Survival horror games. Apocalyptic movies. Zombie TV shows. They keep showing us the end of the world.
And the strange thing is, I find it comforting.
Not the death, or the gore, or the terrifying monsters.
But the quiet that follows.
In games like The Last of Us, in the atmosphere of 28 Years Later, in the long, dangerous walks through empty cities overrun by moss and silence, there is a strange kind of peace. These stories are about zombies, sure, but only in the way that space operas are about rockets. The real story is human.
Stripped of society, of rules, of etiquette and expectation.
Just survival. And with it, a return to something real.
A Common Fantasy, Quietly Shared
I don’t think I’m alone in this. There’s something telling about how many people are drawn to post-apocalyptic settings. We say it’s escapism, but maybe it’s something deeper. Maybe it’s yearning.
A yearning for everything to finally break, so we’re allowed to default back to our instincts. Those instincts haven’t disappeared, but capitalism has twisted them. Turned survival into branding. Turned curiosity into productivity. Turned strength into silent compliance.
In the fantasy, that spell is broken. We move freely. Nowhere is off-limits except by danger. If you’re brave enough to go, you go. And if you make it out alive, you learn something.
Maybe even about yourself.
A World That Makes Sense Again
You don’t need to fill out a form to matter. You don’t need to chase social media followers to have value. You don’t need a degree, or a permit, or a job title to justify existing.
You just survive. You help others survive. You find food. You stay alert. You sleep lightly. You protect your friends. You trust your gut.
The world becomes dangerous, yes — but finally understandable.
The Beauty of Nature Reclaiming
There’s an awe in seeing vines wrap around office buildings. Trees pushing through broken floor tiles. Roads cracked open and filled with moss.
It’s not just beautiful. It’s poetic.
The industrialised world thought it was permanent. But nature is patient. And in the fantasy, it doesn’t just survive. It reclaims.
It takes back the places that were stolen from it. Quietly. Persistently. Without anger.
Bureaucracy Is the Real Monster
The zombie apocalypse gives us a breath of relief from bureaucracy.
No more tax codes. No more emails. No more forms to fill in triplicate to get permission to be a human being. No more ten-step processes to access your basic rights.
The systems we live under have been patched and repatched so many times, they don’t even resemble their original purpose. Like buggy code that’s been layered with fixes until no one remembers what it was supposed to do in the first place.
Maybe the end of the world is the only bug fix that actually works.
Maybe I’d Finally Be Allowed to Live
I’m not saying I want civilization to collapse.
I’m saying that if it did, I might finally feel like I have a fighting chance.
The world we live in now feels like it was built to crush people like me. People who see too clearly. People who question. People who can survive, but only if allowed to act on their instincts without being penalized for them.
Maybe the end of the world wouldn’t be the end of me.
Maybe it would be the first time I was allowed to live.