The Road (movie), what if life was like this?

Originally posted by LDragonFire
reply to post by grubblesnert

 

Excuse me for offering my opinion.

I'll think about it

P.S. You may want to update your user name to "Puff"

Most movies I have I've viewed them multiple times but not The Road. That movie was unnerving to say the least, the film maker did a good job creating a dismal existence for the characters.

Oh to answer the initial question of, "what if life was like this?". You can always rest assure it would be this way for some not all people. People will organize themselves to continue civilization as best as they can, it may be difficult but it will take place. In the movie the father and son were trying to get to the coast for a reason and I'm sure that reason was it would provide them a means of getting to civilization.

Originally posted by LDragonFire
They found the perfect spot to be and it was well stocked with food and supplies, then they heard a dog bark got scared then left?

This bit of the movie had nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with movie structure.

In basically every movie I've seen where people are on the run from danger, they find a safe place to stay, but then decide to leave.
Why?
Because a movie that consists entirely of running, is too "static" (paradoxiacally speaking). It needs to be broken up with a pause. It also gives time to characters to have deep and meaningful conversations, and for time for the audience to be exposed to more of the personality and perhaps also time for a background story or two.
But they cant stay in that safe place forever, because that would be the end of the movie. The movie needs an exciting climax.

Dawn of the dead
People find safety and security from zombies in a shopping mall, but throw it all away for a run to the sea.

30 days of night
People find safety from vampires in the roof of an old house. But somebody says "Its not safe here", so they all walk out onto the street.

Shaun of the dead
They're safe from zombies in the third floor of a block of flats... but instead they decide to go to the pub.

Its an old movie idea, but you see it a lot.

Originally posted by grubblesnert

Originally posted by LDragonFire
reply to post by grubblesnert

 

Excuse me for offering my opinion.

I'll think about it

P.S. You may want to update your user name to "Puff"

Standing by waiting for you to contribute to the discussion, do you think that will happen anytime soon?

reply to post by alfa1


Dawn of the dead - They were being overrun by a biker gang - in the 2004 remake they were dying off one by one for various reasons (stress due to infighting, zombie attacks, etc) and decided to make a break for it.

30 days of night - They ran out if food and the houses were being searched 1 by 1.

Shaun of the dead - That was a comedy.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by LDragonFire
They found the perfect spot to be and it was well stocked with food and supplies, then they heard a dog bark got scared then left?

This bit of the movie had nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with movie structure.

In basically every movie I've seen where people are on the run from danger, they find a safe place to stay, but then decide to leave.
Why?
Because a movie that consists entirely of running, is too "static" (paradoxiacally speaking). It needs to be broken up with a pause. It also gives time to characters to have deep and meaningful conversations, and for time for the audience to be exposed to more of the personality and perhaps also time for a background story or two.
But they cant stay in that safe place forever, because that would be the end of the movie. The movie needs an exciting climax.

This bit of the movie had nothing to do with movie structure, since it happened that way in the book, which was written before the movie.

Points about the story not adapted well into the movie:

The cannibals usually ate the children first, probably because it costs too much energy to fight and kill a grown man. When they stumbled into the cannibal safe house, the book very graphically describes the skeletal remains of children surrounding the areas. It does this in a few more places too.

Basically every encounter with any survivors ended in violence.

There is a religious undertone not felt in the movie.


They find the bunker, stocked with supplies, basically a gift from God in order to survive (the father was basically dying and the kid was getting sick). They stay there after covering the entrance, but the father knows it's only a matter of time before it's found and they get killed (he only has one bullet left, IIRC, so he can shoot the kid if it gets bad).

The family had been following them for awhile, and the kid did see another boy... in fact, he ran off to talk to him. The father yells at him because he thinks the children have all died or been eaten. We get the distinct impression this kid is the last kid on Earth and must be protected at all costs, as if the human race depends on it.

The dog barks while they're in the bunker, and the father realizes it's time to go. His reasoning is that if people are close enough to the bunker, they will be found soon. Also, he sees the bunker as a gift from God, so he doesn't want to use all the supplies, only what they need, and he wants to leave the rest for the next person who stumbles into it...

He was correct in both lines of thought, IIRC... The family was in a nearby house, and could have found them soon. Also, they would be the next survivors to find the place and use the supplies.

The father and son gave the family hope, IIRC, and it turned out they were the boy's guardian angels. The father's choices ended up being the right ones regardless of how you or I would do it IRL.


Realistically, this world could have been from a nuclear war (The US alone has enough nukes to destroy the entire world many times over) or an asteroid, perhaps even an ice age onset due to multiple volcano eruptions.

