i thought the ending was fine. i have faith the movie will be just as good.

Sterling's "Dies the Fire" series was good entertaining SHTF stuff. The SCA Wiccans got on my nerves, but that just made them more realistic.
 

On the beach ,   and The day After ,  pushed me over the edge.. I now have  3 or 4 tins of spam and a half ate MRE.  oh and 32K of ammo

I think if you looked closely at those scenarios, you'd observe far more lawful, productive, and beneficial behavior, than random brutality.

A few communities fell apart, but far more came together, in part in response to the few.

yes,those are also really good books, still haven't read 'scourge of god' yet but I will.

Half of you chumps just dont get that the book takes place like 5 damn years after the "event"


Your damn right all the ammo is gone.  Its going to be the first thing that gets used up, other than water.


How long is 5,000rds gonna last you in that situation?     We are not talking about post Katrina N.O.   This book takes place at the downside of the human race. Not much is left.


As prepared as you think you are, there are very few people on the PLANET that are prepped enough to handle a SHTF situation of that magnitude.
Your weeks worth of Mountian House just aint gonna cut it.

+1

I think if you read much over in the Survival Forum, you'd find folks with a LOT more than "weeks" worth of anything, and order(s) of magnitude more than 5k rounds.    

VERYYYY small part of the population.

The Road was one of the best books I've read in years.








 

I just don't believe they are going to have the entrails and baby on a spit in the movie - however according to IMDB they have a few actors playing 'amputees'
so I guess they are doing the cellar scene

And I loved the book - "We carry the fire"  loved that piece of it

sounds like I need to read One Second After though

WTF?  Did you want the boy to die all alone in the end?  I don't mean to put words in your mouth but seriously man.  Of all the things to complain about...

I don't get the people who talk about how depressing the end was.  It was a pure deus ex machina.  Quite different from the typical nihilistic, everybody dies Romero zombie movie ending.

I liked it.  The characters had values without the author beating you over the head with it.

We don't disagree that it is a very small portion of the population.  But in the book, there are very few people period, and NONE of them have anything.  

I live in rural western VA, and I know well over 2 dozen folks in my little area who have over 3yrs of food and plenty of other sustainable preps for emergencies.  Very small percentage of the general population, absolutely.  Zero, as portrayed in the story?  Absolutely not.  

Like I said, the general perception and the perception of those who "prep" is not the same.

Keep in mind that the story took place a full 7-8 years after the initial apocalypse.  His wife was late term pregnant with their son when the asteroid storm/supervolcano eruption happened.  

That's a hell of a long time to be prepared for.  Especially when massive ash storms have practically destroyed plant life.

Very depressing , yet a great ,quick read.

I like his writing style

I've only read two McCarthy books, but I have concluded that he loves writing about dead babies.

Your idea of happy is different than mine.

Fixed it for you.

That is pretty much what the book was leading up to. That there was no shred of decent humanity left, no hope, no food. And then along comes the magical plot device, at exactly the right moment.



So lame.



If he didn't want to kill him off explicitly, he could have just left the ending open. Instead it is just jarring and kind of lame.



 

I enjoyed the book.  The framing of each segment by dialogue between father and son was great.

I'm the father of a young boy and I believe I understood this book for what it was.  My son is my legacy, really the only thing worthwhile that I have created that will be around when I am gone.  All I can do is give him the fire.  Its up to him to carry it.

I just read the book this week. I wasn't overly impressed with the book.

I thought it was boring, way too much literary wanking and not enough story.

One Second After didn't do much for me either.  I'm picky I guess.

......But do they have 7 years of food?  I've never met anyone in my life that had anywhere near 3 years of food for their family, and trust me we are not of different "mindsets" if you will.  That is an enormous amount of food to keep on hand, and short of a warehouse, I don't see how 7 years is remotely possible for all but the richest and most paranoid of folks.

I too questioned the "lack" of decent people in the book, and how is it possible that EVERYONE they come across is a piece of shit who wants to eat them.  Then it dawned on me, that with the exception of the very few that had a fair amount of food, the vast majority of population was left with two choices "Scavenging" or "Cannibalism".  If there wasn't any food to scavenge, and you refused to eat a person..... you died; leaving ample food for those that had no problem eating human meat.  So, as the "good" people die off, the cannibals survive..... eventually leaving the cannibals to eat each other.  Makes sense to me at least.  

