right now the project im working on is a post-apocalyptic journey of a brother and sister. The catastrophe is a nuculer war, but i have been going back and forth in my head rather or not thats the catastrophe i want, it seems a bit too cliché to me.... so i was thinking perhaps i would change the catastrophe to "What if all the plants on earth stopped producing oxygen" i would have to do my research im sure, but the struggles and obstacles would be very different and i think therefore a whole lot more interesting. What are yalls thoughts por favor
A nuclear catastrophe might be a cliché, but it is believable. While plants suddenly behaving funny, all at once, that would need a pretty good explanation to convince readers that it could actually happen. You're in for a lot of work.
That sounds like it would be pretty interesting! You could incorporate dead zones with no breathable air, it would make running and fighting alot harder, and fires wouldn't burn right either. It would be tough to explain, (biological weapon, disease, idk.) or you could just leave it up to the reader to figure out why it happened. That sounds like a really cool, original idea!
It's a good twist, if you can pull it off. However, the research alone could be overwhelming. One of the worst aspects of doing apocalyptic sci-fi is the readers are way harsher on the writer, than probably any other genre out there. If it's not believeable it's a flop. Might want to check out No Blade of Grass by John Christopher and there's this cool old sci-fi short story available on the net through a Wikipedia link called Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber.
The idea of the plants reminds me of the film The Happening, by M Night Shyamalan. The plants don't stop producing oxygen, but they start producing something that kills people. Why would the plants stop producing oxygen? How would humans find a way to survive?
I was thinking possibly a terriost bio warfare or somthing. Perhaps an experiement going extremely wrong. Perhaps the way to survive would be greenhouses that where not effected or somthing of that nature.... i dont know it was just a thought, i didnt want to go in the same direction as many have done before me.
Keep in mind that most things like mutations and terrorist warfare and such won't affect the whole world at the same time and rate. Some plants will be more resilient, some remote places will be spared. Unless it's something very big that spreads into all of the water and atmosphere, the results will be patchy. And if it is that big (like the nuclear war would be), you'll probably get many other effects besides changing plants' metabolism.
Plants produce oxygen as part of their basic chemistry. If a variety of plant types continue to live, their chemistry can't be radically different. And if the plants in one area died/quit making oxygen, the winds would still distribute what was available to all areas of earth. That wouldn't cause breathable/non-breathable zones. Nuclear war is believable, but not as much on people's minds as it was a few decades ago. A very believable and quite possible catastrophe is the Yellowstone volcano blowing and causing a decades-long long dark winter, similar to a nuclear winter. Read about it.
My first novel had this as one of its major components. In it, I had a virus attack the plant telomere nucleotides. That genetic sequence is the same in all plants and provided a viable reason for cross species infection. As a result of this viral attack, all land based plant life died. The implications of the disaster were examined in the sequel. So, it's not a new concept, but it is one seldom explored sufficiently. I'm sure I didn't do it justice. It's a great idea if you can get some logical reasoning behind your calamity.
It's your story, and your decision. Only you know which version you can do the most with, and which one you really want to write.
Could always try the fall back plan of a meteor. Nuclear war has radiation. Meteor, or asteroid movies tend to have shock factor, but always end well. What about a not so good ending? It would give you the world in its bare bones state, lots of dead, loss of life, and industry is gone. Best thing about a story is how you tell it. New twists, old ideas, new characters, avoiding the cliches that make reading unbearable. Its in your hands. Mold that ball of clay and see what the artwork looks like.
I want to second the Yellowstone Super Volcano path. As someone who just learned about it through a recent news article, I can assure you that's it's existence is a little unsettling. Factor in that it's due to erupt again and they have no way off knowing when that will be and it could easily be made terrifying. The article said that the initial eruption would/could approximately 84,000 people and the assh/dust/debris could contaminate the food supply of the entire planet for several years. Sounds pretty apocalyptic to me.
