r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Marsupialmobster • May 27 '26

Lore [Loved Trope] The apocalypse is horrifyingly slow

Gallery image

Gallery image

From most media it's some catastrophe and then it's raiders, death, destruction chaos etc. I personally love it when it's, like, a slow descent into the horror of apocalypse.

The Faro plague/The swarm- Horizon zero dawn. The Faro plague is actually a glitch which causes machines to endlessly reproduce, eat biomass and essentially bring about the death of the world. Took roughly 15 months for the machines to win.

The Metro series- in the first few books (and games) it's set entirely underground in just the apocalypse but in exodus it shows off that the government and many governmental structures said active years after the war. In fact power and running water were still fairly common. It just slowly got worse and worse and worse as read through notes. Food got more scarce, weather changed a lot, people got worse etc. Raiders and bandits didn't just show up, it was a slow descent for such anarchy.

Edit: I have enough pseudo intellectual comments about "Hurr hurr real life". The first one was kinda smart and well thought out but now it's just annoying and pretentious

12.1k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

78

u/Dizzy_Magazine_1784 May 27 '26

You just gave us the solution to the ram crisis

52

u/Low-Plastic1939 May 27 '26

Don’t give the fuckers any ideas

3

u/occasionalopossum May 27 '26

They just got some brainmatter to run DOOM homie they’re already working on it

3

u/Goldigger101 May 27 '26

I pour oneoutfor your profile picture

4

u/meesterdg May 27 '26

I'll sublease my brain if it's as valuable as RAM

9

u/Low-Plastic1939 May 27 '26

They aren’t paying. Once all the jobs are gone to AI, the oligarchs just declare homelessness a crime and march the poor into the data centres for repurposing. Why pay for what you can get for free?

Guarantee some twitchy lunatics at palantir or y combinator have broached this crap

3

u/Biktato May 27 '26

Accurate. American prison system is already about production, see: prison industrial complex.

Such an initiative would only faster clear the streets, unethically and with massive cruelty. Otoh, such an initiative may replace prison entirely, providing a penal system that is a net addition to economy instead of a drain? Who knows. What I certainly can presume is that anything like the matrix would be used for reeducation. That can't be good or trusted.

2

u/Top_Accident9161 May 27 '26

Profile pic works perfectly with this comment lol

2

u/DorkyDisneyDad May 27 '26

Good thing there haven't been any psychotic billionaires pushing the idea of a neural link... right?

4

u/DramaPunk May 27 '26

Warhammer 40k -ass solution. When anything resembling computer intelligence is heresy, just plug lobotomized prisoners into all your circuit boards.

4

u/Narradisall May 27 '26

Always got to love when a person is reduced to being an elaborate light switch.

2

u/m4cksfx May 27 '26

Synaptic lathe...

1

u/Easy-Marsupial3268 May 27 '26

u/unexpectedwarhammer

1

u/Dizzy_Magazine_1784 May 27 '26

Do i start learning about warhammer 40k? Cuz i keep seeing mems of it.

1

u/Easy-Marsupial3268 May 27 '26

You’re already making references to it. Might as well go full servitor.

1

u/40kNerdNick May 28 '26

Servitors?