The military has ungodly MILLIONS of rounds of ammunition. Unless they're actively fighting a major war, that should last them a few years. Most people only have a couple hundred rounds, at most, for their guns, but there's thousands across the US who have stockpiles that fill entire closets or even rooms. Then you've got police departments; most don't have more than a couple hundred rounds in storage, but a few have actual stockpiles for long-term emergencies like Katrina. Gun stores have thousands or tens of thousands of rounds of ammo in them. This equates to probably several BILLION rounds of ammunition in the United States. And that doesn't include guys who reload ammo.

You're telling me, that in five years, with a population of a little over 300 million people before the disaster killed a bunch of folks, along with disease, famine, etc., that we've somehow managed to use up nearly all of that ammo? What the fuck, is standard procedure to dump fifteen magazines into one guy after he's already dead?

I can see a LOT of calibers getting scarce or impossible to find ammo for, the big game rounds and the oddball calibers. Really common shit that EVERYBODY has, like .30-30, ..30-06, 38 Special, .357 Magnum, and the calibers used by the police and military, 9mm, .40 S&W, .45ACP, .223, .308, 12-gauge, etc. should run out last. Unless we're fighting World War Fucking Three, then there should be plenty of ammo remaining, even assuming all commercial production of ammo ceases the moment the disaster occurs and that reloaders run out of materials.

At the very least, somebody would be manufacturing black powder and cranking out muzzleloaders.

As for food, I'd fully expect most of the population to starve to death without cars or electricity. The rural populations, especially in areas with farms and ranches, should be best off in such a scenario, assuming they can keep the city-dwellers from descending on them like a swarm of locusts, rioting, raping, robbing, and murdering their way across the countryside, taking what they wanted and then moving on to the next target.

Rosebud was the sled.

How do you know that the guy isn't another cannibal?



You don't.



 

They didn't eat their kids, they didn't eat his father, they didn't take his gun, they gave him advice on what to do if he decided not to tag along, and it implies that the woman has spent time talking to the boy about god.





That is how you know that they weren't cannibals, but rather a ham-fisted deus ex machina plot device.





 

They are going to fatten him up when they get back to the gingerbread house.

Okay. I will revise my opinion that he should have stopped the book several pages earlier to include a second option of adding another chapter involving this outcome.



 

You are right, it was deux ex machina, or maybe deus ex butthole.



I had forgotten the details about them letting the kid keep his gun, etc...

"Dies the Fire" was pretty moronic. The chemical reaction that propelled a bullet no longer worked but the (pretty much) same chemical reaction cooked food over campfires.
"Islands in the Sea of TIme" was much better apart from the author's fascination with racist lesbians.

Granted you have to suspend the shit out of your disbelief at the underlying premise, but they actually explain where the cutoff point is in the second or third book.

I take it you haven't read the book?  There is VERY little light, and there is for the most part "ash" constantly coming down from the sky.  The book gives the impression that night time , is close to 100% darkness, and during the day it is only slightly lighter than the ambient light level during a hurricane.  So basically..... there is no way to grow anything.  Oh, and also all the fish in the ocean are dead too.


Mike

+1

And another thing with the ammo, granted all of it might not get shot up, but there's going to be tons of stuff deep stashed that just never gets found.  Like the bomb shelter full of food that the guy finds purely by accident.

Then of course, there's arson and non-arson related fires that are going to destroy tons of stuff.  Fire is going to be used as a weapon a lot in that situation.

I found the overall premise credible.  Seven years after a meteor shower or caldera volcano eruption, things would probably be pretty grim.

how many years went by? it doesnt specify...what like at least 10-12. imagine the meteor or yellowstone eruption that popped all the other volcanoes around the world, the entire planet is "dead" now, nothing grows, the costcos have been looted and game is being hunted into extinction. the desperation grows, and now there are millions of mini civil wars being fought around the third year. years after all that nightmare...no mo ammo. especially for the guy who probably wasnt an arfcommer. as for the reloaders, they still depend on powder supply. manufacturing for that stopped the second the shtf.

Green houses. Grow lights would work just fine, so long as you had electricity. Need electricity? Live near a hydroelectic dam or nuclear plant. Problem solved. We survived one major ice age and a minor ice age (including The Year Without Summer) just fine, we can survive ash blotting out most of the sunlight for a few years.

