Reddit reviews Earth Abides: A Novel

George R. Stewart's Earth Abides more or less explores this exact theme. It's kind of like TWD meets Life After People but without zombies. An amazing read if you're interested.

Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart, is one of the best books I've ever read. I highly recommend it.

Science Fiction : Ray Bradbury - His books are classic , also Earth Abides by George R.Steward

Earth Abides is set in Berkeley, California after a plague apocalypse. The tech is a bit out of date (written in 1949) but the principles of when power and water (aquifers) would fail, when vehicles and guns would lose their viability, etc make a nice starting point. Can probably find it at the library or Half Price books fairly easily.

I really enjoyed Earth Abides.

These are books which I have read twice or more and would read again and again on the topic of post-collapse:

Alas Babylon

On the Beach

The Postman - not like the movie with Kevin Costner (just based upon and quite different)

One Second After - currently the most realistic and scariest of the bunch I think.

Earth Abides

Lucifer's Hammer - this one I wouldn't read without many years between as the start is sooooo slow but the second half is good.

Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection
Don Roff, Chris Lane

Day by Day Armageddon
J. L. Bourne

Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile
J. L. Bourne

Earth Abides
George R. Stewart

Swan Song
Robert McCammon

The Road
Cormac McCarthy

edit: This covers a good array of subjects on different ways the world might perish. All fiction also.

More of a Bry book but The Earth Abides

Those non-perishable food stores would be depleted. 7 billion people aren't going to die over night.

The spread of the virus will be swift. One of the causes of the 1918 epidemic was increased travel. Times that factor by about a thousand, now. Air travel is a virus's best friend. So, it's going to get everywhere, fast.

What will be different from the 1918 epidemic is that less of the world now suffers from contributory factors that existed in 1918. So even though the spread would be more rapid, people would be able to hold on longer before finally succumbing. This extended timeline means you have to provide services to them. Water and food being the top of the list.

The production of necessities would drop to zero or near zero before the final curtain drops. (Workers are sick or dead, or have fled to where they think they will be safe.) Those stocked stores and warehouses would be cleaned out in a matter of a couple of months. Probably weeks.

Lets remember, for the sake of this scenario, the mortality rate is ultimately going to be 98%. No matter what.

Technology: Forget about it. You'll lose electricity within weeks of the final death toll. Those plants need constant attention. Then add in the nuclear plants melting down. All of them going down around the world at the same time is going to create another wave of death, and create uninhabitable lands.

You'll have cars for a little bit, but that will disappear quickly.

If you're sticking to the OP's two year scenario, yes, with the exception of the food, there would be things that would work for awhile. But I said at the outset that I was addressing further down the road. Two years is just everyone still in shock and digging for potatoes. Things are going to change and evolve from the initial few years.

Remember, there are only 140,000,000 people in the entire world. No idea how many people have what skill sets, where they are: widely dispersed, pockets of them highly concentrated in certain areas. That's not very many people. But they're going to be widely distributed around the planet.

We have 326,000,000 people in the U.S. So out of 140,000,000 survivors around the world, how many do you realistically think will be here, or in any country for that matter.

The best book I've ever read on this scenario, and I'm sure most people in this sub have read is, Earth Abides, by John Stewart. It's fiction, but it's a pretty good representation of what this would be like.

• Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
  
• Introduction to Electrodynamics by David Griffiths
  
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Try Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon or Walter John William's Hrdwired for some good cyberpunk. For a good post-apocalypse novel you might like Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345487133/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/179-3482201-3691259

On The Beach by Nevil Shute is probably the closest I've read to that level hopeless apocalyptic scenarios.

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart is another one. It's not as dark, but it has some key things in common that you may like.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood No sci-fi or apocalypse thread is getting very far without me recommending it.

The novel "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart is an excellent example of this scenario:

"A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for."

http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Abides-George-R-Stewart/dp/0345487133

Obligatory wiki links: Dystopian Literature. Although, some of the titles listed don't seem to fit (The Dispossessed?). Nuclear holocaust fiction, and your general apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Some of the better/more popular ones:

• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Kate Wilhelm.
  
  
• Eternity Road Jack McDevitt. Well written, but not very insightful.
  
  
• The Postman David Brin.
  
  
• Mockingbird Walter Tevis. Great read. Think Idiocracy, with a serious take. Humanity's totally run by robots, everyone's forgotten how to read and think for themselves, and the world population's dropped to almost nothing.
  
  
• We Yevgeny Zamyatin. The inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. Not the best read IMO, but some people claim it's better than 1984. It's possible I read a poor translation.
  
  
• Island Aldous Huxley. It's a utopian island surrounded by a dystopian world. Might not fit in this list, but it's a good read if you like Huxley. I think it was his last novel.
  
  
• 1984 George Orwell. One of my favorite novels. I have a bumper sticker with the quote "War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery", which is a slogan from the book. (Also, a sticker on my mirror with "Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me"). The link points to Animal Farm and 1984.
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury. Another must read. Very well written, thought-provoking novel. Is it still required reading in schools?
  
  
• Earth Abides George Stewart.
  
  
• Alas, Babylon Pat Frank. Lucifer's Hammer Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle. I'm grouping these two together because they're very similar, both in setting and politics. I didn't really enjoy either. The politics were not at all subtle, and the characters fit too neatly into stereotypes, and too obviously the writer's hero fantasy. Still, they're pretty popular, so try them out and feel free to disagree with me.
  
  
• Brave New World Aldous Huxley. Really just a utopia that's rough around the edges, if I'm remembering it correctly (also called an anti-utopia, thank you wikipedia). Another must read.
  
  
• A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter Miller.
  
  
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Stanislaw Lem. Another favorite. I once created a text adventure based on this book. It was about as frustrating as that Hitchhiker's Guide game.
  
  
• The Road Cormac McCarthy.
  
  
• Philip K. Dick It's hard to keep track of PKD's novels, but some of them are dystopian, all of them worth reading. Favorites: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (also known as/inspired Blade Runner), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, The Man in the High Castle.
  
  
• The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood.
  
  
• Y: The Last Man A graphical novel/comic collection. Decent art, great story.
  
  Zombies: World War Z, Raise the Dead, Marvel Zombies, Zombie Survival Guide, Day By Day Armageddon, I Am Legend.
  
  Also, just for kicks, some of my favorite dystopian movies:
  Brazil, Soylent Green, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Akira, Children of Men, Dark City, A Boy and His Dog, Logan's Run, Idiocracy, Equillibrium.

I can't think of 3, because most of the authors I love were never really "known" enough to become forgotten. But I will mention two of those:

• Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall was the only book he (she?) wrote, but it was a total masterpiece.
  
• George Stewart also wrote only one novel: the excellent post-apocalyptic story Earth Abides.

possibly 'Earth Abides' by George R. Stewart? It starts out much in the way you specify although it does take it's own turn.

Swan Song by Robert McCammon

Earth Abides by George Stewart

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

Z for Zachariah Robert O'Brien

Deathlands series 116 books so far.

The Last Ranger by Craig Sargent. "Good" is debatable

The Road Cormac McCarthy

The Postman David Brin

The End is Nigh Ed. by John Joseph Adams. This just came out.

Earth Abides it's the book that inspired The Stand and I liked it quite a bit more though that may just be because the second half of The Stand disappointed the hell out of me.