After the End of the World Online Quiz | Literature

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1. Even a long-ago apocalypse changes the landscape. "A Canticle for Leibowitz," by Walter M. Miller, begins hundreds of years after the nuclear war that returned humanity to the Dark Ages. In the novel, what institution has been responsible for preserving what scientific knowledge remains?

Answer: The Roman Catholic Church

The 1960 novel centers on the Abbey of St. Leibowitz in what was once the southwestern United States, St. Leibowitz having been a physicist who was sheltered by the Church after the bombs fell. (Physicists and other scientists were apparently a bit unpopular in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse.) In three sections set hundreds of years apart, the monks go from blindly copying scientific works for preservation, to studying those works themselves, to observing the fate of a reborn technological society. Early in this beautifully written book is an image that has stuck in my mind for a decade: a painstakingly hand-copied blueprint for a circuit, illuminated in the medieval style.

2. It isn't clear what kind of apocalypse set the stage for Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" series, but its effects are long-lasting and far-reaching. What type of people does the dystopian government of Panem force into gladiatorial contests?

Answer: Children between the ages of 12 and 18

In the 2008 novel and its sequels, the titular Hunger Games are fights to the death among young "tributes" chosen by lottery from each district of Panem. These games are required viewing for all Panem citizens, as a means of instilling fear and submission in the populace. Yet as the young protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, shows, not even an apocalypse can kill the human spirit...

3. As described by Nevil Shute in "On the Beach" (1957), humanity may not have much time to contemplate life after the end of the world. In the novel, the northern hemisphere has been devastated by nuclear war, and the radioactive fallout is drifting inexorably southward -- leaving no man, woman, or child alive. In preparation for the arrival of certain doom, what does the Australian government distribute to its people?

Answer: Suicide pills

A slow death from radiation poisoning is a certainty once the fallout reaches you, so the government of Australia -- where much of the action takes place -- seeks to provide for its citizens by giving them the option of a quick death. Some characters in the book refuse the pills in favor of suicide missions or deadly car races; none survive, and none can.

This novel was very much informed by the fears of its age, but the very completeness of its devastation sets a stark standard for literary apocalypses.

4. P.D. James imagined a comparatively slow and gentle apocalypse, but "The Children of Men" nonetheless opens on a depressed populace sure that the human race is doomed. Why?

Answer: No child has been born, anywhere, in 25 years.

The novel, written in 1992, opens with the death of the youngest person on Earth in a bar brawl. There was nothing sudden, no moment of reckoning, just a moment after which there were no babies at all. Science has determined that it is the men who are infertile, but the cause and cure are unknown.

James skilfully paints a species hopelessly anticipating its imminent extinction -- and then shatters its sad peace with the introduction, after all this time, of a pregnant woman.

5. The characters of Stephen King's 1978 novel "The Stand" take two very different approaches to post-apocalyptic life. Some survivors join up with Mother Abagail to try to recreate a democratic society; others follow Randall Flagg in building an authoritarian society with a ruthless focus on obedience. In what two U.S. cities do these opposing groups build their strength?

Answer: Boulder and Las Vegas

The apocalypse, carried by an influenza virus that escaped from a military lab, occupies the first of the book's three parts. Later, a few survivors straggle across the continent to Boulder, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada -- and the resulting struggle between Good and a curiously supernatural Evil will shape the world to come. Even among post-apocalypses, the stage is rarely so clearly set.

6. In "Pastwatch," the apocalypse comes as a prologue. Orson Scott Card writes of a century of war and famine and disaster that killed nine of every ten human beings and left the rest as a humbled civilization on a critically damaged planet. The survivors' future looks grim enough that they gamble it all on a desperate attempt to remake a better society. How do they plan to do this?

