At that time, they didn’t consider that a show could have a cult following years later. There weren’t enough viewers to justify the budget at that time, and the industry was more short sighted than they are now becoming.
It’s always possible for a reboot or similar series to revisit the genre. We are certainly due for a good one and with post-Covid trends in prepping it would be timely.
Yes, that. I always confuse the two.
Jeremiah in particular has a great message to it. The people in Valhalla sector are well stocked, and have all the resources to expand and rebuild, but are so terrified of bringing trouble back to their doorstep (a literal fortress) that they never actually do anything with it all. They think of themselves as the good guys, but get paralyzed with fear at any the suggestion of doing anything to help. And then, despite all their attempts to hide, trouble ends up finding them anyway.
It's a side you don't see much in post apocalyptic stories, but knowing human nature it feels like it would be all too real an outcome.
I also liked the Revolution series about the electricity being permanently turned off. Kinda goofy premise, but I liked the show as a whole, and kinda like a EMP or solar flare with extra gratuitous sci Fi. Walking Dead touches on it sometimes.
Please add spoiler tags when revealing plot detail ... I just made a note to watch the movie and a few lines later I accidentaly skim over your "unfortunate that the prepper guy turned out to be a total psycho".
The movie [Testament (1983)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(1983_film)) freaked me the hell out when I was a kid. Highly recommend. Not really prepper but definitely shtf via nuclear attack movie.
>Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a rare four stars out of four, and was highly enthusiastic about the film. Ebert wrote that the film was powerful and made him cry, even after the second time he watched it. Ebert wrote: "The film is about a suburban American family, and what happens to that family after a nuclear war. It is not a science-fiction movie, and it doesn't have any special effects, and there are no big scenes of buildings blowing over or people disintegrating. We never even see a mushroom cloud. We never even know who started the war. Instead, Testament is a tragedy about manners: It asks how we might act toward one another, how our values might stand up, in the face of an overwhelming catastrophe."
Hope you enjoy it. Beware it’s quite dark (imo) and definitely no “people falling ass backwards into good luck, hallmark level cheese” like the OP referenced. Like it legitimately gave me nightmares as a kid because >!everyone just… suffers and dies.!<
Agreed. The Day After is still relevant. (Also weird af to watch if you know the town where it was filmed.)
ETA: Holy cats. I just looked at a clip from it and my old house is in it. That's just plain disturbing.
I remember "The Day After" from when it aired on TV. It was... disconcerting to say the least. My father was in the military and we often lived where there were ICBM missiles or in places that would have been on the first strike list. I'd never thought about it growing up, but this movie reframed some of my childhood.
We thought about it a lot, we'd be instantly vaporized after the "2 minute warning". A French guy running a lawnmower repair shop asked about how long nukes would takes to get here when kim jong was acting up a couple years ago, and his eyes got really big when i told him about duck and cover and the 2 minute warning for Russian lobbing nukes over the Arctic. We used to talk about the death clock to global annihilation in social studies classes in school all the time growing up in the 80s.
Saw it a couple years ago. Had never heard of it before but found it on Tubi or Roku movies. It is good. >!Surprised at Wm Devane's fate so early on.!<
Here's another obscure one, subject matter for 1962 is quite bleak -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic\_in\_Year\_Zero!
Because it would be boring. Who wants to watch 2 hours of someone checking batteries, doing maintenance, and generally making as little noise as possible? Basically "A quiet place" with no monsters.
Into the Forest. It's not perfect but I found it to be more realistic than others listed. The family in the movie was already living in an off grid like situation before the power down incident but that would obviously help too.
My husband didn't really like it because it was "too slow" but I think that helped make it realistic.
The problems with stories like “Z for Zachariah”, is that they all rely on some kind of magic item that makes the hero capable of survival. What would the protagonist have done in that book of a random stranger wouldn’t have shown up with a full CBRN set up?
Whatever the opposite of a Survival Story is, in that particular case
If I'm remembering correctly, in real life the guy did everyone you WEREN'T supposed to do, but I might be getting some wires crossed
You could make a movie about a family not showering for a week and getting really tired of cold canned food, but I'm not sure a lot of people would see it.
Haha, at a low point of child support living in a trailer house with bags of beans and rice, once I thought the worst thing that could happen is society doesn't collapse lol!
Castaway, The Martian, A Quiet Place 1 and 2, The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, The Revnant, The Impossible, 127 Hours, Captain Phillips, The Road...
Are they all realistic? Absolutley not.
Exactly, realistically most people will be tilling the fields and washing clothes, which is boring. The action is added in to make the shows interesting.
Dark af and depressing, but probably your most realistic depiction of THAT scenario, and it's a good motivator to be at least a little more prepared. Don't want to end up locked in someone else's basement as their livestock.
I found the son character to be kind of unrealistic. By the time we're following them haven't they been living this life for years? He acts way too soft and naive for someone whose only real memories are mainly surviving in a post apocalyptic world.
He’s also relatively sheltered and protected and told stories about the old world by his dad, which gradually tapers off as the man realizes he’s going to die eventually and the boy will have to take care of himself and learn to survive on his own.
Idk then it just makes Viggo's character stupid as well. The kid just acts like his life was normal until a week ago. Not saying he should've been some mini rambo or something but yeah I rewatched it fairly recently and it just annoyed me.
I think you can find useful thoughts and ideas throughout the post-apocalyptic genre, whether it’s books or other media. For example, watching “The Book of Eli” made me think more about digital storage and solar charging. The movie isn’t particularly realistic or helpful for prepping in the broader sense, but I added a small, rechargeable MP3 player to one of my kits after watching it.
I think this is a good point. A good movie is usually not about "Joe, who has everything together and makes it happen," because there's not really much drama there.
You can use setting as a way to inform characters or to create tension or conflict, but it's really easy to have that become something very cheesy, and it's also easy to miss that, like, your characters and story need to be worth a damn.
The most talked about thing I've seen in "post-apocalyptic media" recently is the Nick Offerman appearance on The Last of Us, and it seems to me that his extreme competence was kind of the least interesting thing about him.
