Survival movies

Steve Martin - January 25, 2023

Set out on a quest today…to watch a whole list of “survival movies”….movies where the end of the world has come or is threatened and people are trying to survive. I’ve seen “Panic is year zero” many years ago, not bad, “The Road” which was shot here locally, “On the Beach”, “Red Dawn” and a few others. Today’s movie was “No blade of grass”, a completely terrible 1970 movie shot in Great Britain on budget of about $8. In its day, it was controversial because it had an explicit and long rape scene. What a stinker! Wish someone would make a movie out of “Alas Babylon”. What’s your favorite prepper movie?

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Contagion

Walking Dead TV series, especially early seasons 

 

Glad you mentioned a TV series because I too really like the early seasons of The Walking Dead.  I am currently enjoying The Last of Us.

 

I haven’t seen The Last of Us yet, but it’s good that they’re raising awareness of the threat of a fungal pandemic. We could have one of those any time.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheMemeticist/status/1618648686736867328

 

Just watched opening scene from Last of Us. In just a few minutes it makes a great case for why we should be concerned about a fungal pandemic.

 

I laughed pretty hard on Twitter when somebody said that his wife turned to him, after this scene, and said “You know I hate you now, right?”

 

Mad Max probably but I dont base my prepping on it.

 

Starting on Thanksgiving, we watch our collection of Xmas movies and tv show episodes. Occasionally, I can convince man thing to try something new to add to the list of again, maybe again or never again. Last year was adventurous and among a few others, we added “ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE” to the again list. A light hearted zombie farce with a musical background.  Even non-musical loving peeps such as myself might find themselves singing along. I hope that I will be able to maintain a light heart sometimes as SHTF….

Omega Man starring Charlton Heston is one of my fav end of world flicks. The tenacity and heart of Heston’s Neville is an inspiring performance. I hope that my preps are up to just a fraction of Nevilles’. The version before w. Vincent Price and after w. Will Smith are also worthwhile.

As far as actual prepper learning, the “reality” survival shows like Alone and Naked and Afraid can be quite educational and inspiring. “Doomsday Prepper” is farce like, but, has it’s comic relief. A favorite scene is where this woman who preps in “secret” when her husband goes out, takes the panel off of a door and stuffs food preps inside the door. After this, my bigger half agreed that my prepping had not crossed THAT line and I’m not the biggest whack job out there!!!

When I did my 2022 list up of all my preps, it appeared to me that almost everything I did and do are preps. My new Harvest Rite FD adventure and daily tai chi and other workouts, count as “HEALTH/MEDICAL” , building community and working our property falls under “SECURITY”, raising, harvesting and processing food are “FOOD” and watching tv shows and movies counts as “EDUCATION”. So great subject and thanks for helping along my “education.” :0)…..

Here’s some other flicks I think are worth watching if you like EOTWAWKI –

Contagin
Andromida Strain
Dr. Strangelove
Zombieland
Shawn of the Dead
The Day the Earth Stood Still
A Boy and His Dog
The Postman
Mad Max franchise (NOTNEW ONES!bleh)
Planet of the Apes franchise
Testament
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Living Dead franchise
Hunger Games franchise
Terminator franchise
12 Monkeys
The Day After
Bird Box

finally, some tangental threads/articles from our favorite prepper site –

https://theprepared.com/forum/thread/best-survival-tv-shows/

https://theprepared.com/prepping-basics/reviews/tv-shows/

 

@Steve, you’ve tempted me to look up where “The Road” was filmed. Was surprised to find that the list includes many places I’ve been (though I watched it before I lived in Oregon, so I hadn’t been to those places then). Slightly tempted to re-watch, but I had nightmares for a decade after I saw it the first time, so probably won’t!