Answer: Time travel

In this 1996 novel, subtitled "The Redemption of Christopher Columbus," humanity has developed the technology to observe the distant past with video feeds. They realize that Christopher Columbus's decision to sail west to the Americas -- rather than east to start a new Crusade -- was due to interference from the people of some other future, trying to avert their own catastrophes. If they can send their own people back in time, our heroes reason, they can save the world from the exploitation and disease that marked the Age of Exploration, and lay the groundwork for an enlightened global civilization that is not doomed to destroy itself.

It's technically true that most of this fascinating novel takes place *before* the apocalypse, since it follows Columbus and the time travelers, but the first rule of reading this kind of story is not to think too much about that kind of thing.

7. In S.M. Stirling's "Dies the Fire," civilization falls on March 17, 1998. Battling disease, starvation and banditry, Juniper Mackenzie and Mike Havel each bring a band of people to relative safety in the fertile Willamette Valley, in western Oregon. What disaster has brought them so low?

Answer: Electricity and explosives have suddenly stopped working.

At a single moment -- 9:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time -- internal combustion engines stop combusting, explosives fizzle, and electrical circuits stop cold. Even steam power stops working as it should. This precise and thorough deactivation of modern technology remains mysterious -- one character attributes it to "Alien Space Bats" -- but its effects on humanity are brutal.

The novel chronicles mass starvation and widespread cannibalism, with disease following in their wake. The survivors are hard-working, clever (forging swords from the leaf-springs of cars) and, above all, lucky; the novel and the series that follows tell of their efforts to rebuild functional societies.

8. The Tripods, of John Christopher's "Tripods" series, are aliens who have conquered Earth and enslaved humanity, rolling back civilization. How do they keep the adult human population in line?

Answer: Mind control

On turning 14, every human being receives a "cap," through which the Tripods eliminate thoughts of defiance. (This is a great premise for a series targeted at kids: the heroes are necessarily 13 or younger!) A few uncapped people live free in "The White Mountains" (the title of the first book, from 1967).

The alien "Masters," to whom the Earth's atmosphere is poisonous, live in the cities, with a few athletic and tough humans as their much-abused personal servants and the bulk of the human population in the countryside, kept to a roughly medieval level of technology. Of course, our heroes soon change all this...

9. Climate change has brought civilization to its knees in Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower." The protagonist, a teenager named Lauren Oya Olamina, leads a ragtag group of refugees from the ruins of the Los Angeles suburbs to form a community of farming and faith. What is the name of the religion Lauren founds?

Answer: Earthseed

Lauren, the daughter of a Baptist preacher, has grown up in a walled neighborhood only partially sheltered from the violence of a rapidly decaying society. The system has broken down, but Lauren nevertheless believes that humanity has a bright future in the stars.

In the new religion of Earthseed, she strives to lay out a path for her followers to regain hope, remake society, and claim their destiny. She is smart, tough and passionate, but her story -- told in this 1993 novel and its 1998 sequel, "Parable of the Talents" -- has more than its share of loss and betrayal.

The post-apocalypse is a hard time even for prophets.

10. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" may not dwell on it much, but it does begin with the total destruction of planet Earth. Why do the Vogons blow up the world?

Answer: To make way for a bypass

In Douglas Adams' 1979 masterpiece, the alien Vogons -- known for their dense bureaucracy and terrible poetry -- demolish the Earth, sending Earthling Arthur Dent and Betelgeusian Ford Prefect on a wacky interstellar adventure. The trouble, it seems, is that the Earthlings "couldn't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs" -- that is, they hadn't checked the local planning office in Alpha Centauri for the posted demolition plans.

While Arthur doesn't dwell on his status as post-apocalyptic, he does try to come to grips with Earth's destruction. It's on too large a scale for him to comprehend, though. He finds he can't mourn, say, all of England -- but mourning Nelson's Column is much more manageable.

Source: Author CellarDoor

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
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After the End of the World Trivia Quiz

The aliens have landed, the disease has spread, the bombs have exploded, the climate has changed: any way you slice it, civilization as we know it is not coming back. Let's see how people from the pages of science fiction are coping with the aftermath.

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