Well my first foray into apocalypse-themed diaries was met with interest, confusion, and some mockery. Which tells be the topic has potential but needs some refining. So we're going to take this to the most refined room of the DK mansion, the library. And talk about Apocalypse books.
I'm pretty sure the first apocalypse literature I encountered was "Leiningen versus the Ants": http://www.classicshorts.com/...shorts.com/stories/lvta.html. Arguably, this isn't apocalypse literature, because it's just one guy on a farm, fighting ants. Grounded (as I now realize) in a Jack Londonesque / triumph of technology fantasy and written in 1938, as the sun slowly started to set on Imperialism, and was still rising on Technology. These days, I root for the ants and Nature, but as a child, the menace of a massive invasion of ravenous ants preceded my reading this source text by about 10 years (I was living in the tropics at the time), was the first Apocalypse I feared. I went to sleep each night expecting to wake to a seethe of ants, and hoped that I would have the courage to detour and rescue my younger sister (my parents were a lost cause - they didn't take the ant threat seriously, and so were on their own...) on my way to the pool.
After the jump, a taste of Leiningen...And more Apocalypse Literature!
The Brazilian official threw up lean and lanky arms and clawed the air with wildly distended fingers. "Leiningen!" he shouted. "You're insane! They're not creatures you can fight--they're an elemental--an 'act of God!' Ten miles long, two miles wide--ants, nothing but ants! And every single one of them a fiend from hell; before you can spit three times they'll eat a full-grown buffalo to the bones. I tell you if you don't clear out at once there'll he nothing left of you but a skeleton picked as clean as your own plantation."
Leiningen grinned. "Act of God, my eye! Anyway, I'm not an old woman; I'rn not going to run for it just because an elemental's on the way. And don't think I'm the kind of fathead who tries to fend off lightning with his fists either. I use my intelligence, old man. With me, the brain isn't a second blindgut; I know what it's there for. When I began this model farm and plantation three years ago, I took into account all that could conceivably happen to it. And now I'm ready for anything and everything--including your ants."
The Brazilian rose heavily to his feet. "I've done my best," he gasped. "Your obstinacy endangers not only yourself, but the lives of your four hundred workers. You don't know these ants!"
I'm not going to tell you how this turns out, but it's pretty awesome. Next up for me was the "The White Mountains" trilogy:http://www.goodreads.com/.... Young teenagers join an insurrection against the War of the Worldsish alien tripod beings that have conquered the Earth and mind-control humanity by forcing them to wear a brain-control device when they reach puberty. The young heroes feign brainwashing by wearing broken devices, compete in a hacked version of the Olympics where the winners earn the right to serve the alien overlords as servants, and infiltrate an alien city in order to gain intelligence on how to defeat the enemy. In hindsight, probably more of an anti-capitalist story than anything, but a great apocalypse narrative.
I was obsessed with sci-fi for years, pretty much went through the shelves of my local librairies, but most sci-fi, while it certainly includes apocalyptic narratives, is too techno-triumphant to really fit my definition. But maybe human triumphalism is the real core. I've read too much sci-fi to list, so I'm going to stick with the obvious cases.
Stephen King's "The Stand": http://www.goodreads.com/... probably triggered my first bipolar episode, around 16 - I read the unabridged version over two or three nights, when I should have been sleeping. As hack as King is, he writes with scope and vision - I couldn't stop reading. And his vision of a mostly empty world where the survivors roamed and wandered and coalesced into a classic good/evil Götterdämmerung, was way more interesting than stupid high school. And the sleep deprivation experience prepared me for university.
I came to "Lucifer's Hammer" late: http://www.goodreads.com/.... A friend who had apparently spent the last 15 years of his life obsessed about it forced me to read it. And yes, it's an entertaining story, somewhat tainted by libertarian rants, but the description of individuals uniting into a community and coalescing the knowledge and tech to survive attacks by cannibal barbarian hordes is gorgeous.
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (http://www.goodreads.com/...) impressed me less, mostly because it didn't manage to describe the actual trigger event (the apparent failure of all agriculture is narratively convenient, but logistically problematic. That would explain the apparent unavailability of insects as a food source, but would imply an apocalypse that is unsurvivable). Also, the scene with the prisoners trapped in a basement by a marauding band of cannibals makes no sense. Keeping the prisoners alive is inconvenient and impractical, their food value will diminish as they starve. They should have been killed, bled, and made into jerky. "The Road" is more about the mood, than it is about the reality.
Saramago's "Blindness" (http://www.goodreads.com/...)much more accurately described the smothering horror of being immersed in a a society of suddenly blind people, even for the few who survived with vision. And it was an interesting elaboration on an Apocalypse Book I'd read much younger: "The Day of the Triffids" (http://en.wikipedia.org/...), where a race of motile and agressive plants with venom sacks that blinded people attacked humanity.
And for my apex Apocalypse Book, Ima go all meta on yalls asses and call it for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" (http://en.wikipedia.org/...). Eco's one of my favorite authors, and Name of the Rose one of my favorite books, and (spoiler) all that's lost is a monastery on a hill in Italy in the 14th(?) century, but when I finished it, I put the book under my pillow because I wanted one book at least to survive the fire.
I could go on...
Solzhenitsyn for describing real apocalypses.
Tom Brown for describing survival tactics.
Revelations, and Crusade literature for describing Christian Apocalypses.
Frank Herbert's Dune series
Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos
and so on...
So you, what are your favorite Apocalypse Books?