The Last Man on Earth is Not Alone

"Beware the beast man for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed."
-sacred text of the Lawgiver, The Planet of the Apes

The Barbarians

Opposing the rebuilding survivor population are the Barbarians. Also survivors, the Barbarians have been changed in some way by the disaster. Barbarians fall into one of three categories: Deviants, Mutants, and Cults. The Barbarians actively threaten the goals of the surviving civilization, destroying structures, stealing resources, and kidnapping children.

The first type of Barbarian is the Mutant. Mutants have been physically changed or in some cases created by the disaster that has befallen the Earth. The giant scorpions and deadly invulnerable cockroaches of Damnation Alley are perfect examples of Mutants. The Mutant is mindless, driven only by animal instinct, although not all Mutants are changed animals. Some are mutated humans that have been changed by the disaster and reduced to not just animalistic but non-sentient levels of existence, responding only to their natural instinct and nothing more. The remaining aboveground humans in The Planet of the Apes are human mutants. They have lost their powers of speech and live in the jungles like animals. The Mutants are not usually overtly or purposely threatening the Civilized; they are looking out for themselves and protecting their own self-interests. But these mutant creatures are much more dangerous than their counterparts from before the disaster, and so are perceived as more of a threat. Animals become stronger and deadlier while humans become more animalistic without any capacity to think. They are the natural price that must be paid for the man-caused disaster.

Mutants usually only threaten the Civilized in their rebuilding stage. Given the Mutants' animalistic nature they become a danger when their territory is invaded or their expansion or migration brings them in contact with the Civilized. The roaches of Damnation Alley menace only when the town they infest is explored by the ungrounded civilized. The vampire-like Mutants of The Last Man on Earth try to break down the door of survivor Dr. Morgan's home on a nightly basis. In their animal-like state they can do little but bang at the doors and windows without the reasoning ability to plan a simple assault on Morgan's minimally fortified house. Animals were one of the first threats to humanity and after the disaster the Mutants are the first threats encountered by the rebuilding Civilized.

The next type of Barbarian is the Deviant. Deviants, as might be expected, live against the social norms of the civilized community. They are amoral, brutal and dangerous. Lord Humongous and his men in The Road Warrior are deviants. Their gang contrasts the virginal civilization of the refinery with their unapologetic sexuality. Wez, the mohawked dirtbike rider, wears bits of leather bondage-style gear and little else. His same-sex partner, the Golden Youth, rides with him on the back of his motorcycle. Although there is no explicit relationship between the two; Wez is later driven by vengeance after his companion's death. The rebuilding and reseeding must be done before repopulation can be considered. For a rebuilding civilization, any kind of sexuality that does not aim for procreation, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is a hedonistic act that wastes needed energies and goes against the moral strictures of the community-minded Civilized.

Just as the Mutants are given to pure animal instinct, the Deviants are still human, but have given themselves over to their innate, self-serving tendencies. With the reasoning ability to understand the desires of the Civilized, the Deviants still go against the pure and virtuous societies that the Civilized have tried to create after the disaster. The Civilized created laws to avoid another disaster, while the Deviants live outside the law, embracing the disaster as the way the world ought to be. The Deviants do not seek peaceful lives like the Civilized do; rather they personify the selfish weaknesses of mankind that led to disaster in the first place.

The Deviants come up against the Civilized over supplies. While the Civilized are in the process of reseeding and gathering of resources is when the Deviants become a threat. The Deviants of The Road Warrior claim to want only the gasoline that the Civilized have processed in their refinery. Carrot and his gang from The Ultimate Warrior raid the Baron's commune time and again for the fresh fruits that they have developed to grow. The Deviants allow the Civilized to work to create and harvest resources and then cunningly attempt to steal it.

Finally there are the Cults. The Cults are humans that have actually reordered and are attempting to rebuild society as well. What makes them Cults is that their value systems are in opposition to those of the Civilized. Often the Cults have embraced the idea that the world would be better off without humans and seek to wipe out the Civilized. Matthias and his "Family" in The Omega Man are typical Post-Apocalyptic Cultists. Physically, they have been changed into sun-fearing albinos; this visually separates the Cultists from all other survivors. Except for Matthias, the cultists display almost no free will once they join the Family and socially they are violently against the "creatures of the wheel." Matthias says that they seek to "erase history from the time that machinery and weapons threatened more than they offered." The underground humans of Beneath the Planet of the Apes are also a cult. They worship the one last leftover warhead, the Alpha Omega Bomb, as a god and believe their blistered appearance is a blessing from the "holy fallout." Like Matthias and his Family, The Cults consider themselves the next phase in human evolution. They believe that the disaster was a step forward for mankind, as that is what created the cult. But their existence is still a threat to the ways of the Civilized, though perhaps not as physical as the threat of a Mutant or as immediate as a Deviant. It is a long-term threat that will culminate in another battle for power.

While most Cults have gone through physical changes, like the Mutants, they maintain advanced human reasoning skills. They are able to work together for the good of their own community, a community that goes against the community of the Civilized. Since their dispute with the Civilized is not over territory or resources but over the future of the species the Cults threaten communities that have become concerned with repopulating. Matthias and his family hope for the infected children to "turn" and join them. They fight Neville for his territory, no because they want it, but because he philosophically opposes them. They believe the "creatures of the wheel" to be a scourge on the Earth and want Neville dead simply because he is one of these "creatures." If he is allowed to live he may find others like himself and breed. The Cults are rational enough to Rebuild, Reseed, and Repopulate just like the Civilized but there is only enough land and resources to sustain one of the two groups; whichever group can successfully Repopulate first will become the dominant force.

The Barbarians have a much more intimate relationship with the disaster than the Civilized. They owe their existence to the disaster, which created them (the Mutants), gave them power (the Deviants), and brought them together (the Cults). Even when they are not directly threatening the Civilized, they are a constant reminder of the disaster that mankind brought upon itself, a dark echo of the time before the disaster.