...Lord of the Flies. The 100 is about a far future where humanity lives on a space station and they send all the delinquent youths back to Earth to determine is the planet is habitable. … Um, they’ve proven they can’t be trusted so you send them on an important mission to see if earth was survivable? Good plan.
Kill the pig!
All the 100 have these wristbands that monitor their vitals and let the folks up on the space station know they’re alive and thriving or dying slowly. Of course the take-charge psycho realizes you can just take the wristbands off and let the people who “sent then down to die” think they’re dead and dying.
There’s like one black guy and he’s the noble voice of reason. While their leader is all “they’ll make us prisoners and poor again.”
But reason, neither heartfelt nor rage-filled, won’t do much when they have to face Grounders! Whats? People who stayed on Earth and survived by adapting and becoming something no longer human…
We have fundamental, moral differences. Being good is right! Being bad is fun!
So there are a bunch of youths running around on the surface being total assholes while monsters lurk. Some want to be good, some want to be bad. That’s essentially the plot. Also, that’s essentially the plot of Lord of the Flies.
They’re nerds, bullies, brats, and followers. There’s cool kids picking on losers, noble and strong kids trying to do the right things, and a bunch of expendable others to either punch or defend.
There isn’t a conch … actually, the one guy who decided to be in charge has a gun and everyone else has shanks.
We’re up here, and they’re down there. We should kill people up here so people up here can live. I disagree…
The unique (and only interesting) aspect is the people on The Arc (Get it? like Noah’s.) trying to survive and figure out what’s going on. The council keeps talking able a culling and the engineers are noticing that that drop ship that was ejected because of a serious malfunction didn’t leave any damage and no one’s heard from any of the prisoners who are under some mysterious quarantine.
Humanity is screwed from above and below. I’m currently rooting for the Grounders to kill the 100 and the engineers to use the fact that they’re THE ENGINEERS on a SPACE STATION to their advantage.
Here’s the super-long official summary of The 100:
Because The CW…
Ninety-seven years ago, nuclear Armageddon decimated planet Earth, destroying civilization. The only survivors were the 400 inhabitants of 12 international space stations that were in orbit at the time. Three generations have been born in space, the survivors now number 4,000, and resources are running out on their dying “Ark” – the 12 stations now linked together and repurposed to keep the survivors alive. Draconian measures including capital punishment and population control are the order of the day, as the leaders of the Ark take ruthless steps to ensure their future, including secretly exiling a group of 100 juvenile prisoners to the Earth’s surface to test whether it’s habitable. For the first time in nearly a century, humans have returned to planet Earth. Among the 100 exiles are Clarke, the bright teenage daughter of the Ark’s chief medical officer; Wells, son of the Ark’s Chancellor; the daredevil Finn; and the brother/sister duo Bellamy and Octavia, whose illegal sibling status has always led them to flaunt the rules. Technologically blind to what’s happening on the planet below them, the Ark’s leaders – Clarke’s widowed mother, Abby; the Chancellor, Jaha; and his shadowy second in command, Kane – are faced with difficult decisions about life, death and the continued existence of the human race. For the 100 young people on Earth, however, the alien planet they’ve never known is a mysterious realm that can be magical one moment and lethal the next. With the survival of the human race entirely in their hands, THE 100 must find a way to transcend their differences, unite and forge a new path on a wildly changed Earth that’s primitive, intense and teeming with the unknown.
Want to get rich quick at the end of the world? Stock up on shit nobody needs. Seriously. After six months of roughing it and cowering in fear and smelling something foul every time you sit down or raise your arm, you’d do just about anything for a hint of comfort.
The key is, people can and will do without most of the amenities they have access to in daily life. People don’t need delicious food but they travel, and search, and pay and wait just to get what might be delicious food. People don’t need most things, but they want so, so much stuff.
This is where you come in. Smart people pack what they need or what they can carry. They have rations, MREs, bottled water, antiseptic spray and the like.You, my entrepreneurial friend, you will have random shit nobody needs but everybody wants.
I spent (and am still spending) the week at a giant national training mandated, organized, and run by my job. As I sat in theback of the auditorium and listened to people chant and cheer and say motivational things to one another and generally embrace the corporate culture, my mind began to wander.
What if motivational culture, structure, schedules, and tradition we all that some people brought with them through to the post-apocalyptic world. These things are what make many difficult situations tolerable. There is a shared language and bonding in the quirkiness and need for these tools.
However, if the situation did not call for these tools and the person on stage was not a motivational speaker but a tyrannical misanthrope, we’d have ourselves a cult [1. I have a very active imagination…].
I wondered what this would look like if that hypothetical tyrant on stage was speaking, not to employees, but to survivors. What would it look like, or even feel like if this was how every morning started before your rations were handed over. Many of your needs would be covered, from food to socialization and your survival would be based on community membership. The leader doesn’t even need to be a tyrant [2. but it’s more fun to think he is], Your leaders could simply be false prophets, motivational speakers, sales folk, a resourceful marketing team, a boy band, a cheer squad, or some other individual or small group with both charisma and a respect-demanding demeanor. Continue reading “The Pros and Cons of Post-Apocalyptic Cults”