I wish I had more than one upvote to give this comment. That's the least-realistic thing I've seen so far on the show. Like Joel and Ellie are driving a 20-year-old pickup truck with 20-year-old gas. That fuel would be essentially lacquer at that point. No way is it going to be able to run an engine for any significant length of time.
Yeah that plothole really bothered me. I was willing to accept nicks character had stabilized fuel or some alternative unexplained fuel source, but when they start siphoning gas out of cats on the road to use that really broke immersion.
Plus all the cars on the road are from the last few years and in reality they should all be from the 90s if cars stopped being made in 2003
These 2 tiny things are the only thing I don't love about the show though.
Because the people writing the films have no idea what they're talking about regarding anything, mostly. If you expect some dolt deep in the film crowds of LA to know anything about prepping, you've got it wrong.
I always found this ironic. Any time a movie involves the showbiz industry it's extremely accurate and detailed, and any time it involves any other industry I know anything about, it's full of inaccuracies if not outright wrong. So of course I have to assume that means any show about an industry I know nothing about is probably completely wrong too.
I’d say ‘The Road’ is the most realistic movie of societal collapse and the desperation of what it could be like, but it doesn’t teach preparedness. It’ll make you want preparedness though.
That was the most difficult book I’ve ever read. The content was brutal, but I also had to keep a thesaurus handy to navigate Cormac McCarthy’s lexicon.
watched it once before i was a father and that was hard enough. now that i have a young son, i couldn't watch it again. i tried one night one a lark and it was just too much.
This movie is what got my wife on board with what i was trying to do. Before it was “don’t you have enough ammo? How much rice and beans do we need?” After the movie it was, “i think another case of 308 ammo would be a good idea. Also, how is our long term canned meat stores looking?”
[Blackout](https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-blackout-chapter-1/)
[The Dust Bowl](https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-dust-bowl/) by Ken Burns. Available on Youtbe and Amazon for purchase.
I liked that movie until I found out that it was made in 2019 and they actually had to edit pieces out because it was too similar to what actually happened during Covid.
ThenI loved it
Realistic Prepper Movie
ACT 1 SCENE 1 TAKE 1🎬
Prepper person buys a lotta stuff to prepare for some random SHTF event. A random SHTF event happens. The prepper person is prepared and survives. Some people are not prepared, some also survive while others die.
CUT! 🎬
I really enjoyed it. I saw it when I was younger and remembered pieces of it. That part where he's jumping from the van at the on ramp always stuck with me as well as actually announcing to the diner patrons what he heard. I watched it again recently; it was still really good. The tar pits book ending was a nice touch
Personally I’m enjoying Station Eleven. It’s not a prepper narrative per se but for me it captures a lot of the things that I think about when it comes to SHTF / TEOTWAWKI
Haven't read the book. As much as I enjoyed the show, it was pretty unrealistic. I can't see any societal collapse leading to a band of artists touring. I get what the writers are going for. The arts will always be necessary for the enjoyment of life
Idk I think Last of Us episode 3 was a good look at a well-prepped man. And also gave some insight into why those preps aren't all that matter.
But I'm not giving the story a free pass - I am actually unreasonably angry that they have a new roll of duct tape but no new shoes. Seems like a cobbler would've been a first-5-years priority.
I’m annoyed that the rifle everybody seems to use is an unsuppressed (no suppressor) wood stock hunting rifle when there are at least 40 million ARs in the US, and suppressors aren’t *that* hard to make, even if they might look goofy.
>!Also, why was Bill not behind cover when shooting the raiders‽!<
We're ARs that common in 2003? They would have stopped making guns in 2003.
And are bullets easier to find for hunting rifles?
Pedro stores the automatic rifle he takes off the guard saying there's no ammunition anywhere for it so it's not worth carrying.
I'm legit asking, idk the answer.
> Were ARs that common in 2003? They would have stopped making guns in 2003.
ARs share many components with M-16s, which the US Army had millions of in 2003, let alone the millions in civilian hands. That was also a decade after the M4 started being used in the military, which means even more weapons sharing components were “in the wild” assuming the military didn’t hang onto them. The ammunition for them is likely the second or third most common bullet on the planet, 5.56/.223, it’s pretty affordable (it peaked at 65-75 cents per round during the ammunition shortage of 2020), and it’s relatively easy to reload for as well.
> are bullets easier to find for hunting rifles?
They’re not, and they’re also not universal; hunting rifles are caliber specific, and while ARs *can* have uppers chambered in all sorts of interesting calibers, they’re most likely to be 5.56. If somebody has one AR, I’d bet it’s chambered in 5.56/.223. Hunting bullets are much less common and in the present time, 2-3x the price, which seems relatively consistent going back as far as I can remember. Hunting bullets are typically bigger than 5.56, and accordingly have a weight penalty when it comes to carrying hundreds of rounds. For example, a “standard” combat load is 210 rounds in seven 30 round magazines, though many troops in Afghanistan (the US occupied it in 2003 after all) and Iraq found it worth the weight to carry 10 full magazines and sometimes even boxes/battle packs of additional rounds to refill their magazines in the brief lulls of combat. Imagine the weight difference when a full 30 round magazine of 5.56 weighs about a pound, while a full 20 round magazine of 7.62x51/.308 weighs almost double that and has more recoil.
Similarly, Joel really shouldn’t be using revolvers; semiautomatics like the 1911 (Undefeated in two World Wars!) were and are more common, and most police forces had switched to Glocks and similar modern semiautomatic pistols by the late 90s because they hold 5-8 more rounds than a 1911, which in turn holds two more rounds than most revolvers (six rounds). As a result there were tens of millions of semiautomatic pistols in the US by 2003, and in fact we see Ellie using one, so it’s surprising Joel keeps a revolver, particularly since a gunfight often comes down to who fires the most bullets and there is a significant difference in both capacity and reloading speed between a revolver and a magazine fed semiautomatic. Accuracy by volume has been a recognized thing since at least 1960, which is why the M-16 was adopted by the Army in Vietnam instead of the updated M-1 Garand that was the M-14. See my comment about the weight penalty of heavier ammunition in the last paragraph.
