Hacker Cinema
The Postman
1997 · Film · 178 min
Directed by Kevin Costner
In 2013, there are no highways, no I-ways, no dreams of a better tomorrow, only scattered survivors across what was once the United States. Into this apocalyptic wasteland comes an enigmatic drifter with a mule, a knack for Shakespeare, and something yet undiscovered: the power to inspire hope.
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8 comments on Hacker News
There’s even a movie: the Postman :) (everybody hated that movie)
The Book of Eli War of the Worlds 2012 Day of the Triffids (TV series) The Bodysnatchers Waterworld The Postman Contagion
His cameo in The Postman was the best part of that movie.
One may jest but the subtext of The Postman (particularly the David Brin novel, which I can recommend) is analysing which pre-apocalyptic institutional operating models are predisposed (or otherwise) to being rebooted/reconstituted even after the loss of all staff and centralised records, which is a definition of business continuity and process resilience I certainly intended to be in scope of the remark above.
Which is to say, Kevin Costner did make a movie about it. Just not a good one.
In practice though you can simulate/stimulate most of the failure mode conditions of central control dependencies by parking a delivery truck underground, or addressing something to a farm.
You're probably thinking of The Postman (1997)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119925/
Usually special operations/espionage/post-apocalypse type fiction. Some recent examples:
- The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (I've re-read this a number of times)
- The Postman by David Brin (Again, re-read this many times). Nothing like the movie.
- Sapiens
- The book series by Dalton Fury (RIP). His fiction is great, and if you do a little OSINT on the places in the book, you can see that he's describing these places from first-hand experience. Extremely realistic and you get the sense that many of these events really happened and are fictionalized to bypass censorship. I've re-read his book series at least 7 times. Easy reads.
- One Second After by William R. Forstchen. Although I have some minor issues with things in it, it's a fun post-apoc book.
- Anything by Derek Sivers. His writing is concise.
- The Terminal List by Jack Carr. Pretty good, not quite as good as Dalton Fury, but will read the next in the series.
- Bunches of tech books
I am very picky about the fiction I'll read but am open to unsolicited suggestions. Prefer post-apoc type stuff. Can't really get into fantasy. It needs to be an easy read because I have a house full of kids and no privacy.
There is an idea! Slow-coin, all the hashes have to be calculated by hand and passed by mail. A kind of anonymous distributed sharia scheme. I think I just saved the US postal service. Beat that Kevin Costner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman_(film)
Yeah, that was only half a joke. At some point, the only things that are worth anything are things that have utility. Money isn't intrinsically useful, it's only useful in what others will trade for it.
The Postman, while it was resoundingly mocked as a movie, was a really chilling book that dealt with what happens when you get to that point.