Recently I've gotten into Discovery's The Colony, despite it being fake and manufactured and all of that. That combined with a Fallout 3 addiction has led to a side project of myself indulging in a bit of creative writing. That being said, there are some dramatic limits to my technical knowledge that I am sure some here (Malse perhaps) have a far better grasp on.

Essentially the plot of The Colony mirrors the movie The Postman, some series of events have lead to a world without modern civilization. Modern technology is almost all gone and everyone who survived said events now live in small mideval style towns and so forth. In all of these scenerios the events to take civilization to chaos seems to be nuclear war. To me that seems so over done and surely some new way of fucking ourselves must have come about since the Cold War. I just can't figure out what it could be that would render most technology useless other than EMPs or little green men.

Any ideas?

EMP + 2012 = unbeatable apocalypse story!

http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/nasa-warns-of-super-solar-storm-2012/

Nothing is going to render technology useless, however you could make it much more expensive to maintain, which changes things. Basically we're never going back to a pre-electrical level of machinery because you can make a dynamo or alternator with the equivalent of spit and bailing wire, and while the precision manufactured devices like tiny electric motors or nano-meter process silicon ICs require massive amounts of pre-existing infrastructure to even make the tools than make them might go away in the event of some calamity, you wouldn't see people going back to sticks to stones (with apologies to Einstein).

Even assuming you had some massive EMP disaster, the real effects of that are entirely theoretical, and while it might fry a lot of phones and transformers, it's not like it renders all future circuits unusable.

Now what's more likely in my mind would be something like a collapse of food production in a modern dustbowl that makes current population level impossible and results in the collapse of larger nations in favor of city-states dependent on plantation agriculture. Just getting rid of cheap petroleum makes the entire long-haul trade system completely impractical.

Now what's more likely in my mind would be something like a collapse of food production in a modern dustbowl that makes current population level impossible and results in the collapse of larger nations in favor of city-states dependent on plantation agriculture. Just getting rid of cheap petroleum makes the entire long-haul trade system completely impractical.

Lamest. Script. Ever.
I was thinking of something initial that made things fucked up, not that things couldn't be rebuilt (though it would certainly take time, and I certainly was including food shortage as the first big epidemic to follow). Maybe a solar storm is a good start.

As for Sanchek's link, I have a crush on :heartMichio Kaku:heart. Don't talk bad about him.

I would rebut that the Postman was the lamest script ever.

You wanted small towns with medieval social structures, solar flares aren't going to do it. Assuming you had some EM storm that overloaded out every functioning circuit on earth while magically not killing every living thing in the process, you'd still have 1900s level technology back in a matter of months in areas with the resources. I bet you could get hydroelectric power back in a matter of days, as it has no restart costs and centralized transmission circuits.

Haha it was pretty bad. Poor Kevin Costner.

So what you're saying is nuclear holocaust and/or little green men are still the best ways to go, eh?

What about good ole biological disease ala The Stand, things still get pretty messed up. Those that are left might not have the knowledge to rebuild effectively even if they did roving marauders could snuff or enslave them.

resources deplete or age finding the last twinkie.

Biological disease both real and manufactured has been played out a lot recently too. See 28 days later, Omega Man/I am Legend, etc.

It's fiction, you can do whatever you want; just saying unless someone kills off everyone with a degree in science and burns every "do it yourself electronics" book in the process, it's actually pretty hard to go back from where we are unless you somehow make specialized labor so prohibitively expensive that the people who know how aren't able to get past basic survival questions for so long that the practical application is forgotten.

Hrm, so a satelite programmed lazer to take out people with science degrees then. Devious.

It's fiction, you can do whatever you want; just saying unless someone kills off everyone with a degree in science and burns every "do it yourself electronics" book in the process, it's actually pretty hard to go back from where we are unless you somehow make specialized labor so prohibitively expensive that the people who know how aren't able to get past basic survival questions for so long that the practical application is forgotten.

You could have a dark age scenario where self, religious, or leadership imposed fear of technology prevents restarting the engine after a collapse.

We're so spoiled that even a pretty decent civilization with electricity would still seem like the stone age by comparison. With little-to-no easy oil left, it would be a bitch to get back in the saddle too. How much oil does an average solar panel require to manufacture?

You could also potentially go with a literal "dark age" scenario a la "Sunshine" in which some catastrophe (megavolcano? solar failure? massive fluorocarbon release?) blots out the sky and renders anything more than a 10 degrees off the equator too cold to support life.

I loved Dark Angel. That show rocked. It was EMP that knocked everything out. They could have done so much more if it hadn't been canceled. Oh and Jessica Alba was beyond hot.

What about wildfires (or something else) causing massive damage to worldwide agricultural centers? Sort of tagging along with Malse's idea, and it's plausible given what's been happening with Russia. Once the food supply is buggered, whatever cause of the original disaster triggers a chained event(s?) that bring the world to its knees when it's already fighting to survive food shortage troubles.

Part of what makes The Colony work is it's a small community, with know how but limited means. Long term, sure we'd rebuild, but in the short term a small group has enough survival concerns to limit construction of advanced equipment.

As an aside, I would enjoy The Colony more if they focused on the inventions and techniques, instead of the forced drama.

Actually if one looks at the caos in NO after Katrina it wouldnt be hard to spin that into a global scale. imagine what NO would have been like after 90 days if no rescue and relief efforts had ever arrived and go from there. its fiction after all take a small dose of reality and blow it out of proportion. it works for the republicans =)

After hurricane Wilma in 05 i was amazed at the helplessness and panic I saw at the prospect of going a few days with the power out. on my entire block was the only one with the capacity to make a pot of coffee. it was mind boggling.

I loved Dark Angel. That show rocked. It was EMP that knocked everything out. They could have done so much more if it hadn't been canceled. Oh and Jessica Alba was beyond hot.

I have the series on DVD, and I have not been able to find a really good explanation of why her motorcycle worked (with electronic ignition) or why the varied 'bad guy' equipment was not affected by the EMP event.

A great concept, and the last thing she was actually good in (waiting to see Machete), but the whole EMP scenario left too many holes when you watched the series unfold.

Sharks with laser beams would cause global ruination!

The population curve spiking up while the oil production spiking down stands the best chance of shutting the world down. Then again with all these people to do things by hand it might not be such a big deal.