The Sunday Times (London), UK
July 27, 2014 Sunday

We’re all doomed

The end of the world looks like Connemara – at least in one film.
Pavel Barter explores Ireland’s post-apocalyptic visions

by Pavel Barter

Last month a film crew assembled in a forest near Ballymoney, Co
Antrim, to tell a story about a man struggling to survive in the
aftermath of the apocalypse. The Northern Irish actor Martin McCann
lost weight in preparation for his role and was fresh from a
survivalist course, during which he learnt to cut down trees and skin
rabbits. Actresses Olwen Fouéré and Mia Goth, who play mother and
daughter drifters, stayed in character by isolating themselves from
the crew during their time off.

While writer and director Stephen Fingleton was making The Survivalist
in the wilds of Co Antrim, another crew in Ireland was climbing
mountains, crossing bogs and scurrying through forests. Cattle Raid,
Liza Bolton’s independent film, was inspired by an ancient Irish myth,
but set in a desolate 2120. Connemara was chosen for the
post-apocalyptic background. “Empty, barren,” explains Bolton. “I can
do a 360-degree view from a field and see nothing except stone for
miles. It gives us a chance to recreate a world.”

Ever since Noah built his ark, apocalyptic fiction has used mankind’s
fears for the future as high-concept entertainment. Nowadays biblical
prophecy seems as outlandish as a zombie armageddon (The Walking
Dead), ape evolution (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) or James Franco
vehicles (This Is the End). Yet we are living in a new age of
paranoia, with global warming, political instability, wealth disparity
and terrorism seemingly putting Earth on a knife edge. Accordingly,
writers and film-makers are responding to these cultural anxieties.

Collider, this year’s Irish multiplatform story, was set in a
post-apocalyptic 2018. The Quiet Hour, which premiered at the recent
Galway Film Fleadh, was shot in Co Tipperary. Hollywood is continuing
the theme with The Rover, a post-apocalyptic thriller with Robert
Pattinson and Guy Pearce, due out next month. Ireland’s first
significant foray into the genre came in 2009 with One Hundred
Mornings, a harrowing story about a small band of survivors after the
collapse of civilisation. Its director, Conor Horgan, was inspired to
make the film after seeing Margaret Atwood, author of dystopian novel
The Handmaid’s Tale, speak in Dublin. Atwood, whose father is a
natural scientist, dwelt on the planet’s future. “She talked about the
amoeba equation,” says Horgan. “There’s a test tube filled with amoeba
food, with one amoeba in it. The amoeba divides and replicates every
minute. There becomes less food until it is 100% amoebas. That’s the
situation we find ourselves in. She said, ‘Any species that outgrows
its resource base won’t survive.’ You could feel a sharp intake of
breath in the audience. I was terrified because it is inarguable.”
Fingleton was inspired to make The Survivalist after seeing Collapse,
a documentary about the decline of fossil fuels. “We are in the middle
of the Anthropocene age,” he says. “It’s a geologist term, meaning the
age of man. We will last a short amount of time: a subsection of a
tree ring in terms of the Earth’s history. We have such a tremendous
effect on our environment, it is equivalent to the asteroid strike
that wiped out the dinosaurs. This is an age, and it will come to an
end.” While previous end-of-day myths – whether Y2K paranoia or Mayan
prophecies – might have spoken to deep psychological needs, the
concept of a global catastrophe because of climate change seems more
real.

“There will be some kind of trouble ahead – that is unavoidable,” says
Horgan. “This is now not so much a matter of speculation, opinion or,
in some cases, wishful thinking, as fact. Any idiot can look at the
energy that goes into keeping a society afloat versus the energy that
goes out.

Something has got to give – the only question is when.”

Post-apocalyptic fiction is no fun, as anyone who read Cormac
McCarthy’s The Road will testify. But there has been a shift in
concern from the nuclear threat (Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach, for
example) to natural resources and the environment. Irish director
Jason Figgis throws a global pandemic into the equation in Children of
a Darker Dawn. In his post-apocalyptic horror, an epidemic has wiped
out the planet’s adult population, leaving only children behind.

Figgis is not overly optimistic about the future. “Humanity has relied
too long on synthetic solutions for treating illness,” he says. “We
are biologically changing DNA and messing up the world. Humans are
evolving to a state where antibiotics are no longer having an effect,
so any kind of strain of virus can mutate into a super-virus.

“In my film the virus starts out with flu-like symptoms, as a lot of
diseases do, then rapidly evolves into something horrific. I asked a
few doctors if there are any viruses that will attack a fully formed
adult but leave children and teenagers unharmed. One guy said, ‘I have
four or five I could tell you about.'” For many post-apocalyptic
storytellers, the causes of a global catastrophe are less important
than how humanity deals with the aftermath. Kevin Barry’s novel City
of Bohane is set in a futuristic west of Ireland. “When I started
writing, I had no idea it was set in the future until I started the
first chapter,” says the Limerick-born writer. “My intention was just
to build a demented Irish city of my own. The setting meant I could
invent at will – I could make up all the rules. I didn’t want to
explain how it got to the condition it was in. I wanted to present
this world as a fait accompli, where they have Irish accents, but that
is at much as we know.”

Film-makers and writers agree that a post-apocalyptic world would not
be pretty. All the characters in The Survivalist are killers.
Fingleton’s film has references to the Armenian genocide of the First
World War and the death camps of Nazi Germany. By Fingleton’s
reckoning, human morality is just a means of social control. When all
hell breaks loose, morality dissolves. New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina and the riots in England in August 2011 are prime
examples.

“There’s a theory that genocides are precipitated by fluctuating
population ratios within ethnic groups,” says Fingleton. “If you look
at every major sectarian conflict of the 20th century – Rwanda,
Northern Ireland, Germany – populations were changing rapidly at the
point violence broke out. This suggests we have an alternately
co-operative and violent strategy to survive.

“Right now we are in a cooperative phase of civilisation. At the same
time, there is an advantage to being the first person to take out the
machete. Chimpanzees behave in this fashion – they form alliances,
break alliances, wipe out other tribes. It’s extremely violent.”

Post-apocalyptic fiction looks to the future but perhaps says more
about the present. Only Ever Yours, the debut novel of Co Cork author
Louise O’Neill, explores a time after environmental collapse, in which
females are no longer born naturally but genetically engineered for
the purpose of pleasing men.

“Dystopian fiction such as Nineteen Eighty-Four or The Handmaid’s Tale
takes elements of our culture today and pushes them to the Nth
degree,” explains O’Neill. “It acts like a fable, a warning. It makes
people examine their own social morals and ideas about culture. My
book is primarily concerned with feminist issues, the role of women in
society. I tried to take problematic elements from society we accept
as normal – casual sexism, the objectification of women – and push
them as far as I could.”

Although City of Bohane is set in 2053, Barry considers it his Celtic
tiger novel. “It’s a response to those mad, crazy, vulgar new energies
that were sweeping over tormented little Irish cities at the time I
was writing it, in the late Noughties,” he says. “At some level you
are always responding to the world around you.”

” Post-apocalyptic fiction ultimately leaves its audience with a
question: would you have what it takes to survive when civilisation
goes down the tubes? “Not a chance,” says Horgan, laughing. “Someone
who makes films in a world where you need to make fires?chan Som worl
If everything falls down tomorrow, I’m somebody’s breakfast.”

tomo breakf Fing surviv woul ” Fingleton agrees. “I wouldn’t survive –
I’m a writer. My skills wouldn’t be well suited. The reins would be
handed over to people who are disenfranchised. In a future calamity,
they will inherit the earth.” peop inheri

Dystopian fiction acts as a fable, a warning