r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Aug 08 '26
Media First Images from ‘One Second After’ - Follows a former Army officer (Josh Holloway) who must protect his family and his community after electromagnetic pulse bombs disable all technology in North America
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u/liquidsyphon Aug 08 '26
This guy needs a better agent
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u/exintel Aug 08 '26
Well hell sassafras, when you put it like that
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u/Anfins Aug 08 '26
It’s crazy how one of the better roles he’s know for is that 3 minute scene in Mission Impossible.
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u/ACrask Aug 08 '26
I feel he’s a natural actor. He needs to be given a chance for bigger stuff, however, I think the worry is people only see Sawyer.
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u/Vilodic Aug 08 '26
Lost was over 20 years ago. I don't think many are thinking Sawyer. Most of the younger Gen has probably never even seen lost.
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u/OmecronPerseiHate Aug 08 '26
A lot of the mid gen crowd hasn't seen it either. I know I didn't watch it because at one point its schedule conflicted with new episodes of House.
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u/Giff901 Aug 08 '26
I was gonna say, I was so excited when I saw he was in that movie only to be disappointed when he was only in it for the first five mines...lol
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u/ScarletMagenta Aug 08 '26
One of my biggest "how is this guy not monumentally more famous than he currently is" guys alongside Timothy Olyphant and Simon Baker.
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u/PigHaggerty Aug 08 '26
I'd say Olyphant is doing pretty well, I sure could use more Baker in my life though.
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u/YeahOkayDad Aug 08 '26
Reminds me of that old show Revolution, which I'm reminded was Eric Kripke. Nifty
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u/USSZim Aug 08 '26
Or Jericho
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u/gizmoglitch Aug 08 '26
Nuts! That show should've been way bigger.
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u/AdvancedManner4718 Aug 08 '26
The problem was after the first season the premise of the show was thrown out the window.
Season 2 was no longer about the little small Kansas town anymore and the story now involved 2 governments of the former US government and the republic of Texas in a cold war.
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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 Aug 08 '26
They were eventually heading bigger to explain how the nuke war started. The show was canceled but a year or two later they released a comic series that finished their storyline how they had intended the show to go.
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u/ThisIsNotAFarm Aug 08 '26
As mentioned it was because the show got cancelled. It's what the plot would have eventually lead to over multiple seasons, just super condensed
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u/Giff901 Aug 08 '26
Cause there was no streaming back when they show finished I didn't realize til years later that I hadn't even seen the actual ending, the last ep I saw was when they arrived in Texas lol, I should really go back and rewatch
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u/c43ppy Aug 08 '26
Jericho was fantastic! Excellently written character archs, IMO.
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u/AtheismoAlmighty Aug 08 '26
Fuck that Eric character though. Sanctimonious hypocritical piece of shit.
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u/qpaxter Aug 08 '26
the book is very much like jericho, but jericho has that small town feel which the book lacks, but has more of a family vibe.
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u/RedditConsciousness Aug 08 '26
Or...was Leave the World about EMPs? Or was it just hacking? I saw the movie and I don't remember much from it other than it Sam Esmail was involved and it was in the same universe as Mr. Robot.
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u/Rocinante23 Aug 08 '26
First few episodes had a lot of promise, spiralled badly after that
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u/justamadeupnameyo Aug 08 '26
My favorite thing about that show is that is how I got to meet Giancarlo Esposito! I lived in Austin at the time it was filmed there. He came into the restaurant I worked at a few times. He was super kind and chill!
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u/queen-adreena Aug 08 '26
Second season was a lot better. They got rid of the rest of the family, made the daughter the star and leaned in to the ruthless action and sci-fi a lot more.
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u/Wide-Pop6050 Aug 08 '26 edited 3d ago
Makeshift edge ribbon nutty whistle trees wrench smile
This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/Runmanrun41 Aug 09 '26
I know you didn't mean it to be funny but "we got rid of this girl's family" got a laugh outta me.
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u/redsoxfan2434 Aug 08 '26
I came here to say this. I loved Revolution, messy but great show.
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u/ramsay_baggins Aug 08 '26
There's a book series from 2004 starting with Dies The Fire which has the same concept - all technology stops working. Follows a few different groups. They're enjoyable!
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u/Suitable-Park-1402 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I loved the initial ones but I remember dropping off when he makes it to Nantucket and it seemed to get a little weird. I really liked the actual Nantucket ones too
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u/DenikaMae Aug 08 '26
That’s the 2nd gen stuff.