If this scenario were to play out, this is pretty much exactly how it would happen. Smart survivors would head towards the coast, where the ocean winds would blow the fallout inland, so there would be fresher air (The father in the story realized he was dying from the ash and soot in the air).

Depending on how long after the catastrophe took place, and judging by the amount of survivors, it seems as if it had been awhile (The boy was born after the event, and was almost a teenager when the father died), and there have been numerous documentaries explaining the degradation of roads, buildings, etc after a catastrophe. There would only be a handful of "Roads" out there... think major highway systems with funding for upkeep... these will last the longest after the SHTF.

People will panic... Groups will form, usually led by the most dominant alpha males. If a group forms using democracy, it's only a matter of time before an alpha male takes over. History shows us this time and time again. In this situation, it becomes survival of the fittest. With limited supplies, most of the groups will turn into raiders and cannibals.

IMO, the story was spot on. The only way to survive is to go it alone.

Originally posted by LDragonFire

Originally posted by grubblesnert

Originally posted by LDragonFire
reply to post by grubblesnert

 

Excuse me for offering my opinion.

I'll think about it

P.S. You may want to update your user name to "Puff"

Standing by waiting for you to contribute to the discussion, do you think that will happen anytime soon?

Puff dude! your putting to much on me, I'm still dealing with your first request (asking to be excused, still muling it over).
Now you lay this anticipation of me contributing something to "the discussion" and to top it off putting a time table to the whole thing.
Lighten up Puff or you'll have a nervous breakdown

reply to post by mkmasn
you post is very thorough and well written
I saw the movie and found it moving. The way you you explain the book compels me to read it.

reply to post by grubblesnert


Thanks! I do highly recommend reading the book... it's a good one. It's a quick read, too, IIRC, it came in under 300 pages. I don't read too often, but I get excited when I read a good one and it gets turned into a movie.

Originally posted by EqualizerUK
I saw this film ages ago ....how would you survive this type of SHTF world?

edit on 26-7-2012 by EqualizerUK because: (no reason given)

I saw the movie and read the book which is much more depressing by a factor of 10 BTW.

While the author never really says what the event(s) were that lead to the decline of civilization in this scenario I get the impression from the book that it is one without end. What I mean is that there are some apocalyptic scenarios that are not survivable. In this one unless there is a region of the world in which one could eventually grow food or raise livestock the survivability of the species will be possible for while but not in the long term. I mean even the government in their “continuity of idiocy” bunkers will eventually run out of food.

I am a prepper – I live on 160 rural acres with my own livestock and even an underground shelter. I have stable food for about 3 years for the family and 6 months of fodder for the livestock as well as seeds and such for a garden and crops.

While I think I am well prepared to survive say a financial collapse or civil disturbance or even regional natural disaster if the face of the planet changes say with a gamma burst or a nuclear winter I don’t see us surviving the long haul. My shelter is more for safety than survivability I don’t have a CBC filter or overpressure system or any fancy stuff like that nor do I intend to invest in it. If the area in which I live becomes non-temperate or barren for some reason I can bug out but where will I go that everyone else will not already be headed? The migration of even a sparse remaining population along the same route to a redoubt or safe zone will result in nothing but a constant running gun battle for the resources along the way. While I think I might win some of those battles my group is not that big and consists of too many minors to be very combat effective. I have gambled on bugging in and will just have to take my chances with that.

Honestly there are some scenarios I don’t know that I would want to survive. I mean a nuclear winter cold last 5 years or more… That’s a long time for people to live on cans and leftovers of society. Even then when and where will the land become arable again etc.

The situation in The Road is never really resolved and while the author tries to renew our faith in our fellow man with the arrival of the man and his family at the end of the book and they take in the boy we never really know if there is an area to which they can travel that is even habitable or tillable. Very depressing story – The Road is…

reply to post by LDragonFire


Yeah, he could have gotten better if they even stayed there a short while. Clean, dry, well fed, more relaxed, etc. I thought I would have stayed there too. They hid the door, so no one would see it anyway. Of course that didn't mean it was totally safe, but like I said, they could have stayed a short while maybe.

reply to post by texasgirl


Ooh I saw that film, "Take Shelter." I liked it a lot. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the survival stuff. I like the way you see him thinking things through and just starting to try to get stuff done. I won't give away the ending or anything though.