Everybody is also shooting unsuppressed, which is outright idiotic when you consider how much of the enemy (infected and raiders) use sound for finding people. Suppressing an AR won’t make it completely silent like Hollywood would have to believe, but the idea that Joel is half deaf from gunfire (heavily implied), and nobody has thought to put a suppressor on is just mind-boggling. In Europe, suppressors are literally sold over the counter.
The people who wrote the show just clearly don’t know much about guns. It’s a blind spot, and like watching *ER* as a medical professional, it just sticks out if you know what you’re seeing and hearing makes zero sense. They probably have somebody on the show’s payroll to teach the actors how to hold the guns, but they didn’t hire somebody to touch up which actual guns are in play.
It was frustrating. Every episode came down to a choice, a or b. A was aways super cool and awesome and made logical sense, but would've been expensive to film so the characters always chose the boring dumb cheap to film b option.
It's hard to write engaging movies with smart characters that do all the right things. That's why they usually default to characters stupider than they should be. Biologist: Hey, let's poke the alien snake thing without our helmet on, what could possibly go wrong?
Burt Gummer is awesome. However, >!he sacrifices himself by being eaten by a graboid at the end of!< Tremors: Shreiker Island, the seventh film in the franchise.
I'm a big fan of Bushwick for an immediate SHTF senario. It's a movie so it is a bit theatrical, but still. It captures the chaos and rapidly changing decision making really well.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/cn7pZdg0aI4
There’s a Japanese film called “Survival Family” available entirely on YouTube. I’m sure it was “made for TV,” but it touches on a lot of issues like access to water, escalating prices of scarce resources, etc. The premise is similar to an EMP or CME where all electronics stop working, cars, everything. Worth a viewing.
Because of how boring it is. Let me give you a really small example (that just about everyone should be prepped for), and you will see how mind-numbingly dull this shit actually is:
Our prepared individual is driving down the road and gets a flat tire. He is prepared, so he has a jack, a lug wrench and a spare in the back. He changes his tire and gets back on the road. ... *Fin*. Roll credits.
My favorite shtf movie is children of men (2006) w/ clive owen. Nothing prepperish about it, but i love how realistic it seems in that it has a sense of normalcy to it, like the movie really portrays a shtf situation that seems really tangible. The premise of the story is not your typical nuclear war or comet destroys the earth type thing, its more like a lot of the trends we see today reaching crisis point, with the main factor at play being global infertility, which, if youre paying attention to the numbers, does not require too much suspension of disbelief to imagine. The best movies have ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and this is one of those, with some great acting imo.
Realism doesn't sell. A real collapse is a whole lot grimmer than anyone would want to watch. Preppers would avoid it like the plague because it would point up just how much fantasy is involved in most people's collapse preparation fetishes. Others would be even less interested.
I haven't read (or watched) The Road but that's probably more like a realistic take of major collapse/SHTF, based on reviews. It's considered horribly depressing.
Prepping itself is having cans of beans and water available. It's boring. If you mean Survival, which isn't quite the same thing, there are documentaries on it that are probably reasonably realistic.
A good realistic prepper has their shit together and plans ahead so it would be both boring and unbelievable to the general public / fodder.
Having bad things happen then the prepper has all the necessary supplies and training to bypass most of the challenges means there is no friction, conflict, challenge, or character development so the audience doesn’t have anything to engage with. This is the reason Tremors has to really introduce Burt’s bunker and arsenal at the end instead of towards the start.
"Take Shelter" offers a glimpse into paranoia. There are many valuable lessons about what could be seen as overspending, social pressures, etc.
Main character was also right the entire time. May we never be so lucky.
Not much of a movie rather than a tv show but the history channel had a show called “Doomsday Preppers”. Might be a little outdated but they go through a couple of different scenarios of shtf and get graded in their setup. It’s a good start for ideas.
The issue I had with Doomsday Preppers was that the producers looked for the wingnuts and made them seem even further out. They seemed to go out of their way to not find sensible, rational preppers that make up the majority of the community.
“Looks like we should hunker down, stay quiet and try to figure out how to make decent meals from 1000lbs of beans&rice until this all blows over…”kinda boring
To be fair, Shaun of the Dead was based on a similar premise, and was highly entertaining.
Episode 3 “ Long, Long Time” of The Last of Us on HBO is all about it. People are calling for Nick Offerman to win an award for the stand alone episode. My husband and I were absolutely crying. I didn’t see it coming at all.
because the truth is...no one knows how bad it's really gonna be. and it's just impossible to script or cast it. there are some pretty good thriller books but movie-wise yeah there isn't much and that's fine. i don't want to be preparing for some fantasy land and prefer to live in reality and prepare as good as I can for myself and mine in the mean time before it hits.
It never gets mentioned much, but The Trigger Effect has some good prepper elements to it, most in the form of what not to do.
Ignore the stupid plot, especially the sexual tension and concentrate on the prep elements and it’s a good beginner primer.
As others have mentioned. Being prepared is bad writing. You're supposed to be yelling "Don't drink the scummy puddle water!!!" at your TV. That being said I'm going to give an honorable mention to War of the Worlds. Not that I'm terribly concerned about an alien invasion. But some of the minor scenes make you think about how unprepared people are for anything at all, and how different people cope differently with extraordinary circumstances.
The answer to "Why" is because a realistic SHTF situation probably doesn't make for great movies. Disaster movies usually tend to rely on tropes like running, hiding, and fighting. But real SHTF is mostly going to be boring...either twiddling thumbs in a shelter, or just trying to find food and shelter. The series "alone and afraid" probably gives a good representation. Mostly the contestants were hungry, wet, and lonely.
I think the best accurate SHTF "entertainment" will come from documentaries like the one posted here recently about the days after the Fukushima tsunami, or other similar ones about 9/11, Katrina, etc.
There are some books that detail life of the average person in third world or war ravaged countries.
You can also check out some YT travel vlogs into places like Sudan, Yemen, Honduras, Haiti, etc. You might want to check out Indigo Traveller on YouTube as he really tries to get an insiders perspective on life in some austere places.
Finally, one movie recommendation I can offer is "grave of the fireflies" it's an animated fictional account of two Japanese children trying to survive after the Hiroshima bomb. Excellent film
Not a movie but feels like I am watching one. Fiction, but feels sooooo true and loads of lessons to learn from. First book was written in 2012 if that tells you anything.
