Tales of the looming apocalypse are as ancient as oppression itself and as relevant as health in today’s contemporary world. And as is often with everything that affects the way man thinks or acts, artists and authors will try to express such themes in cold, hard words and bizarre actions and stunts inscribed on the pages of post apocalyptic books, documents or shown in films. An imminent apocalypse being such a central theme and a source of endless fascination to many since the World War II, a lot of hype has come to surround the events leading to this major event and how life will unfold after it and just how humans will be able to cope with life after it. Though the earliest forms of post-apocalyptic writings date back to Noah’s ark and the flood that wiped the earth clean of wicked mankind, modern genre of post apocalyptic books can be traced back two centuries back when Mary Shelley’s post apocalyptic book “The Last Man” was published in 1826.

Why the hype that has come to be associated with post apocalyptic books?

Post apocalyptic books are written with the aim of visualizing a world after a potentially existential catastrophe that is bound to happen at one time or the other. Such catastrophes are portrayed as being cause by such things as technological malfunctions, attack by extraterrestrial aliens, a nuclear warfare, an unprecedented climate change or ecological collapse among other general disasters. In most of these post apocalyptic books, disasters occur in such a horrific magnitude that mankind is thrown into a quagmire where he has to survive on basic instincts and scattered elements of technology that happen to remain. In an attempt to understand where dystopian ideas such as vampires and fallen angels so heavily featured in post apocalyptic books spring from, financial unease and geo-political unrest so fraught in the current world has been pinpointed as some of the post-apocalyptic writing’s major source of ideas. A quick delve into some of the following popular post apocalyptic books will help one understand this concept.

Dream Caster by Najeev Raj Nadarajah

This book’s title is what it literally says it is. Sixteen-year-old Weaver is a dream caster who has the ability to cast dreams into reality, a fact he realizes while in the hidden refuge of a ruined Toronto city. His later discoveries are that his once hospitable world was destroyed by a mystic man who is also a dream caster and although he wants to live a peaceful life, he must accept his mystical abilities and master them before humankind is wiped into oblivion and his home destroyed.

The Road by Cormac MacCarthy

Probably one of the most gut-wrenching and enervating post apocalyptic books, this novel depicts a barren, arid world that exists after a mysterious severely cataclysmic event where all that is left of mankind are a few survivors who roam a bleak landscape in a fervent search for food and warmth. So desperate is the situation that humans are slowly turning into savage cannibals which makes existence even more precarious.

Other Examples of Post Apocalyptic Fiction

Other popular books on post apocalypse include: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Stand by Stephen King, World War Z by Max Brooks to mention but a few. In a world full of uncertainties and with mainstream media houses sensationalizing every gory details of horrifying experiences it is not hard to see why the post apocalyptic genre of fiction is here with us to stay.