The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, the way to maintain the human race alive and together as one, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). The story may involve attempts to prevent an apocalypse event, deal with the impact and consequences of the event itself, or may be post-apocalyptic, and be set after the event.

The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change natural, such as an impact event man-made, such as nuclear holocaust medical, such as a plague or virus, whether natural or man-made or imaginative, such as zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. Imagination magazine cover, depicting an atomic explosion, dated March 1954.

However, this form of literature gained widespread popularity after World War II, when the possibility of global annihilation by nuclear weapons entered the public consciousness. Recognizable modern apocalyptic novels had existed since at least the first third of the 19th century, when Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) was published. Various ancient societies, including the Babylonian and Judaic, produced apocalyptic literature and mythology which dealt with the end of the world and of human society, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, written c. Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in a non-technological future world or a world where only scattered elements of society and technology remain. The time may be directly after the catastrophe, focusing on the psychology of survivors, the way to keep the human race alive and together as one, or considerably later, often including that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been mythologized. The story may involve attempts to prevent an apocalypse event, deal with the impact and consequences of the event itself, or it may be post-apocalyptic, set after the event. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change astronomical, such as an impact event destructive, such as nuclear holocaust or resource depletion medical, such as a pandemic, whether natural or human-caused end time, such as the Last Judgment, Second Coming or Ragnarök or more imaginative, such as a zombie apocalypse, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics or alien invasion. At the time, the armaments available to the world's various air forces were not powerful enough to produce such a result.Īpocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, science fantasy, dystopia or horror in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. Joseph Pennell's 1918 prophetic Liberty bond poster calls up the pictorial image of a bombed New York City, totally engulfed in a firestorm.

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