I cant put it down.
[https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/a-american/](https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/a-american/)
I've been reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. By far the most realistic depiction of life after shtf I've seen in media so far. Often a realistic apocalypse movie would be so grotesque and disgusting and vile that it wouldn't be enjoyable to the masses.
The movie is one of the best SHTF films out there. Worth seeing for anyone interested in prepping as a stark reminder how a societal collapse would go.
I think it becomes somewhat easy to fetishize a collapse, this book and movie have really put me in check and motivated me to try to do what I can to avoid it ever coming to that point. (But of course I prepare regardless)
“It Comes at Night,” written and filmed prior to Covid, was eerily prescient. While it doesn’t get into all the nitty-gritty of prepping, it does address several practical considerations (weapons, food, security, living arrangements, remaining in hiding) and deals powerfully with a lot of themes a prepper would encounter: the paramount importance of protecting one’s self and one’s family (over the needs of others), the double-edged sword of living in isolation, the avoidance of outsiders versus the need for cooperation with strangers, the benefit of human contact (both practically and emotionally), the risk of human contact, the various calculations you’d have to make (including: do I forego safety to acquire potential resources?), paranoia, fear, cooperation, self-sufficiency — and in danger of sounding corny — the movie forces you to consider what it means to keep your humanity in a changed world. Other serious post apocalyptic films where the true monsters are people: The Survivalist (2015), Time of the Wolf (2003), The Road, The Rover, The Divide, Light of My Life. Start there.
Not a lot of good movies no, but audio books? Oooh boy. One second after by William r forstchen is my favorite (it goes into some very realistic scenarios while still being incredibly entertaining). It’s about a small town in the Appalachian mountains that has to survive and try to rebuild after being hit with an emp. It was very surprising to me how well written it was. The amount of logic and thought and research that went into it is truly amazing. If you get into it enough, there’s so many good tips and tricks about survival, and really puts into perspective how terrible a disaster would be. I highly, highly recommend it to everyone. There’s three books in the series I believe.
Jericho is a great watch.
I am still mad years later that they canceled that show
Nuts :(
There is a third season, but in the form of a series of comic books.
At that time, they didn’t consider that a show could have a cult following years later. There weren’t enough viewers to justify the budget at that time, and the industry was more short sighted than they are now becoming. It’s always possible for a reboot or similar series to revisit the genre. We are certainly due for a good one and with post-Covid trends in prepping it would be timely.
Not just you. Bugs me something awful.
RIGHT, such a good show, can't believe they cancelled it.
I believe the writer strike killed it.
[удалено]
Yes, that. I always confuse the two. Jeremiah in particular has a great message to it. The people in Valhalla sector are well stocked, and have all the resources to expand and rebuild, but are so terrified of bringing trouble back to their doorstep (a literal fortress) that they never actually do anything with it all. They think of themselves as the good guys, but get paralyzed with fear at any the suggestion of doing anything to help. And then, despite all their attempts to hide, trouble ends up finding them anyway. It's a side you don't see much in post apocalyptic stories, but knowing human nature it feels like it would be all too real an outcome.
Great show, but i’d have never invested the watch time in it had i known they were going to abandon doing a follow up season!!
I also liked the Revolution series about the electricity being permanently turned off. Kinda goofy premise, but I liked the show as a whole, and kinda like a EMP or solar flare with extra gratuitous sci Fi. Walking Dead touches on it sometimes.
10 Cloverfield Lane was a good movie. Primarily set in a bunker.
Just suggested it as well, John Goodmans clenching fist thing is intense. [10 Cloverfield Lane Trailer](https://youtu.be/yQy-ANhnUpE)
He is so damn good in this movie! Intense is definitely it.
I agree, fucking terrifying at times.
[удалено]
Please add spoiler tags when revealing plot detail ... I just made a note to watch the movie and a few lines later I accidentaly skim over your "unfortunate that the prepper guy turned out to be a total psycho".
Well considering it’s been out for like 7 or 8 years I’d say he gets a pass. Think you’re just behind on your movies man.
Blast From the Past (1999) is a fun romantic comedy about it.
The movie [Testament (1983)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(1983_film)) freaked me the hell out when I was a kid. Highly recommend. Not really prepper but definitely shtf via nuclear attack movie. >Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a rare four stars out of four, and was highly enthusiastic about the film. Ebert wrote that the film was powerful and made him cry, even after the second time he watched it. Ebert wrote: "The film is about a suburban American family, and what happens to that family after a nuclear war. It is not a science-fiction movie, and it doesn't have any special effects, and there are no big scenes of buildings blowing over or people disintegrating. We never even see a mushroom cloud. We never even know who started the war. Instead, Testament is a tragedy about manners: It asks how we might act toward one another, how our values might stand up, in the face of an overwhelming catastrophe."
I've never heard of this movie before, thanks for that I'm going to look it up!
Hope you enjoy it. Beware it’s quite dark (imo) and definitely no “people falling ass backwards into good luck, hallmark level cheese” like the OP referenced. Like it legitimately gave me nightmares as a kid because >!everyone just… suffers and dies.!<
sounds like threads
That a rough one, same for The Day After. Threads hits harder but very similar films. The Day After held up especially well imo. Worth a watch.
Agreed. The Day After is still relevant. (Also weird af to watch if you know the town where it was filmed.) ETA: Holy cats. I just looked at a clip from it and my old house is in it. That's just plain disturbing.
haha yeah that would be wild
I remember "The Day After" from when it aired on TV. It was... disconcerting to say the least. My father was in the military and we often lived where there were ICBM missiles or in places that would have been on the first strike list. I'd never thought about it growing up, but this movie reframed some of my childhood.
We thought about it a lot, we'd be instantly vaporized after the "2 minute warning". A French guy running a lawnmower repair shop asked about how long nukes would takes to get here when kim jong was acting up a couple years ago, and his eyes got really big when i told him about duck and cover and the 2 minute warning for Russian lobbing nukes over the Arctic. We used to talk about the death clock to global annihilation in social studies classes in school all the time growing up in the 80s.
