Apocalypses, New and Old

Unlike a lot of folks, I didn't replay The Last of Us in preparation for the sequel.  Instead, I read through Joe Dever's "Freeway Warrior" tetralogy of choose-your-own-adventure books.  For me, it was a chance to revisit a series I had enjoyed from my childhood from a much older perspective.

There's a adage that goes "any work of science fiction is the product of the time in which it was created."  It's certainly a saying that holds true here.  Like a lot of the post-apocalypses from before the turn of the millennium, the event that brings it all crashing down is a nuclear war.  In the case of the "Freeway Warrior" series, the catalyst is a terrorist organization with cells located across the globe.  After the dust and fallout settle down, these post apocalyptic "clansmen" (as they are referred to in the text) proceed to scramble out of their bunkers to recruit or slaughter any survivors in a bid for local domination.  I guess they are firm believers in the famous John Milton quote from "Paradise Lost":

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven

Unsurprisingly, a book called "Freeway Warrior" is heavily inspired by the "Mad Max" films...right down to a nuclear-winter induced wasteland complete with leather-clad bikers and a muscle-car-driving hero.  Comparing this kind of landscape to the one found in The Last of Us provides an interesting contrast.  Instead of sickly deserts, we have mother nature thriving to such a degree that she is reclaiming what was taken from her in the form of vast swaths of green overgrowth.  The survivors aren't living in some kind of primal Darwinian nightmare of predator and prey so much as a self-destructive cycle driven by vengefulness and intolerance.  

Surprisingly, the differences become less pronounced when examining the minutia in these two works of fiction.  Scavenging plays a huge roll in both settings, and the most valued objects are largely the same (tools, medicine, supplies and weapons).  The scarcity of ammunition becomes apparent in The Last of Us (parts one and two) very quickly through gameplay.  In Joe Dever's novels, he communicates the same idea rather effectively by making the player's character sheet have a literal checkbox for each bullet in their inventory.

Visual aesthetics aside, the place that these two pieces of fiction truly diverge is in their respective narratives and the themes found within them.  The story of Freeway Warrior mirrors the film "Road Warrior" in that it is very much about escaping persistent external threats.  The protagonist is a young man and proxy for the boys who are the primary audience for these sorts of books.  Our protagonist even has a female love interest who periodically plays the role of damsel in distress.

On the flip side, The Last of Us Part 2 is firmly focused on its female cast with the narrative being more inward looking as the characters try to overcome the darker aspects of human nature.  It's basically the video game equivalent of movies like "Reverant", "Unforgiven", or "True Grit".  As one online forum poster put it "this is one of the best revisionist westerns I've ever seen...that also happens to have zombies in it."

The fungal infection aspect of The Last of Us might seem to strain the plausibility of the otherwise hyper realistic setting, but it also works as an excellent metaphor.  In the increasingly lifeless deserts of "Mad Max" and "Freeway Warrior", the end comes when the world finally expires from the injuries humanity has inflicted on it.  In the setting of The Last of Us though, doom is nature deciding to deliver a final deathblow to human race for its lack of wisdom.