Alas Babylon Vs. the Day After Tomorrow

Imagine, everything you have been doing to build your future, becomes a future that no longer exists. People every day are faced with life threatening challenges that sometimes re-shape their whole entire future. In the movie The Day After Tomorrow, a series of natural disasters shocks the entire United States and forces people to fight for their lives. In the book Alas Babylon, nuclear bombs were dropped by Russians, wiping out half of the United States and most of its population. In both of these disasters come destruction, leadership, and survival skills along with the formation of communities with total strangers.

In Alas Babylon, comes destruction that changes the lives of everyone living in the U.S. It was any normal day in the lives of the citizens of Fort Repose, Florida, until all of a sudden comes chaos and catastrophe. Turns out, atomic bombs were dropped by the Russians on all different parts of the U.S to form World War III. Fortunately, the small town of Fort Repose was not bombed, so they all turned out to be okay, until weeks and months started passing. The main power plant and manufacture city for Fort Repose was Orlando, which was one of the biggest targets for the Russians, so right away electricity was no more. The stores also were starting to lose everything because of the fact that they were not able to restock. Also, while weeks and months start passing, food, transportation, people, and government start to deteriorate.

Alas Babylon demonstrates the many skills needed in order to survive such destruction. Since this town has no electricity, food becomes more abundant because of the fact that they now have no electricity. Food is now found either by hunting or fishing and is cooked over a fire. Since every store is cleaned out, money was now used for trading instances. Now that computers were of no use, knowledge had to come from nowhere else but books, which helps in medical purposes. Salt was a key product because of the fact that it preserves meat and keeps it from going bad.