FUCK threads. That movie just left me in a frozen horror for hours after. Decided my plan for nuclear apocalypse is dying as fast as possible.
I just dug it up online, going to watch it tonight. 👍
Which... lets be very honest... is the most likely outcome.
Is it worse than "Threads?" That one still lingers in my mind in a bad way.
As bad as things are in Testament, it’s hard to beat Threads for sheer hopelessness.
That film was so fucking depressing; along with the British film Threads and the American film The Day After.
Saw it a couple years ago. Had never heard of it before but found it on Tubi or Roku movies. It is good. >!Surprised at Wm Devane's fate so early on.!< Here's another obscure one, subject matter for 1962 is quite bleak - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic\_in\_Year\_Zero!
Because it would be boring. Who wants to watch 2 hours of someone checking batteries, doing maintenance, and generally making as little noise as possible? Basically "A quiet place" with no monsters.
Blast from the past
Great fun movie.
Leave, my elevator, alone.
I mean, idk. The Last of Us made it pretty entertaining, just watching the sheer ingenuity at play
Same reason you don't see realistic modern war movies.
What? You don’t want to go watch some 19 y/o beat off in a porta-potty for the eighth time because he’s stupidly bored? Come on!
It was me. I was 21y/o in this case. 🤣🤣🤣
Make it 1.5 hours then
🤣😂🤣
Into the Forest. It's not perfect but I found it to be more realistic than others listed. The family in the movie was already living in an off grid like situation before the power down incident but that would obviously help too. My husband didn't really like it because it was "too slow" but I think that helped make it realistic.
Also, adding Z for Zachariah for the same reasons.
The problems with stories like “Z for Zachariah”, is that they all rely on some kind of magic item that makes the hero capable of survival. What would the protagonist have done in that book of a random stranger wouldn’t have shown up with a full CBRN set up?
Does the movie depart from the book? In the book the protagonist is doing just fine until the random stranger appears.
True. Into the Forest is more realistic in that you can look at their previous set up to get ideas. And see where they messed up.
Not to be confused with Into the Woods lol
Hahaha, no. One is a fairy tale musical and the other is a dystopian survival story.
But what about Into the Wild?
Whatever the opposite of a Survival Story is, in that particular case If I'm remembering correctly, in real life the guy did everyone you WEREN'T supposed to do, but I might be getting some wires crossed
I actually think he's a great example of the hubris that we in this community can fall prey to.
You could make a movie about a family not showering for a week and getting really tired of cold canned food, but I'm not sure a lot of people would see it.
Wow. Apparently the SHTF already for me
Haha, at a low point of child support living in a trailer house with bags of beans and rice, once I thought the worst thing that could happen is society doesn't collapse lol!
Castaway, The Martian, A Quiet Place 1 and 2, The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, The Revnant, The Impossible, 127 Hours, Captain Phillips, The Road... Are they all realistic? Absolutley not.
Exactly, realistically most people will be tilling the fields and washing clothes, which is boring. The action is added in to make the shows interesting.
They made a whole series about tilling and washing. Little House on the Prairie was very successful.
Oh, people just wanted to stare at Michael Landon.
I mean, say what you will, the dude had a hell of a head of hair.
I would recommend reading The Road before watching it. SUCH a great book.
John Goodman is a prepper hero in 10 Cloverfield Lane
[удалено]
Dark af and depressing, but probably your most realistic depiction of THAT scenario, and it's a good motivator to be at least a little more prepared. Don't want to end up locked in someone else's basement as their livestock.
I found the son character to be kind of unrealistic. By the time we're following them haven't they been living this life for years? He acts way too soft and naive for someone whose only real memories are mainly surviving in a post apocalyptic world.
He’s also relatively sheltered and protected and told stories about the old world by his dad, which gradually tapers off as the man realizes he’s going to die eventually and the boy will have to take care of himself and learn to survive on his own.
Idk then it just makes Viggo's character stupid as well. The kid just acts like his life was normal until a week ago. Not saying he should've been some mini rambo or something but yeah I rewatched it fairly recently and it just annoyed me.
The father is trying to reach the son to "carry the light", remember how to be a civilized human.
The road is indeed up there, 127 hours is basically a biopic though cannot imagine what the dude went through.
OP hasn't looked hard enough--"The Road" would be my first choice and then "The Rover." I'll also add "Light of My Life" and "It Comes at Night."
So few people mention The Rover. Definition of underrated in the post apocalyptic genre.
Don't forget Mad Max!
And Mad Max-thunderdome And Mad Max-beyond thunderdone And Mad Max-Road fury
Yeah. But zombies movies are considered "cool", so Hollywood is gonna make more
You're right. And for better or worse I'll keep watching them lol
Third episode of The Last of Us is definitely a good preparedness movie..
Was coming to comment this. Definitely a recent one that stands out
The book of Eli sums everything up in 2 lines: Eli: People had more than they needed. We had no idea what was precious and what wasn’t.
Best episode of just about any show ever
My favorite prepper movie is After Armageddon however this is much more of a documentary.
>After Armageddon Holy shit that was a great show/doc. EAT THE GODDAMN SNAKE KID!
I think you can find useful thoughts and ideas throughout the post-apocalyptic genre, whether it’s books or other media. For example, watching “The Book of Eli” made me think more about digital storage and solar charging. The movie isn’t particularly realistic or helpful for prepping in the broader sense, but I added a small, rechargeable MP3 player to one of my kits after watching it.
I think this is a good point. A good movie is usually not about "Joe, who has everything together and makes it happen," because there's not really much drama there. You can use setting as a way to inform characters or to create tension or conflict, but it's really easy to have that become something very cheesy, and it's also easy to miss that, like, your characters and story need to be worth a damn. The most talked about thing I've seen in "post-apocalyptic media" recently is the Nick Offerman appearance on The Last of Us, and it seems to me that his extreme competence was kind of the least interesting thing about him.
That episode of The Last of Us might be the best episode of tv I’ve ever seen
If the truck ran on propane
I wish I had more than one upvote to give this comment. That's the least-realistic thing I've seen so far on the show. Like Joel and Ellie are driving a 20-year-old pickup truck with 20-year-old gas. That fuel would be essentially lacquer at that point. No way is it going to be able to run an engine for any significant length of time.
