post apocalyptic

The Fireman

By Joe Hill
Star Rating
★★★

Rated by Jed D.
Sep 4, 2016

Draco Incendia Trychophyton. That’s the official name for the spore that causes fiery veins of Dragonscale to show up on the patient’s skin. Eventually, the infected people will spontaneously combust, burning down hospitals, laboratories, and killing entire families. What’s scarier than this plague, though, is the cult-like group of infected survivors holed up at Camp Wyndham. Enter the Fireman, who can control the Dragonscale and keep it from killing him, and Harper, a pregnant former nurse trying to survive until her delivery date. While this apocalyptic novel is very original and filled

Mad Max Fury Road

By George Miller

Rated by Library Staff (not verified)
Feb 27, 2016

I've been sitting on this review for months, unable to express my feelings for this movie. I watched all of the originals, I remember when Max was a cop, I know who runs Bartertown, and I was incredibly leery of rebooting an old property like that. Except this isn't a reboot. It's just a story in the mythology of a man named Max in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And it is, start to finish, incredible.

I'm into words. Language is my thing, not images, and yet this movie, with what probably amounts to six pages of dialogue, tells an incredible story with sparse words and lush images. It also

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch:

By Lewis Dartnell
Star Rating
★★★

Rated by Brian O.
May 22, 2015

A near extinction level event strikes the earth, humanity is devastated and left with just a handful of hardy survivors. How will a small group of survivors not just survive but how can they rebuild modern civilization from the ashes? Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge tries to answer this question and serve as a guidebook for restarting civilization.

The beginning of the book covers how, without routine human intervention, infrastructure quickly begins to rot. Survivors will need to scavenge and scrape to get by. Once able to survive Dartnell describes the processes of rebuilding agriculture

Snowpiercer (DVD)

By Bong Joon Ho, Director
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Jed D.
Mar 7, 2015

Snowpiercer is South Korean director Joon-ho Bong’s over-the-top action movie that will leave few viewers without strong opinions.   Set in 2031, an environmental catastrophe has frozen Earth and the few surviving humans live on a train.  One percent of the train’s population lives in luxury near the engine, while the remaining humans are essentially slaves, working to ensure the survival of the entire train.  The starving, brutalized, and scared workers plan and execute a revolt after many of their children are taken to the front of the train for mysterious reasons.  Can the passengers in the

Station Eleven

By Emily St. John Mandel
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Josh N.
Oct 18, 2014

Confession: post-apocalyptic stories are not my favorite genre and can be really hit or miss with me. Despite the overall rave reviews, I've never read Cormac McCarthy's The Road because it sounds too grim and bleak for me. I watched the first season of The Walking Dead and gave up when I found it too depressing. (And I'm a fan of the Cure and Joy Division, so it's not like I only like things bright and cheerful.) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, however, is very definitely not a miss.

Beautiful, heartfelt writing and strong, complex, sympathetic characters keep this story from

Life as We Knew It

By Susan Beth Pfeffer
Star Rating
★★★★

Rated by Angel T
Jun 28, 2014

If you knew the precise time the moon would collide with a meteor would you pull out your binoculars, pop some popcorn, and pull up a lawn chair for the best show of your life? If you knew the moon would be struck quickly by the meteor but then slowly move closer and closer to the earth would you fear for you life? If you knew the moon's imposing presence in the sky would produce deadly earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes that wipe out millions of people would you still have hope? If you knew the middle of summer would soon turn to a blistering winter would you survive?

Miranda and her

The 5th Wave

By Rick Yancy
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Kate M.
Nov 21, 2013

The aliens have unleashed 4 waves of death upon humanity. The first, an electronic pulse to render all machines useless. The second, tsunamis to destroy coastal cities. The third, an avian plague called The Red Death. The fourth, Silencers, a race of humans implanted with alien intelligences as fetuses, an enemy we didn’t see coming. The 5th is upon us. Cassie, a 16 year old surviving on her own is one of the few left alive on earth. Armed with an M-16 and a teddy bear, she searches for her little brother with the hunky and mysterious Evan. Zombie, was an up and coming athlete when he was

Jan 28, 2013

I picked up I am Legend when I learned that the Horror Writer’s Association had recently voted it Best Vampire Novel of the Century. First published in 1954, the only thing dated that I noticed was the records the main character played at night to drown out the sounds of the marauding vampires.

When the whole world succumbs to vampirism, Robert Neville, as far as he can determine, is the last living human. He spends every day on search and destroy missions. That is, when he isn’t fortifying his house against the vampires who seek him out every night, repairing damage or trying new strategies

The Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey


Rated by Jared H.
Oct 15, 2012

When the world was created, it only housed 148 levels.  To keep the world structured and orderly, rules were established to protect the status quo. The first rule is never mention that you would like to go outside. This is life in Hugh Howey’s The Wool Omnibus, the world of the silo. For as long as anyone can remember, the silo is the only thing protecting the people from the toxic environment outside. The cameras viewing this wasteland need to be cleaned periodically with a piece of wool. Those condemned to go outside always perform their duty, but never return to the silo.

I am not sure why

The Road by Cormac McCarthy


Rated by Michelle H.
Aug 27, 2012

An unnamed man walks with his son through a post-apocalyptic landscape looking for food and shelter, haunted by memories of life before the cataclysm. The man protects his child from a world that incrementally comes into focus as the evil surrounding them begins first as sparse suggestions of danger and turns later into harrowing descriptions of violence. This is a carefully told story in which love and brutality, beauty and horror exist together among people who have only one important choice to make—to be on the side of good. Expect to read a tale so captivating that you’ll experience the

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy


Rated by Library Staff (not verified)
Jul 17, 2010

theroad.jpgThis book is hard to read – but so is William Goldman’s Lord of the Flies or George Orwell’s 1984.

The Road is about a man and a boy. They are not named. They are wandering. The landscape is bleak, blasted, ruined. Cormac McCarthy does not tell us what apocalyptic disaster has befallen the world, but the result is the Earth is all but wasted, there are very few humans left, very few animals. The man and the boy are walking south, trying to escape the coming winter, heading for the gulf or south atlantic coast, probably through the Appalachians.

The man and the boy call themselves “the good