Back Issues: Tentative Timelines
It’s that week at last, the week many of you will have been waiting a long time for. I’m talking about the week Fallout 4 finally releases, of course. The hype around it has gotten so huge that you’d really have needed to be dwelling in a vault in order to have dodged the news. In light of all that excitement for the return to post-apocalyptia, for this week’s Back Issues we’ll be dealing with three series that deal with the apocalypse in separate ways. They may not necessarily deal with the desert post-apocalypse from the Fallout or Mad Max universes, but each of these titles handles The End Of The World As We Know It in their own unique way; some with a bit of humour, some without. In fact, sometimes it isn’t the end of the world you should get down about, but the world as we know it right now…
Sheltered – A Pre-Apocalyptic Tale
Sheltered doesn’t exactly tell the story of the human struggle to survive in the wastelands of the future, rather it follows one group of humans’ struggle to prepare for what they believe could potentially be the end of the world. Set in the very near future, this Pre-Apocalyptic Tale is centred on the inhabitants of Safe Haven, a community of doomsday preppers. The people of Safe Haven, men, women and children, all believe that the world will come to an end very soon and that it is their job to carry on the legacy of humanity. To do this, they need to gather supplies, everything useful they can get their hands on; weapons, solar panels, food, you name it they need it. However, despite all their prepping, as Winter comes it becomes apparent to some of them that there simply isn’t enough food coming in to sustain everyone. Reacting to this, some forward thinking young adults do the only rational thing they can to best allow the continuation of the human race… They execute their parents.
Sheltered only gets heavier from there as civil war breaks out in Safe Haven following the decision. Expect a full write up on this powerful series coming soon right here on The Arcade.
D4VE
Okay, let’s lighten the mood after that. Let’s pretend no one ever prepped at Safe Haven and that they all lived out their lives normally until the end of days. After all, no amount of prepping for environmental disaster was ever going to save them from a threat of the humans’ own creation.
D4VE is set in the far future, in a time long after our humble toasters have risen up to bring our downfall. The Robot Uprising happened. It was successful. The humans all died, shortly followed by all other life in the galaxy. And D4VE, D4VE was right there at the centre of it all, wasting every fleshy skinbag organism he came across… But maybe the robots were a little too effective. Soon after killing everything worth killing, the robots had to settle somewhere. As flaw in their programming, no doubt brought about as a side effect of being programmed by humans, the robots soon began to act like humans. They became robolawyers, robodoctors and D4VE, with nothing left to kill, became a robojournalist.
Now, tired of his job, and his life in general, D4VE spends his days doing mediocre work half-heartedly and day dreaming away the hours, calling up memories of his heroic acts on the battlefield. Unknown to D4VE however, is that a new alien force is set to invade E4RTH and as one robot is about to learn; War, war never changes.
LOLA XOXO
To close off the list we’ll go back to the roots of post-apocalyptia talk about Lola. Lola’s story is set in the traditional post-apocalyptic world we’ve come to know and love. With a strong western influence, Lola’s universe will feel like home for many New Vegas or even Firefly fans.
As a young child, Lola was separated from her parents, about to board a flight home from across the country just as the bombs dropped. Now, 10 years older and travelling with a group of mercenaries, Lola has slowly been making her way home, hoping to find her family again. Conrad, leader of the pack and a sort of father-figure to her, wants sorely to help her, but at the same time neither wants to lose her, nor have her faced with the reality that her parents are likely dead. As the group move along they run into many other colourful characters in this well fleshed out world.
While the plot may sound very much ‘been-there-done-that’, the art and narrative make this a story well worth checking out, especially for anyone looking to sate their wasteland appetite while waiting for Fallout 4 to preload.