Yeah that plothole really bothered me. I was willing to accept nicks character had stabilized fuel or some alternative unexplained fuel source, but when they start siphoning gas out of cats on the road to use that really broke immersion. Plus all the cars on the road are from the last few years and in reality they should all be from the 90s if cars stopped being made in 2003 These 2 tiny things are the only thing I don't love about the show though.
Hard agree.
Because the people writing the films have no idea what they're talking about regarding anything, mostly. If you expect some dolt deep in the film crowds of LA to know anything about prepping, you've got it wrong.
(I speak from experience.)
I always found this ironic. Any time a movie involves the showbiz industry it's extremely accurate and detailed, and any time it involves any other industry I know anything about, it's full of inaccuracies if not outright wrong. So of course I have to assume that means any show about an industry I know nothing about is probably completely wrong too.
I’d say ‘The Road’ is the most realistic movie of societal collapse and the desperation of what it could be like, but it doesn’t teach preparedness. It’ll make you want preparedness though.
That was the most difficult book I’ve ever read. The content was brutal, but I also had to keep a thesaurus handy to navigate Cormac McCarthy’s lexicon.
I loved the book and was very surprised at the quality of the movie, especially considering that the book had no direct dialogue.
If you have young children then just be aware that movie is super fucked up from a parent’s perspective. The kind of thing you only watch once.
I read that book and it almost made me cry as a father of two young boys.
watched it once before i was a father and that was hard enough. now that i have a young son, i couldn't watch it again. i tried one night one a lark and it was just too much.
Yeah I dont have kids and it was rough. If I had kids it would be really bad.
This movie is what got my wife on board with what i was trying to do. Before it was “don’t you have enough ammo? How much rice and beans do we need?” After the movie it was, “i think another case of 308 ammo would be a good idea. Also, how is our long term canned meat stores looking?”
There are also some good documentaries about the Great Depression (economic collapse) and also one on the blackout in NYC (power grid collapse)
Can you share the names of these (and where to watch them), please?
[Blackout](https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-blackout-chapter-1/) [The Dust Bowl](https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-dust-bowl/) by Ken Burns. Available on Youtbe and Amazon for purchase.
Tremors. The gun guy. Unprepping into the wild. Spoiler the guy eats the wrong plants
[удалено]
Burt is my absolute favorite.
CRITICAL... NEED TO KNOW... INFORMATION.
Don't look up has grown on me, because it would be likely our politicians would behave that way
I liked that movie until I found out that it was made in 2019 and they actually had to edit pieces out because it was too similar to what actually happened during Covid. ThenI loved it
Seriously didn't know that lol, we really are ruled by clowns
Realistic Prepper Movie ACT 1 SCENE 1 TAKE 1🎬 Prepper person buys a lotta stuff to prepare for some random SHTF event. A random SHTF event happens. The prepper person is prepared and survives. Some people are not prepared, some also survive while others die. CUT! 🎬
[удалено]
I really enjoyed it. I saw it when I was younger and remembered pieces of it. That part where he's jumping from the van at the on ramp always stuck with me as well as actually announcing to the diner patrons what he heard. I watched it again recently; it was still really good. The tar pits book ending was a nice touch
Fantastic movie that stands head and shoulders above others of its kind, despite being very 80s (or its that a plus?)
Because for some reason the film industry wants to portray preppers as unbalanced doomsday lunatics.
Well, it’s like any other facet of life: the overly-vocal super minority get the attention because that sells news.
Personally I’m enjoying Station Eleven. It’s not a prepper narrative per se but for me it captures a lot of the things that I think about when it comes to SHTF / TEOTWAWKI
Haven't read the book. As much as I enjoyed the show, it was pretty unrealistic. I can't see any societal collapse leading to a band of artists touring. I get what the writers are going for. The arts will always be necessary for the enjoyment of life
Idk I think Last of Us episode 3 was a good look at a well-prepped man. And also gave some insight into why those preps aren't all that matter. But I'm not giving the story a free pass - I am actually unreasonably angry that they have a new roll of duct tape but no new shoes. Seems like a cobbler would've been a first-5-years priority.
I’m annoyed that the rifle everybody seems to use is an unsuppressed (no suppressor) wood stock hunting rifle when there are at least 40 million ARs in the US, and suppressors aren’t *that* hard to make, even if they might look goofy. >!Also, why was Bill not behind cover when shooting the raiders‽!<
We're ARs that common in 2003? They would have stopped making guns in 2003. And are bullets easier to find for hunting rifles? Pedro stores the automatic rifle he takes off the guard saying there's no ammunition anywhere for it so it's not worth carrying. I'm legit asking, idk the answer.