I like these kinds of movies too and my husband wonders why. He thinks I WANT this stuff to happen. NO I don't! I would probably not last, I'd be killed, or worse, in no time probably. It scares me, but maybe that's why I like reading and watching related stuff. It helps me get in the mindset and think about the things I might do to survive. It's a good mental exercise prompt. And yeah, I've seen "The Road" maybe 4 times now. I like "Book of Eli" too. Also, "The Stand" by Stephen King. So many more too.

Originally posted by Ellie Sagan
reply to post by LDragonFire

 

Yeah, he could have gotten better if they even stayed there a short while. Clean, dry, well fed, more relaxed, etc. I thought I would have stayed there too. They hid the door, so no one would see it anyway. Of course that didn't mean it was totally safe, but like I said, they could have stayed a short while maybe.

They did stay awhile. The stayed long enough for the boy to get healthy and the father to get as healthy as he could be. It wasn't as if they found it, ate, spent the night and left. I got the feeling they stayed for at least a week, perhaps two.

I'm pretty sure the movie conveyed that they stayed for a bit, I know the book did.

Why did the black man who tried stealing the cart and the family man have no thumbs? Is it something to do with being a thief? Or were they captured by that gang of people near the beginning?

reply to post by Sozen94


This was more a movie thing... it was kind of a passing thing in the book. If I had to say though...

The use of the thumb in a survival situation is incredibly important. Without it, you basically can't grip anything. I would assume a gang of raiders would come along, beat you to a pulp, steal your supplies, cut off your thumbs, and leave you to die without killing you themselves.

I also think it probably has to do with the tribal instincts humans have... you take something from a fallen foe as a trophy. If they have nothing, you take a body part. It becomes a status symbol... The person with the most trophies is the most feared and respected.

Originally posted by Ellie Sagan
reply to post by texasgirl

 

Ooh I saw that film, "Take Shelter." I liked it a lot. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the survival stuff. I like the way you see him thinking things through and just starting to try to get stuff done. I won't give away the ending or anything though.

I like these kinds of movies too and my husband wonders why. He thinks I WANT this stuff to happen. NO I don't! I would probably not last, I'd be killed, or worse, in no time probably. It scares me, but maybe that's why I like reading and watching related stuff. It helps me get in the mindset and think about the things I might do to survive. It's a good mental exercise prompt. And yeah, I've seen "The Road" maybe 4 times now. I like "Book of Eli" too. Also, "The Stand" by Stephen King. So many more too.

edit on 28-7-2012 by Ellie Sagan because: (no reason given)

It's kind of embarrassing when I have people over, as my bookshelf is filled with books on doom. They didn't peg me as a conspiracy, doom/gloom kind of person.

I, too, would probably perish immediately. Honestly, would you want to live in a world like that?

reply to post by mkmasn

I just saw this movie last night on Netflix and it compelled me enough to search out this thread because of that scene in particular and I didn't even realize the guy had no thumbs. It sickened me the way he was left, the loss of the father's humanity as the toll of the road and the son being crushed because his father promised they would always be the good guys. That boys emotions and sadness, I just can't put it into words but it was like a punch in the gut.. The biggest thing I saw in this movie was man losing his humanity. It is a movie I would recommend but with a warning.

reply to post by EqualizerUK


TR is one of my favorite novels and films--man vs man is more horrifying than any zombie apocalypse. The first thing "the man" did when the shtf was to fill the tub and sink with water (in a flashback).
For a less harrowing (but realistic) look at a shtf situation, check out "Apocalypse Man" on Youtube (it was originally on History Channel). There's a thread about it:

"http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread532440/pg1

[As an aside, Naughty Dog's game "The Last of Us" gave an in depth, harrowing look at a germ apocalypse (fungal zombies). It deals with cannibalism, man vs man, survival on the run, the aftermath of a broken society. When my son brought the game home, I was all set to fuss at him, but I found myself caught up just watching Joel and Ellie. I believe it is going to be made into a film.]

Great movie and I am always optimistic so I think even this situation could be survivable if the right steps were taken. If you had access to some form of uncontaminated underground water source and enough food to last a year or so you could build indoor greenhouses lit from a power source that a capable person could build. Anything from a hydro dam, bicycle generators % batter combo, geo thermal heat or gas generators if you had a supply. There is lots of plants that need little energy to grow plus if someone had a system already in place which had a fish tank circulation through the greenhouse you could also have a sustainable source of non-human meat even if the outside world was a barren wasteland. Mushrooms also are easy to grow and as long as you had an uncontaminated place either a bunker, cave or some kind of shelter you can sustain yourself using modern technology imo.

With enough resources in a place like Iceland that has ample geo-thermal heat they could theoretically build a dome like structure and if they had seeds and a few fish with enough people to run it all I could see it being a decent living.