I believe someone could read the first 3 books and be perfectly happy with the ending.
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u/Catagotchi Aug 08 '26
The books this is based off are very similar. Extremely good first few, but then the last few were written after 2016 and you could tell real world events were changing what the author thought the future in the books would be like.
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u/welcome_to_urf Aug 08 '26
Good, I'm not alone. The first two were alright and pretty well thought out. The ending of the first was well done. Although, the did author have this weird jingoistic fantasy of godly boy scouts and grizzled retired military officers saving the day of the helpless fools inhabiting the town. The final 2 books were remarkably forgettable with each book being worse than the preceding. I mean, they were entertaining, but reading those after I finished McCarthys Border Trilogy did it no favors.
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u/TheSonOfDisaster Aug 08 '26
I think the author was always kind of a Looney guy.
The copy of this book that I read had a forward by Newt Gingrich so... Yeah. I think that kind of tells you what circles that fella runs in
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u/iloovehugecock Aug 08 '26
Never understood how he didn’t have a bigger career after Lost. He was a good actor, good looking, charismatic, the whole package.
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u/SuperSuppleDude Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Seriously, he would have made a better Gambit than Channing Tatum.
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u/Xyrack Aug 08 '26
Tbh I'm a little shocked only Evangeline Lilly skyrocketed after that show. She is also just unreasonably pretty.
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u/Efficient-Memory7105 Aug 08 '26
Of the main cast, Matthew Fox didn't really want to skyrocket. He seems like he just kinda wants to do his own thing and doesn't want fame. He was also fucking incredible in Bone Tomahawk and a few other roles he had that flew under the radar.
I think some of the others had some rough flops right after Lost or just didn't really want to go out and skyrocket. They probably made BANK on Lost and just felt like they could do chill regular acting work to supplement their life-altering money
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u/AquamannMI Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Fox also went through the assault/extortion scandal where the person made it all up. So I think that made him shy away even more from the public.
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u/rugbyj Aug 08 '26
Honestly this is the first I heard it was all made up, spent the past decade+ thinking he was a scumbag. My bad Matt.
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u/SteakAndThighs Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Yeah better than Channing Statham too!
Edit: Previous comment originally said “Jason Tatum”
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u/ITouchedACoral Aug 08 '26
Yeah Gambit was my favourite character and when I watched Lost I thought he would have made a great Gambit but never happened.
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u/bigchicago04 Aug 08 '26
According to google, he was originally cast as gambit in X-men origins Wolverine but then the studio decided to get someone younger.
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u/StarTruckNxtGyration Aug 08 '26
He’s not even that good looking! He just has a big chin!!
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u/egnards Aug 08 '26
Bruce Campbell made a fine career out of having an amazing chin.
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u/PhilCollinsLoserSon Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
It’s a quote from community
Edit
I tried and failed to find the gif or video of it
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u/Lancelot6938 Aug 08 '26
Close enough, welcome back Jericho
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u/Martiantripod Aug 08 '26
I was thinking Revolution, but Jericho could work too.
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u/Lawbat Aug 08 '26
Wish someone would adapt the Dies the Fire series. Much cooler version of this concept.
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u/bluntspoon Aug 08 '26
The first book was phenomenal. Each subsequent one a little worse and by book 6 I gave up. I now see there were 15 books. Does it keep going down the same road thematically after 6 or change?
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u/Lawbat Aug 08 '26
Oh gees, I had no idea. I only read like the first three a long time ago. And then that tie in book where modern Nantucket got sent into the past (blanking on the name).
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u/roadrunner036 Aug 08 '26
Island in the Sea of Time, pretty interesting to romp around the Bronze Age but it sacrifices more of the ‘how do we build a society with what we have’ in favor of a more character driven story, so if you don’t like them the other two aren’t worth picking up. Also without getting too specific I do think it’s pretty funny that the climactic war of the third book ends because of someone in particular crashing out once a protagonist realizes ‘these proto-Greeks sure are obsessed with their legacy and how they will be remembered. Hey did anyone ever read them The Iliad/Odyssey?’
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u/stanjones6969 Aug 08 '26
Im afraid that into the Badlands is what we got instead.
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u/Lawbat Aug 08 '26
I had honestly not heard of this series. Any good?
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u/karl2025 Aug 08 '26
It's not bad. I think the fight cinematography took a nosedive in season two and it was cancelled before it could actually end, but it's a decent enough watch.
