The Last Man on Earth is Not Alone

"For being as dead as they were, I think they're coming back real fine. It's good stock."
-Cal, The Ultimate Warrior

The Civilized

After the immediate threat of disaster has passed, there are three things to do: rebuild, reseed, and repopulate. Those people who survive the disasters must attempt to accomplish these three things to reorder a new civilization from the one that they have lost. In order to achieve these goals the Civilized must appreciate the value of community over that of the individual. In all of the Post-Apocalyptic films some form of civilization has survived or reemerged from the ruins, seeking to thrive.

The group in The Ultimate Warrior is the walled-in community created by The Baron. In The Road Warrior the civilization has fortified themselves into the confines of a refinery. Both of these groups have attempted rebuilding first. They have constructed similar fortress-like compounds, with only one main gate that must be opened to admit people in and out, much like a drawbridge in an ancient castle. These small tribe-like communities represent the new civilization that has risen from the fallen civilization.

Not only does civilization physically rebuild itself, but the laws of that civilization must be rebuilt as well. The moral basis for the laws that govern the rebuilding of civilization speaks to the fact that all the members of the civilization have survived the disaster. Basic survival is all that remains during rebuilding and the new laws seek to conserve as much life as possible, at the expense of those who might threaten that survival. In Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Aunty Entity, the leader and builder of Bartertown, hires Max to fight a rival in Thunderdome, a structure in which all disputes are settled to the death in a game show-like atmosphere. Like the emerging civilized towns of the Western, Bartertown requires those entering the city to surrender all weapons while in town. Dr. Dealgood informs the crowd of the history of Thunderdome, saying "Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring, and that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now, busted up and everyone talking about hard rain. But we've learned by the dust of them all. Bartertown's learned. Now when men get to fighting it happens here and it finishes here. Two men enter, one man leaves." Created with knowledge of what came before as well as what went wrong, the law of Thunderdome is that if two men have a dispute they settle it once and for all between themselves. The rebuilt civilization attempts the tame the brutal Wasteland just as the expanding civilization of the Western seeks to tame the wild cowboy towns. The rebuilt laws ensure no uninvolved people will be hurt, as they were during the wars that killed so many in the post-nuclear Thunderdome reality.

Once the structures and laws of the new civilization have been established, the survivors can go on to the next most important task, which is reseeding of the land. Without access to renewable food sources, rebuilding would be futile and going on would be impossible. Before and during the rebuilding there are generally enough supplies left, in the form of canned goods and roaming animals, for short-term survival. With structures and social order restored to an acceptable level, the survivors can concentrate on cultivating a renewable, reliable food source. The Baron in The Ultimate Warrior is working to breed new strains of vegetables that can thrive in the new, toxic environment. Tomatoes are the first success and their seeds are more closely guarded than anything else in the compound. When Carson, the hired fighter, leaves for Sanctuary with the Baron's pregnant daughter, The Baron proves how important reseeding is when he tells Carson, "If it comes to saving one or the other, save the seeds." The seeds are more important than his daughter or his grandchild, because without them and the food source they promise, the human race will die. The Japanese Anime Fist of the North Star (1986) also takes place in a post-nuclear wasteland, and one character carries a bag of seeds. None of the characters initially seem interested in the seeds until the action moves to a reclaimed city. The survivors have rebuilt so much of the city and its laws that it is not an Oasis but had been born anew as a Sanctuary. When the seeds are mentioned here, the battle for them is much fiercer than it was in the wild of the Wasteland earlier in the film. The seeds have no importance until the rebuilding is sufficiently completed. Many other Post-Apocalyptic films take place after rebuilding and reseeding, and with those needs met, the civilizations then move on to the next step, repopulating.

The final goal of the survivors is repopulation. Fertile women, as mentioned earlier, are often the focus of quests in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, speaking to the quest to repopulate. In The Ultimate Warrior there are two babies, one unborn and one infant, but because the civilization has not truly reseeded, the well being of the children (repopulation) cannot be fully addressed. The Baron balks at sending Carson out of the compound to rescue the kidnapped infant, because while they are still attempting to reseed the important resource of Carson's fighting skills should not be squandered over the luxury of a baby. These concerns can only be the focus of a rebuilt, reseeded, and stabilizing civilization. Thematically, the future of the new generation occurs again and again. The narrator of The Road Warrior is the Feral Kid as an old man, who has grown up to become the leader of the escaped tribe. At the end of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Max rescues a tribe comprised entirely of children from a planeload of survivors. These children are the keys to the survival of mankind after the disaster. In After the Fall of New York the last remaining powers of the American government assign Percival to find the last fertile woman on earth. Five hundred of her eggs will be harvested so the human race can be reborn from this one woman. One rocket is left to escape the planet but without the woman's eggs to restart the human race the escape is useless.

If these goals are to be achieved satisfactorily the Civilized must put the needs of the community above the needs of the individual. Without the strength of the community as a whole, the goals of rebuilding, reseeding, and repopulating are meaningless and ultimately doomed. The laws that created Bartertown's Thunderdome speak to this belief of community over the individual; one man should die in order to keep the peace amongst all of the others. When a man is accused of stealing tomatoes in The Ultimate Warrior, the Civilized community that falls upon him en masse, binding and blindfolding him before evicting him from the compound to be murdered by the scavengers outside. Even the peace-loving members of the commune will exact this savage toll on one of their own if they believe that he values his desires over the viability of the community. Only once a community has met all of its goals and left the growth-stifling Oasis for Sanctuary can the Civilized begin to value individuality again.

The goals of the Post-Apocalyptic survivors must be met in the proper order by a united community; rebuilding the physical and moral structures, reseeding the earth to create a food source for the future, and then repopulating, creating and caring for the civilization that will rise from the ashes. If the order is disturbed or if the individual is valued over the community the needs of the Civilized will not be met satisfactorily and the new civilization's foundation will be shaky and susceptible to outside threats.