Uhhh.....Ok.... So the one dude who manages to dam up an ENTIRE GODDAMN FUCKING RIVER.... and install a turbine to make power by his damn self, who happens to already have a green house, lights, seed, soil, and remote control robotic gun turrets to fend off hords of armed starving people ............will make it, until he dies from lung cancer from working outside in the falling ash.....Right.

Back to reality partner, your "dream survival world" isn't realistic.  Do you really think that a hydroelectric dam is going to survive a cataclysmic and semi-seismically related event, that has killed off most of the people in the world?  The hoover damn might..... but I doubt many of them would be able to.  Shit, I couldn't even tell you where the nearest damn like that was around here.  Nuke plant....... you're a retard.  Who is going to run it?  Who is going to change the fuel? Supply the fuel? How is the plant going to run, when safety systems exist to scram the reactor when it is separated from it's distribution network (many many downed power lines)?  

If that is your survival plan, well good luck.

One of the major points of the book was it takes place in a time that EVERYONES "Preps" would have run out........and EVERYONE is going to die in the not too distant future.......... Even "DAM MAN!!" with his super powers..... will only make it a few months after one of the many earthquakes that takes place during the book shatters all of his lights, and cracks open his magical hydroelectric dam of wonder and joyness.  

I'm not saying that the author's vision of the end of the world is realistic (Not "SHTF"....The END OF THE WORLD), but it is a factor in the book.  In his context of what it's like, "Preps" might get you a bit farther along than the next guy........ but in the end you are just going to die hungry, and alone.

The survival forum is a great thing, but the one thing that it is lacking is a sense of reality, and the understanding that "No matter how hard you fight, sometimes the good guy just dies"


READ THE BOOK

We survived an ice age that appeared gradually with a population that was exponentially lower. In The Road there aren't really any animals left. The global crop loss and resulting demise of modern factory farming for two or three years would likely lead to mass starvation and a collapse of civilization to an extent that it is impossible to compile a group of people able to set up and maintain (much less defend) the sort of infrastructure required for the return of electric lights and grow houses.



If order was able to be maintained while large portions of the population were starving to death, your plan might work. Obviously in the book that did not happen.



 

The book is one long windup to the last page. It's the classic writer's trick of building the story backwards. The ending is suppose to be sad, and that sadness can only come about if certain events, decisions, and mistakes occur throughout the story.

The one true lesson that book showcases is the importance of .22 ammunition. In that world, a man with a little 10/22 scoped carbine, and a pocket full of bullets, would have been a God.

PS, The Road is nothing compared to this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads

I think a LOT of people have delusions of how they will be "fine" after a serious SHTF.


Its HIGHLY doubtful that you will be living on a lake, in Rural Alaska, Dick Prenoke style.
"Its not a SHTF!! Peppery ram stew FTW!"

If you live in a super rural area, with MASSIVE stockpiles, and NO looters/bandits. Yeah, maybe, for a while.
The closer you get to population, the less your chances are.
Downtown metro area? Good luck.

How many ARFers live in town houses? Metro areas?  Do you think you are going to hold off looters forever?
We are not talking a week here. Can you do it, for say, 4 YEARS?

Not an army and you. Just you, your 8yr old son, and your wife.





The book takes place a good while after the "event"

If its something like Yellowstone, then half of the US population would be dead nearly instiantly.


All those Mil bases and stockpiles of ammo?     45ft under dirt, ash, and debris.



Hydro power from a dam?      Yeah, after yellowstone erupts, ill just run an extension cord over to the dam, and plug it in. No worries
It should still be working fine. Im sure all the hundreds of people that work AT the dam will still show up to do daily MX and keep things in check.

Threads is available to watch online (hopefully the video works).





 
 

Both series tie in together. As was stated, you have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, but the story is about more than the physics involved.

Threads was intense.  It's on Google Video, definitely worth a watch.

Very similar to The Road in that it deals with the extreme aftermath - the woman at the begining, when the nuclear war happens, is pregnant, and at the end her daughter is like a teenager.

Very, very grim.

I've seen it happen in a matter of hours or more than one occaision.


Not exactly a student of history, are you?


Usually they just reach a certain point and then stagnate.


Most people turn to shit under prolonged duress. Again, just what I have experienced over and over firsthand, I am sure your baseless opinion formed by ignorance is far more correct.


People are pushovers and tolerate all manner of atrocities done to them so long as they get to have some sort of life.

tag for when I finish the book