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Post by shifty on Jul 12, 2010 22:36:51 GMT
What got everyone into the PA/ survival thing? For me it was a combination of Dawn of the dead and reading The stand. From that i moved onto reading swansong, Then i reread both books about 6 times.
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Post by Matthew on Jul 14, 2010 5:29:30 GMT
For me it was the original Survivors. What grabbed me in particular was the double episode story in series two 'Lights of London' and seeing a community depicted living at the Oval cricket ground. I think it was the first time I saw somewhere that I knew on the Television and it really grabbed me.
From there it was generally a case of getting my hands on some second hand John Christopher novels such as 'Wrinkle in the skin' and 'The Death of grass' along with the general cold war paranoia.
There was 'The War Game' and then 'Threads' followed by a whole host of 'what if' documentarys and really I became a massive fan of the whole genre even down to renting what I can only describe as the most awful 'Spaghetti post apoc' movies usually made by Italians and which were so bad that they were good.
Also a massive fan of 'The Stand' and also the whole Mad Max series with the usual reservations about Mad Max 3 (A Mad Max 4 is in production as we speak).
Me and Zombies, well lets just say that I was a tad snooty about them to start with and never really considered them part of the genre BUT have changed my mind massively over the last few years and now see it as perhaps the most active and certainly the one with the most fan interation.
I confess I prefer the quiet desperation of the pandemic side of things but will also lap up all of the Zombie stuff as well.
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Post by edwin on Jul 14, 2010 14:14:43 GMT
Probably Day of the Triffids reinforced by Death of Grass, really what this Board is about.
Oddly though perhaps the Swallows and Amazons may have started it. On your own in an empty landscape, especially Ransome's Secret Water. Plus I would rewrite the stories in my head inserting myself into the plots as with Triffids and Grass.
Used to spend a lot of time on what clothes to wear and nonessentials such as Safari Type suits at one time (in the imagination) and nonsense activities such as collecting the tastier examples of the Crown Jewels. May have mentioned least practical kit for Death of Grass (No blade of Grass) was a full suit or chain mail and a tommy gun.
Was in my thirties when Survivors was on and its comic counterpart The Good Life along with JoHn Seymour's book Fat of the Land published in 1961 and other good works from Faber and the like.
But also the interest in Historical fact and fiction, after all the Mesolithic may be very much pre-Fall but they had the same challenges except no dead civilisation to loot for support.
Edwin
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Post by thrombus on Jul 16, 2010 18:22:59 GMT
Interesting OP! I was interested in my early teens, I was fortunate to grow up in a very rural area and spent most of my time messing about in the woods and by streams etc, fishing, camping and the like. There was a series of books at the time by Jerry Ahern - "The Survivalist". I can't remember now how many I read, probably about 6 or 7 out of the 21(?). Anyway, I then got to the age where I discovered girls, booze and nightclubs etc . Then had the London career thing. Jacked all that in and moved back here to Devon and became self-employed. It was HFW and his River Cottage programs that started my way back into all of this. Home food production etc. Then as a natural progression I got into the "green" thing (although I refuse to give up my Landrover). I joined the "It's Not Easy Being Green" forum and spent a very enjoyable couple of years there. A bunch of 'survivalists' joined up to that board Anyway to cut a boring story short, i've gone full circle and am now pretty much back where I was a couple or so decades ago. I do prepare for the end of the world in as many ways as I can. We keep a good supply of food and water in the house, caches in the local area etc. I try to increase my knowledge and skills wether that be food preserving, home brew, plant identification/foraging etc - you get the drift. I regard myself as a "prepper". The term "survivalist" has many negative conatations to it these days.
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Post by halforc on Jul 24, 2010 12:06:11 GMT
I guess what got me started was Survivors, the original series that is. I can still remember Abby walking through Peters School and her footsteps echoing; the fact there was no background music to the series added to it all.
Then came Role-playing games, Aftermath! by FGU soon became my favourite and led to my buying and reading as many PA type books as I can from as high brow as Wolf and iron to the 'pulp' side of things and the Ashes series; I think I have nearly all of those !
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Post by keiron1 on Mar 29, 2011 12:50:52 GMT
I cant remember really, I read Death fo Grass and Wrinkle in the Skin in the 70s as a 10 year old, read lots of survival books, and have always been until recently an outdoors worker, the thing I like best of the PA genre is the look and feel, the ruins, the salvaging of old equipment, the rediscovery of old technology, I'm not really into additional elements like zombies, mutants or supernatural mumbo jumbo, just the practicalities of day to day survival. Those of you that go fishing know just how hard fish can be to catch when they dont want to be, or those who have a veggy garden know that growing stuff aint that easy, I had a revelation last year when harvesting a few lettuces why the harvest festival was such a big deal to our forbears, you would die if the crop failed. How many of us even if we could grow stuff would know how much to grow, and how to store it over the winter, how to lay down seed stock for the following spring? I look at the windfarms that dot the hills around me in Wexford, if I had to could I utilse the power from one of them, how? How many of us can strip, clean and fire a machine gun, read a map properly, how big should a survival community be? Big enough to defend itself and be sustainable yet not too big it cant feed itself, how big is that? 5, 50, 500???
Generally, I find most PA fiction doesnt quite ring my bell, so one day, I will try and list what I think should be in a PA book and bloody well write one!
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Post by Matthew on Mar 29, 2011 20:41:30 GMT
Generally, I find most PA fiction doesnt quite ring my bell, so one day, I will try and list what I think should be in a PA book and bloody well write one! Feel free to experiment and post it on here. Me and Edwin have both tried our hands so feel free to join in.
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mark
New Member
Posts: 2
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Post by mark on Apr 24, 2014 16:19:47 GMT
Planet of the Apes and Beneath TPOTA in a double bill about 1972 never knew the twist! Wow blown away with that. Then Survivors (book and TV) which to this day have not been beaten in my opinion. Domain, James Herbert was a great finale to the Rats Trilogy. Didn't care much for The Stand BUT Swan Song is PA fiction at its very best and sits on my shelf as a must read at least once a year.
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Post by Matthew on Apr 25, 2014 0:18:35 GMT
Planet of the Apes and Beneath TPOTA in a double bill about 1972 never knew the twist! Wow blown away with that. Then Survivors (book and TV) which to this day have not been beaten in my opinion. Domain, James Herbert was a great finale to the Rats Trilogy. Didn't care much for The Stand BUT Swan Song is PA fiction at its very best and sits on my shelf as a must read at least once a year. Welcome on board ! If you like James Herbert then you should read '48'. For my money one of the most under rated UK based PA novels ever written along with a nice chunk of alternative history thrown in for good measure.
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Post by triffiduscelestus on Apr 30, 2014 11:34:29 GMT
The John Wyndham (triffids, kraken, chrysalids) and John Christopher/Youd (tripods, death of grass, wrinkle in the skin) works.
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Post by triffiduscelestus on Apr 30, 2014 11:51:45 GMT
I joined the "It's Not Easy Being Green" forum and spent a very enjoyable couple of years there. A bunch of 'survivalists' joined up to that board Sounds interesting - do you have a link?
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