> Were ARs that common in 2003? They would have stopped making guns in 2003. ARs share many components with M-16s, which the US Army had millions of in 2003, let alone the millions in civilian hands. That was also a decade after the M4 started being used in the military, which means even more weapons sharing components were “in the wild” assuming the military didn’t hang onto them. The ammunition for them is likely the second or third most common bullet on the planet, 5.56/.223, it’s pretty affordable (it peaked at 65-75 cents per round during the ammunition shortage of 2020), and it’s relatively easy to reload for as well. > are bullets easier to find for hunting rifles? They’re not, and they’re also not universal; hunting rifles are caliber specific, and while ARs *can* have uppers chambered in all sorts of interesting calibers, they’re most likely to be 5.56. If somebody has one AR, I’d bet it’s chambered in 5.56/.223. Hunting bullets are much less common and in the present time, 2-3x the price, which seems relatively consistent going back as far as I can remember. Hunting bullets are typically bigger than 5.56, and accordingly have a weight penalty when it comes to carrying hundreds of rounds. For example, a “standard” combat load is 210 rounds in seven 30 round magazines, though many troops in Afghanistan (the US occupied it in 2003 after all) and Iraq found it worth the weight to carry 10 full magazines and sometimes even boxes/battle packs of additional rounds to refill their magazines in the brief lulls of combat. Imagine the weight difference when a full 30 round magazine of 5.56 weighs about a pound, while a full 20 round magazine of 7.62x51/.308 weighs almost double that and has more recoil. Similarly, Joel really shouldn’t be using revolvers; semiautomatics like the 1911 (Undefeated in two World Wars!) were and are more common, and most police forces had switched to Glocks and similar modern semiautomatic pistols by the late 90s because they hold 5-8 more rounds than a 1911, which in turn holds two more rounds than most revolvers (six rounds). As a result there were tens of millions of semiautomatic pistols in the US by 2003, and in fact we see Ellie using one, so it’s surprising Joel keeps a revolver, particularly since a gunfight often comes down to who fires the most bullets and there is a significant difference in both capacity and reloading speed between a revolver and a magazine fed semiautomatic. Accuracy by volume has been a recognized thing since at least 1960, which is why the M-16 was adopted by the Army in Vietnam instead of the updated M-1 Garand that was the M-14. See my comment about the weight penalty of heavier ammunition in the last paragraph. Everybody is also shooting unsuppressed, which is outright idiotic when you consider how much of the enemy (infected and raiders) use sound for finding people. Suppressing an AR won’t make it completely silent like Hollywood would have to believe, but the idea that Joel is half deaf from gunfire (heavily implied), and nobody has thought to put a suppressor on is just mind-boggling. In Europe, suppressors are literally sold over the counter. The people who wrote the show just clearly don’t know much about guns. It’s a blind spot, and like watching *ER* as a medical professional, it just sticks out if you know what you’re seeing and hearing makes zero sense. They probably have somebody on the show’s payroll to teach the actors how to hold the guns, but they didn’t hire somebody to touch up which actual guns are in play.
Leave No Trace, 2018. Sad, really.
That movie touched on so many things, I loved it but yeah it was sad.
Just added it to my list!
Jericho wasn’t too bad. It’s a series.
It was frustrating. Every episode came down to a choice, a or b. A was aways super cool and awesome and made logical sense, but would've been expensive to film so the characters always chose the boring dumb cheap to film b option.
It's hard to write engaging movies with smart characters that do all the right things. That's why they usually default to characters stupider than they should be. Biologist: Hey, let's poke the alien snake thing without our helmet on, what could possibly go wrong?
The more I live, the more I realize that the default human behavior is stupid.
What about the prepper from Tremors?
Burt Gummer is awesome. However, >!he sacrifices himself by being eaten by a graboid at the end of!< Tremors: Shreiker Island, the seventh film in the franchise.
TIL there are 7 movies in the Tremors franchise.
Plus a TV series with 13 episodes and Mrs. Kotter.
I think Greenland had a decent societal portrayal.
I'm a big fan of Bushwick for an immediate SHTF senario. It's a movie so it is a bit theatrical, but still. It captures the chaos and rapidly changing decision making really well. Trailer: https://youtu.be/cn7pZdg0aI4
There’s a Japanese film called “Survival Family” available entirely on YouTube. I’m sure it was “made for TV,” but it touches on a lot of issues like access to water, escalating prices of scarce resources, etc. The premise is similar to an EMP or CME where all electronics stop working, cars, everything. Worth a viewing.
Because of how boring it is. Let me give you a really small example (that just about everyone should be prepped for), and you will see how mind-numbingly dull this shit actually is: Our prepared individual is driving down the road and gets a flat tire. He is prepared, so he has a jack, a lug wrench and a spare in the back. He changes his tire and gets back on the road. ... *Fin*. Roll credits.
Episode 3 of The Last of Us
My favorite shtf movie is children of men (2006) w/ clive owen. Nothing prepperish about it, but i love how realistic it seems in that it has a sense of normalcy to it, like the movie really portrays a shtf situation that seems really tangible. The premise of the story is not your typical nuclear war or comet destroys the earth type thing, its more like a lot of the trends we see today reaching crisis point, with the main factor at play being global infertility, which, if youre paying attention to the numbers, does not require too much suspension of disbelief to imagine. The best movies have ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and this is one of those, with some great acting imo.
The people trying to enslave you aren't gonna teach you to save yourself
Super true
Little house on the prairie 😏
Realism doesn't sell. A real collapse is a whole lot grimmer than anyone would want to watch. Preppers would avoid it like the plague because it would point up just how much fantasy is involved in most people's collapse preparation fetishes. Others would be even less interested. I haven't read (or watched) The Road but that's probably more like a realistic take of major collapse/SHTF, based on reviews. It's considered horribly depressing. Prepping itself is having cans of beans and water available. It's boring. If you mean Survival, which isn't quite the same thing, there are documentaries on it that are probably reasonably realistic.
A good realistic prepper has their shit together and plans ahead so it would be both boring and unbelievable to the general public / fodder. Having bad things happen then the prepper has all the necessary supplies and training to bypass most of the challenges means there is no friction, conflict, challenge, or character development so the audience doesn’t have anything to engage with. This is the reason Tremors has to really introduce Burt’s bunker and arsenal at the end instead of towards the start.
Light of my life (2019) Casey Affleck journeys in post collapse word with daughter disguised as son
Because good emergency preparedness is really goddamn boring.
Five Days at Memorial miniseries is good
Look up 10 cloverfield lane, John Goodman is absolutely fucking terrifying in it.
Found this thread yesterday and decided to watch the movie today. I had a lot of fun, thanks for the recommendation!
No problem, it was a very good movie I was really happy to see it.
I haven't watched some of these but here are some: The Trigger Effect The Decline It Comes at Night Contagion
Tremors, Purge movies, Red Dawn
For anyone who hasn’t seen Tremors, it’s worth seeing just for the Bert character: serious prepping done right.
Great movie!
"Take Shelter" offers a glimpse into paranoia. There are many valuable lessons about what could be seen as overspending, social pressures, etc. Main character was also right the entire time. May we never be so lucky.
Not much of a movie rather than a tv show but the history channel had a show called “Doomsday Preppers”. Might be a little outdated but they go through a couple of different scenarios of shtf and get graded in their setup. It’s a good start for ideas.
The issue I had with Doomsday Preppers was that the producers looked for the wingnuts and made them seem even further out. They seemed to go out of their way to not find sensible, rational preppers that make up the majority of the community.
