deep into Babylon and Cyrus gets killed in battle. The opposing Persian commander invites the Greek leader and his staff to a banquet to talk things out and instead has them killed. This leaves the 10,000 Greek mercenaries deep in hostile territory with no leaders. So they elect Xenophon, who leads them out of Persia and back to Greece with a tactically brilliant retreat. To make a long story short that is exactly the story line of this lost fleet series, except with spaceships. I feel like I have to reach out to the author and ask him if that was his intent. I’d be curious to know if it was or if it was just an example of how universal human stories are. If you want to delve more deeply into any of this the links are in the show notes and on an accompanying post at my Patreon page. Survivors, we are about to crack 4,00 downloads, which is good, but we can do better! I need your help. I need you to like the show, post a review and, most importantly, tell 3 friends about it. Please share the show on social. I really want to start publishing weekly, but I can’t afford to unless I get more survivors to tune in. I’m just a guy doing what he loves, not a corporation, so I need your help. If you enjoy the story help me keep it going by contributing $5, $10, $20 to the Patreon. It is Patreon.com/aftertheapocalypse all one word. Do it now. Let’s keep it going and until next time, keep surviving. … Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

17 Apr 202120min

After the ApocalypseA pandemic survival storySeason one, Episode Thirteen, “The Dig”The old man kept a slow but steady pace down the gravel road. It was getting on in the day and he needed to start thinking about shelter for the night. Bill, the dog trotted about 10 yards ahead as the vanguard. A small dust cloud rose behind them marking their progress. The old man thought about that. ...Hello my survivor friends, How is the apocalypse treating you? Happy Easter! I figure rabbits will probably survive the apocalypse, right? Cockroaches and rabbits. There’s a zombie online multiplayer game I play called Dead Frontier, yes, I’m all in on the apocalypse, and for the easter event you get to kill zombie bunnies. Reminds me of Monty Python – “It’s just a Bunny Rabbit!” – You kids who don’t know what I’m talking about go stream Monty Python and the Holy Grail and you can thank me later. Did you like today’s cliff-hanger? Maybe it was more of a pit-hanger. Good news we at about 3500 downloads. We have new listeners in Minsk Belarus, Dhaka Bangladesh and Portoviejo Ecuador. All places I’ve yet to visit. I have been at Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal, but that’s another story. Send me an email if you are listening form one of these far-flung places. Love to get your feedback. cyktrussell@gmail.com I need a favor from all you great people, whether Belarusian, Bangladeshi or Ecuadorian. Go into whatever podcast app you’re using and leave a review. Just a quick note. That’s what drives the algorithms. And we all love algorithms. If you’re feeling super motivated tell a few friends. If we, you and I and Dmytri from Belarus can grow this tribe I can accelerate to weekly episodes and I’d really like to do that. If you are just beside yourself with enthusiasm you can throw some Belarusian rubles, some Bangladeshi taka or some Ecuadorian dollars – because, yeah, Ecuador switched their currency to the US dollar – and you can do that at my Patreon page patreon.com/aftertheapocalypse. I listened to a couple interesting SciFi stories recently. I like these short SciFi stories because they have that one really interesting idea that makes you say ‘Huh’. One is a story called Things by Peter Clark - Have you ever seen a movie called The Thing? It was released in 1982 starring Kurt Russell (no relation) and directed by John Carpenter, based on a book by John Campbell from 1938. Now you might be thinking, ‘gee all of those names sound familiar’ and you’d be right. John Carpenter the prolific director who brought you the Halloween moves, as well as some other B-movie SciFi classics like Escape from New York, also with Kurt Russell in 1981, just a year before The Thing, and one of my personal favorites, They Live with professional wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. And of course John Campbell, who wrote the original story, was one of those giants of the golden age of Science Fiction, both as a writer and the editor of Analog.I know, I know, I keep doing this to you, but trust me all of these factors come together to make The Thing a great sort of SciFi-Grindhouse mashup with lots of practical horror effects. The links to all of this stuff is in the notes and don’t get me started on Adrienne Barbeau! Any of these movies would be a good streaming choice for SciFi lovers on a Friday night in the apocalypse. The critics hated Carpenter’s version of The Thing at the time. No one knew what to do with a horror – SciFi mashup, but I liked it. There was an original version in 1951 called The Thing from Another World, which I have seen and was pretty good for it’s time. Anyhoo – to make a long, complicated, meandering story short - the Peter Clark story I listened to on a bike ride reimagines that movie from the alien’s point of view. If you have seen the movie this story, especially as read by Kat from Clarkesworld, is just an awesome fun-house mirror read of the same story from a different angle I really enjoyed it. That’s it my survivor friends, this is Chris your lead survivor wishing you a happy Easter and as always…Keep on Surviving! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

3 Apr 202126min