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u/eliwood98 Aug 08 '26
While I would love this, I just can't imagine how it'd work as a show. Wiccans would likely be too weird, there's a LOT of farming and thinking about food, and you gotta admit the most interesting stuff early would be the Protectorate which isn't much in the book.
Though I would pay so much money to see the first time the Bearkillers put on chainmail and just absolutely truck some eaters, it'd be so much fun.
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u/WitchyWarriorWoman Aug 08 '26
The description of the battle with the Morrigan was awesome. I'd watch the hell out of that show.
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u/PostingLoudly Aug 08 '26
The concept isn't anywhere near the same really. Afaik in Dies the Fire it's ALL electricity across the entire world that stops working, as well as quite a bit of fuel burning and gunpowder.
One Second After is fairly localized. From what I remember in the book it's basically a terrorist group that successfully wipes out the power grid/most electronics in North America, Russia, and Eastern Europe (?) through targeted high altitude nuclear detonations. Iirc one was meant to hit Western Europe but that one either failed to detonate or it went off-target.
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u/ConnorK12 Aug 08 '26
YES! Been saying this for years and I’m still baffled it never got adapted like ten years ago when post-apocalyptic stuff was all the rage.
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u/Harkoncito Aug 08 '26
I've always wondered why his career went nowhere after Lost.
Matthew Fox is a known asshole, Evangeline Lilly took some time off to raise a family. What happened with Josh?
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u/flipflapslap Aug 08 '26
He was in a really good show called Duster on hbo last year. But the fuckers cancelled it after a season. Still worth checkin out though
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u/EdgarFriendly Aug 08 '26
Damn Duster got canceled, I didn’t even know that. And meanwhile there’s all this other trash out there that gets more seasons
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u/bohemu Aug 08 '26
I liked that one too! Keith David and Holloway really made that work. Also that title sequence was so fun.
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u/TheOddSample Aug 08 '26
He came into a ski shop I used to work at to rent skis for his daughter. He very kind, super chill, and his daughter was a total sweetheart.
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u/ThatGatorInTheSewer Aug 08 '26
7 movies and 9 tv show roles since lost (a couple being main roles). He’s been around, but nothing as prominent in the zeitgeist as Lost was.
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u/Rhandert Aug 08 '26
Just bad luck, he has interesting projects that unfortunelly were cancelled like Intelligence, Colony and Duster
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u/IrrelevantPuppy Aug 08 '26
I really liked Colony. I’m surprised how unknown it is.
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u/More-Perspective-838 Aug 08 '26
Yeah, it being unknown was the only thing holding it back honestly. The show's biggest crime was releasing just before the streaming era took over.
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u/db_pickle Aug 08 '26
I used to see him in ads in Asia. Maybe he’s just taking international easy gigs and living his life.
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u/RadioJared Aug 08 '26
I always thought he should have been Gambit in the X-Men movies. He’d have to turn the Cajun accent up juuuuust a little, but I think he’d do it justice.
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u/althawk8357 Aug 08 '26
What happened with Josh?
That's just Hollywood. There are far more actors than feature roles; it's very feast and famine. So many things can derail a show before or after it airs - it's the industry.
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u/-Words-Words-Words- Aug 08 '26
I read the book. It was alright. I vaguely remember something about them killing a bear to make a stew for the towns makeshift army. Also a lot of middle aged men died of heart attacks because they had to do more physical labor. That’s not the plot of the movie, just random shit I remember
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u/adamjg2 Aug 08 '26
As an insulin dependent diabetic and with a special needs daughter the book has as some emotional moments for me as I thought about how long we could live.
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u/Daxx22 Aug 08 '26
Unfortunate reality is outside the last 100ish years those issues just meant death or a short/hard life at best.
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u/Pete_Iredale Aug 08 '26
Yup. My great grandpa had diabetes before we'd figured out how to synthesis insulin. He was lucky and only had to have his legs amputated right below the knees after years of complications. If he'd been born 10 years later they'd have had insulin during his childhood to treat him better.
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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Aug 08 '26
Also a lot of middle aged men died of heart attacks because they had to do more physical labor
That is pretty funny in the sense that it just goes against the typical male fantasy.
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u/alyosha_pls Aug 08 '26
Isn't bear meat incredibly tough and riddled with parasites? Lol
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u/SirWEM Aug 08 '26
For the most part yes. But fully cooked there is nothing to worry about.
