And Man Grew Proud/Playing With

Basic Trope: In a post-apocalyptic society, the event that caused the apocalypse has entered into myth, along with the world before the apocalypse.
 * Straight: Stranded in a post-apocalyptic society, Alice discovers a sacred document which describes the nuclear war which devastated the Earth in terms of a religious parable.
 * Exaggerated: As well as the religious stories describing the nuclear war as God's judgment, the post-apocalyptic society has mangled modern stories, history and notable figures into mythological figures. What remains of the ruins of modern society have been misinterpreted as to their original function -- a shopping mall, for instance, is believed to have been a mighty cathedral devoted to the various Gods worshipped by people before the Event. The people in the post-apocalyptic society have a completely corrupted and misinterpreted understanding of what the modern world was like and there's no way to correct them.
 * Justified:
 * The apocalyptic event, as well as destroying infrastructure, wiped out vast amounts of knowledge when the places they were stored were wiped out. The education system and its facilities have also been all but completely destroyed, meaning that the people who survive in the future of the post-apocalyptic society have only sketchy fragments of life before the apocalypse to build their understanding of it on.
 * The sum total of human knowledge, experience and understanding is lost within seconds of the apocalyptic event happening.
 * Related to the above, all of man's knowledge was stored digitally, all paper records rendered obsolete. The apocalyptic event, among other things, completely wrecked all digital devices, meaning man has to start society again from scratch.
 * Inverted: Just before the all-encompassing natural cataclysm, the humanity universally gains the power of prescience and foresees its future survival down to minor details.
 * Subverted:
 * Despite the apocalypse, knowledge has managed to survive and the people of the post-apocalyptic society have an accurate understanding of what life was like before the apocalypse.
 * Alternatively: Alice discovers an Apocalyptic Log which clearly and accurately outlines how the apocalypse happened.
 * Doubly Subverted:
 * Given that it was the apocalypse, however, their knowledge is still flawed, distorted and mangled in several key ways.
 * Alternatively, the Apocalyptic Log is accurate, detailed, and functional, but the language it's written in has been dead for a long time. No one can read it.
 * Parodied:
 * The people of the post-apocalyptic society have based their understanding of the past -- and thus the structure of their current society -- on something wildly inappropriate or which already provides a rather skewed or inaccurate depiction of modern society, such as children's cartoons.
 * It turns out that the apocalypse wasn't quite as all-consuming as the 'survivors' believe; there are numerous intact bastions of civilization complete with accurate records of what happened and what life was like before the apocalypse within easy reach, but the survivors are just rather stubborn and / or stupid.
 * The fragments of civilization which have been spared are not exactly that helpful towards understanding how civilization actually functioned.
 * Deconstructed: An apocalypse capable of mangling the survivors understanding of the past and destroying all records of what happened is also enough to severely reduce humanity to tiny enclaves of barbaric survivors gradually whittling down towards extinction.
 * Reconstructed: Hope and the human spirit are not so easily defeated, however; the survivors gradually reform to create a new civilization, albeit one with a skewed understanding of its past (much like modern society).
 * Zig Zagged: Some forms of knowledge were remarkably well preserved, others lost almost entirely, still others sort-of preserved but with large gaps of understanding, and so forth.
 * Averted:
 * The apocalypse was in the recent past, meaning that people are still capable of remembering what the world was like before.
 * The 'apocalypse', whilst devastating, was not enough to completely wiped out the infrastructure of civilization; civilization, and thus knowledge, is preserved.
 * The apocalypse wiped out all life on the planet, meaning there is no one left to form any kind of understanding of what happened anyway.
 * Enforced: The creator wants to make an ironic point about how history is often skewed or misinterpreted by future generations.
 * Lampshaded: "I suppose it was too much to ask for an encyclopedia to survive the apocalypse..."
 * Invoked: The Ancient Conspiracy behind the apocalypse intentionally targeted places of knowledge and learning, such as libraries, schools, universities and wikis, in order that the knowledge base of future generations would be corrupted and thus easily controlled, making future generations malleable to their control.
 * Defied: As the apocalypse approached, authorities intentionally stockpiled and stored as much cultural, sociological and historical material as they could in safe places so that generations of the future would one day be able to find them and thus gain an understanding of what life before the apocalypse was like.
 * Discussed: The characters discuss how so much was lost after the apocalypse.
 * Conversed: "No one ever thinks of saving an encyclopedia in these apocalyptic stories..."

Back to And Man Grew Proud