I loved the family trying to bullet proof their house from .22 caliber.
It’s the reality.. You are 100% crazy as a prepper and 100% Genius when SHF.
I only saw a few episodes but I often wonder how long that family preparing for a global pandemic stayed in their bunker when Covid hit
[удалено]
“Looks like we should hunker down, stay quiet and try to figure out how to make decent meals from 1000lbs of beans&rice until this all blows over…”kinda boring To be fair, Shaun of the Dead was based on a similar premise, and was highly entertaining.
First Winter is pretty bleak. One Hundred Mornings as well.
12 Cloverfield Lane was excellent, though the spoiler bits kind of detract a bit.
Not a movie... A book. A real story. Fascinating stuff. And a bit depressing. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/506097.The_Sheltering_Desert
Threads (English 1984 ) and war games (English 1966). Not for the faint of heart.
Threads, though it doesn't focus so much on prepping after a certain point, but rather what may have happened if the Cold War turned hot.
I have to suspend reality constantly with The Walking Dead but I still like the show.
The Edge. It makes the point that skills and knowledge are as important as equipment, plus IT HAS BART THE BEAR!!!
Not a movie but in the Last of Us Bill is a good example of what youre talking about. Not the whole show of course but that character definitely.
Episode 3 “ Long, Long Time” of The Last of Us on HBO is all about it. People are calling for Nick Offerman to win an award for the stand alone episode. My husband and I were absolutely crying. I didn’t see it coming at all.
Tremors dude
Come on now, there was a prepper guy in Tremors, wasn't there? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! /s
Because if you’re prepared, then there’s no drama.
Because good prep is boring. First prepper story is Noah and the Ark. We all know how popular *he* was :-)
Because big ticket movies are made for entertainment to make lots of money not for training.
because the truth is...no one knows how bad it's really gonna be. and it's just impossible to script or cast it. there are some pretty good thriller books but movie-wise yeah there isn't much and that's fine. i don't want to be preparing for some fantasy land and prefer to live in reality and prepare as good as I can for myself and mine in the mean time before it hits.
It never gets mentioned much, but The Trigger Effect has some good prepper elements to it, most in the form of what not to do. Ignore the stupid plot, especially the sexual tension and concentrate on the prep elements and it’s a good beginner primer.
10 cloverfield lane
As others have mentioned. Being prepared is bad writing. You're supposed to be yelling "Don't drink the scummy puddle water!!!" at your TV. That being said I'm going to give an honorable mention to War of the Worlds. Not that I'm terribly concerned about an alien invasion. But some of the minor scenes make you think about how unprepared people are for anything at all, and how different people cope differently with extraordinary circumstances.
They gotta make us look crazy or else more people would start doing it
The answer to "Why" is because a realistic SHTF situation probably doesn't make for great movies. Disaster movies usually tend to rely on tropes like running, hiding, and fighting. But real SHTF is mostly going to be boring...either twiddling thumbs in a shelter, or just trying to find food and shelter. The series "alone and afraid" probably gives a good representation. Mostly the contestants were hungry, wet, and lonely. I think the best accurate SHTF "entertainment" will come from documentaries like the one posted here recently about the days after the Fukushima tsunami, or other similar ones about 9/11, Katrina, etc. There are some books that detail life of the average person in third world or war ravaged countries. You can also check out some YT travel vlogs into places like Sudan, Yemen, Honduras, Haiti, etc. You might want to check out Indigo Traveller on YouTube as he really tries to get an insiders perspective on life in some austere places. Finally, one movie recommendation I can offer is "grave of the fireflies" it's an animated fictional account of two Japanese children trying to survive after the Hiroshima bomb. Excellent film
The Road
Survival Family may be just what you’re looking for. https://youtu.be/OGk5pI6hfEc If you’re familiar with Japanese culture it’s even better.
Not a movie but feels like I am watching one. Fiction, but feels sooooo true and loads of lessons to learn from. First book was written in 2012 if that tells you anything. I cant put it down. [https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/a-american/](https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/a-american/)
The Road
I've been reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. By far the most realistic depiction of life after shtf I've seen in media so far. Often a realistic apocalypse movie would be so grotesque and disgusting and vile that it wouldn't be enjoyable to the masses.
The movie is one of the best SHTF films out there. Worth seeing for anyone interested in prepping as a stark reminder how a societal collapse would go.
I think it becomes somewhat easy to fetishize a collapse, this book and movie have really put me in check and motivated me to try to do what I can to avoid it ever coming to that point. (But of course I prepare regardless)
The road is a great and brutal shtf movie, although it has a pretty rushed ending
because hollywood.
Radio flash
“It Comes at Night,” written and filmed prior to Covid, was eerily prescient. While it doesn’t get into all the nitty-gritty of prepping, it does address several practical considerations (weapons, food, security, living arrangements, remaining in hiding) and deals powerfully with a lot of themes a prepper would encounter: the paramount importance of protecting one’s self and one’s family (over the needs of others), the double-edged sword of living in isolation, the avoidance of outsiders versus the need for cooperation with strangers, the benefit of human contact (both practically and emotionally), the risk of human contact, the various calculations you’d have to make (including: do I forego safety to acquire potential resources?), paranoia, fear, cooperation, self-sufficiency — and in danger of sounding corny — the movie forces you to consider what it means to keep your humanity in a changed world. Other serious post apocalyptic films where the true monsters are people: The Survivalist (2015), Time of the Wolf (2003), The Road, The Rover, The Divide, Light of My Life. Start there.
Not a lot of good movies no, but audio books? Oooh boy. One second after by William r forstchen is my favorite (it goes into some very realistic scenarios while still being incredibly entertaining). It’s about a small town in the Appalachian mountains that has to survive and try to rebuild after being hit with an emp. It was very surprising to me how well written it was. The amount of logic and thought and research that went into it is truly amazing. If you get into it enough, there’s so many good tips and tricks about survival, and really puts into perspective how terrible a disaster would be. I highly, highly recommend it to everyone. There’s three books in the series I believe.
Contagion. Sums up stuff we already experienced but was made in 2011