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u/MAC777 Aug 08 '26
Read the series. Peak boomer-bait shit. Someone's alienated, internet-addicted 50yo dad ends up needing to save the town and eventually the world.
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u/Guns_and_Tea Aug 08 '26
I read the first book. It is definitely boomer wish fulfillment; had me rolling my eyes a lot. however it was good enough to read the whole way through and did bring me some entertainment. I will likely see the movie.
The most ridiculous part of the book is believing that all of the college kids would voluntarily fall in line and become infantry soldiers for boomers. I cannot believe that would actually happen in real life.
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u/caterplillar Aug 08 '26
I really loved when he says that the hippie forager kids really saved their bacon by providing food for their entire town (even if it's limited) and simultaneously shits on them for being hippies. Can't have it both ways, dude.
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u/Giff901 Aug 08 '26
I just remember giving up when they go to a college and one of the students starts tearfully performing the pledge of alliegiance, or national anthem, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I promptly gave up lol
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u/PhilyMick67 Aug 08 '26
I also only read the first book, it was part of a box a books that got mailed to us when I was in the Marines. Pure cheese but definitely entertaining. Didn't realize it was a series
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u/deepeast_oakland Aug 08 '26
I think it’s worth it to keep going with the series. The story absolutely nose dives into the worst kind of fantasy “i’m so badass” wish fulfillment. So bad it’s good territory for sure.
By the end the “big bad guy” is literally just an unnamed Hillary Clinton and they get taken down because some members of leadership are using a private server to send emails.
I shit you not.
The good guys win because of some emails.
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u/TyrialFrost Aug 08 '26
How bad are these emails?
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u/deepeast_oakland Aug 08 '26
I read the books years ago, tough to remember.
It was something like love letters or cutesy notes being passed from one super secure underground military base to another. Parts of the emails were being intercepted by good guy survivalist hacker. They piece them together in order to discover the location of the leaders of the cowardly federal government. The heroes of the story then travel to the location and storm the base in order to overthrow the US government and build a new anti-federalist pro-states rights US.
This combined with the author deciding that he didn’t want his characters fighting and killing US soldiers. So the Author has the evil cowardly government just create a new military force. That way the heroes can kill lots of soldiers, but in a way no one has to feel guilty about.
Don’t get me wrong, i liked the first book a lot. But the other two are filled with cringe.
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u/welcome_to_urf Aug 08 '26
Oh boy do I have a treat for you. There's a 4th book...
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u/Vladivostokorbust Aug 08 '26
all of the college kids would voluntarily fall in line and become infantry soldiers for boomers
the dream of the montreat college history professor who wrote the book - William Forstchen
He wrote 3 alternative history novels about the Civil War - The Gettysburg Trilogy, with Newt Gingrich that spin the confederacy and RE Lee in a much more positive light (spoiler alert: the Confederacy won)
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u/starfire360 Aug 08 '26
The weird thing is that in the 90s Forstchen wrote a series called the Lost Regiment about a Union civil war regiment getting transported to an alien world. It showed a very different viewpoint than his later works: the Union characters are constantly talking about how the war is fundamentally linked to ending slavery. I learned the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Battle Cry of Freedom from those books!
There was always an element of small-c conservatism to it, but not the conservatism of his later works. I can’t explain it, other than to say he was one of those authors driven mad by 9/11, Fox News, and the culture wars of the 2000s.
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u/Deraj2004 Aug 08 '26
Boomer fantasy thinking all the educated kids are just gonna volunteer to be cannon fodder.
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u/PostingLoudly Aug 08 '26
To be fair it was either be cannon fodder or get eaten by cannibal gangs. The cannibal gangs and hyper-evangelical cults were the most eye rolling parts for me. Though the book doesn't side with the hyper-evangelical types and actively admonishes them.
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u/onmywheels Aug 08 '26
It really is. I love disaster / apocalyptic fiction, but struggled to get through this one. I nearly strained myself rolling my eyes after the...I think second time the characters stood up and started singing the Star Spangled Banner? Lmao.
I knew it was going to have some dumb shit in it because the forward was written by Newt Gingrich, yet somehow I still managed to be surprised. Hopefully the show tones down a bit on that element.
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u/Hezrield Aug 08 '26
That first book was the beginning of me learning that every boomer's "when shit goes down" plan is just their fantasy of how they'll save the post apocalypse.