 

Part of it was shot in the destroyed Conneaut Lake Amusement Park near Meadville PA. It had suffered a horrendous fire in its 100 year old ballroom just days before while parts of the movie were being shot near Pittsburgh. The producers saw an opportunity to shoot in a still-smoking wasteland landscape. I was the only news photographer on scene the night the ballroom burned and caught spectacular footage. I stayed on scene for 6 hours until the approaching morning show airtime forced me to get back to the station.

 

Wow, what a neat story— I mean, sad that the 100-year-old building burned, but neat that the film crew pivoted to take advantage of the smoldering ruins, and that you got to shoot it!

 

I’m a big sci fi/fantasy fan, so I’ve seen a lot of Dystopian Nightmare scenarios. Some have already been mentioned, so I’ll add a few others:

Battlestar Galactica (both versions)

Don’t Look Up (great look at the human, esp. American, inability to publicly handle a massive crisis)

The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings (leave the comfy Shire for adventure and the weight of nearly pure evil)

The Stand (I’m used to the earlier miniseries with the great Don’t Fear the Reaper opener); still mad at you know who being killed off.

V the miniseries, the next miniseries, and the TV series (I saw these in high school and it embedded in me the idea that It Can Happen Here and here’s how it might happen). It made me very language sensitive to BS, shall we say. Kenneth Johnson also worked on The Incredible Hulk tv series (featuring the world’s saddest end credits music)

The Impossible (A tourist family gets caught in the Thailand tsunami. Naomi Watts’ character has a leg injury so realistic it was making me nauseous when I watched in theaters).

Everything Everywhere All At Once (A multiverse comedy, so it won’t be for everyone’s tastes, but I feel it really captures the stress and nihilism of modern life amazingly well. Mainly useful prepping wise for showing how to think on your feet and out of the box. It’s almost all powered by unconventional thinking, using what’s around you, and using Kindness as a ‘fighting’ method).

A Handmaid’s Tale and The Purge series (I feel like some folks might want a combination of these two scenarios, and even small incursions into either will be misery and death in the real world, no thank you!).

The Day After Tomorrow (It’s the usual Disaster Movie set up, but it made me consider the possibility that Climate Change might make things colder in some places, not hotter, etc. The truest thing is making the poor weather guy stand outside during a mega-tornado, you know they’d try and do it).

Interstellar (Global crop failure leads to global starvation, etc., so they look for a new planet to live on). 

A Quiet Place/2 (Aliens really really don’t like noise, at all. How to post-apocalypse by making as little noise as possible; it’s harder than you think).

 

 

You can see other picks from theprepared at https://theprepared.com/prepping-basics/reviews/movies/.

I actually liked No Blade Of Grass.  I can see a lot of the scenarios really occurring during a crisis.

Just watched a 2016 Japanese movie called ‘Survival Family’ about a worldwide outage of all things electric and a family that travels cross-country to find the wife’s father.  No zombies or gun battles but some real-life struggles and adventures.  It’s interesting to see another culture’s take on how the apocalypse will unfold.  Everyone seems a bit too respectful of each other.

It can be watched on YouTube at https://youtu.be/OGk5pI6hfEc .

 

I just finished watching Survival Family based on this recommendation. Agreed that the other people they met were far safer/friendlier than the people in other survival shows. There were some good lessons in there, including the reminder that my wife and I should probably have bikes as backup transportation.

 

Two series I highly recommend are:

Blackout (German language series) current day series about what would likely happen when the power goes off and how quickly society descends into chaos

Blackout (French language series) similar to the above but made from a number of different perspectives

Both are excellent and very relevant to preppers!

 

Just watched Blackout, a 2013 UK docudrama about what might happen during a one-week power outage. A mix of the usual characters with footage shot with a home-made feel.

 

The Survivalist(2015).

I find alot of prepping/survival-adjacent media a bit too ungrounded. The survivalist is a truly excellent film imo, quite low budget and deals with many interesting aspects of surviving teotwawki.

Easily my number 1 recommendation in the genre

 

Definitely one of the rawer movies of the bunch.