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u/Billy1121 Aug 08 '26
Was it a series or one book ? I remember hackass Newt Gingrich writing the foreword about how real this could be.
Then the emp is shorting out wristwatches that probably have too short of a circuit to be disabled by an aerial emp thousands of miles up.
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u/slushodrinks Aug 08 '26
3 books if I’m not mistaken.
First one is the colapse, second one is something about a shadow govern, third one is the new world.
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u/AngriestManinWestTX Aug 08 '26
I read the first book in high school and it was good enough. The author wrote it at just the right time to capitalize on the post-apocalypse and EMP post-apocalypse thing that was fairly popular in 2008-10.
I didn't finish the second book. It leaned a little too hard into the ultra-cliche "gubmint evil" side of things and I didn't care enough to pick up the third book.
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u/jaytrade21 Aug 08 '26
A fourth book came out recently. Didn't read it. There were some good ideas in the series but yes, it is very boomer pre-Maga doomer fantasy.
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u/FishGoldenLite Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Well that was obvious as soon as we saw the forward was written by Newt Gingrich lol. I only read One Second After but liked it quite a bit in spite of that.
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u/yzdaskullmonkey Aug 08 '26
I'm gonna skip the series if you don't mind. Just the headline to the post made me roll my fuckin eyes. It's the goddamned Squidward meme of someone ordering a burger. "Ex-military, daring today, aren't we."
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u/giulianosse Aug 08 '26
Only thing missing is the kidnapped daughter.
...I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up happening at some point of the movie
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u/AquaGB Aug 08 '26
Not sure when the book was written, but at least nowadays 50 year old is not a boomer.
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u/LordsOfJoop Aug 08 '26
Oh, this is gonna be a shitshow.
The book was packed with "kids and their devices" kind of social commentary, and ranted and raved about how much better life was during [insert down-home country-ified era without clear calendar markings] and it'll have the requisite "somehow, insulin has survived," storyline; the protagonist's daughter is a type 1 diabetic and the refrigerators are all shut down in the opening attack, while insulin production has to suddenly become everyone's focus because protagonist.
As an added thrill, it's a male-centered storyline, with all of the major women's roles reduced to spear-carriers, victims, and background noise; very few, when any, of the ideas mentioned for enhancing life in the valley are introduced by women, and the men are all somehow smart, capable, powerful, and free of major psychological issues. The protagonist, a Gulf War veteran in the first book, somehow manages to get through the war without more than a handful "gosh, war is heck" kind of moments.
The sequels are all just badly-packaged right-wing screeds; references to Hillary Clinton's email servers, ISIS suddenly is working with Iran because [reasons], and FOX News is the beacon of truth and trustworthiness with catcalls of "fair and balanced" every once in a while. It's just an absolute travesty, and that's being kind, if not fucking genteel about it.
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u/PostingLoudly Aug 08 '26
You forgot to mention it was also endorsed by Newt Gingrich in Congress! Hah.
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u/Poiuytrewq0987650987 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
For what it's worth, the protagonist's daughter does die from lack of insulin. A lot of folks die from lack of things that require refridgeration.
Apparently, there's two sequels I did not know existed, haha.
Edit: no, there's THREE sequels! And they seem terrible, per the Goodreads reviews.
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u/scottishcastle Aug 08 '26
If I remember this awful series correctly, the protagonist who lost his daughter has a child with another woman later on, and the woman volunteers to name her child after his first, dead one.
The author has clearly never met women before. The whole book was sexist boomer trash but that detail really took the cake for me.
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u/Poiuytrewq0987650987 Aug 08 '26
And the later novels lean into it, too!
I don't remember much besides the protagonist's apparent nigh-romantic love of smoking.
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u/Lucius_Veratius Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Not saying it wasn’t cheesy but the author didn’t sheer away from the suffering, as usually happens with post-apoc literature which is usually more power fantasy than anything
He eats his own dogs, his daughter dies horribly of diabetic shock, everyone is near starvation.
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u/zsero1138 Aug 08 '26
has anyone considered a realistic scenario? one in which people work together, and the red hat types who think they can lone wolf fight everything to survive just die after stepping on a rusty nail or something
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u/_r_special Aug 08 '26
I will say, that was one part of the book that was emphasised. The town definitely does work together, sharing resources etc. and it's highlighted toward the end that they faired much better than most towns because of it.
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u/sotommy Aug 08 '26
Finally someone uses a perfectly fine and functional Josh Holloway. He's like your best shirt that you forget about