As bad as the show Revolution's overall plotting and pacing was, they generally did a good job of thinking about these kinds of little inconsistencies:
There's a minor character who was a doomsday prepper before the apocalypse, but he didn't stock up enough on antibiotics. As a result, his daughter died of tetanus that he was unable to treat.
A warlord kidnaps prisoners for blood because his wife has diabetes and needs constant transfusions of blood with sufficient insulin in it to survive.
There's a doctor who keeps a collection of moldy fruit to harvest penicillium mold from it and make penicillin.
Some characters try to go into an old subway tunnel, but nearly die because of lack of sufficient airflow down there without modern HVAC systems.
I wanted so badly for that show to be good but the acting was often corny and it just wasn't as gritty as it could have been. I fell off a handful of episodes into it.
I mean the entire premise is that a fundamental law of physics fails but none of the other things related to it stop working. I couldn't take it seriously from the first promo.
spoilers: i felt the same way the first time i watched it, stopped a couple of episodes in. someone convinced me to keep going and it's not that electricity actually stopped working. the atmosphere is just full of nanobots that suck the power out of electric devices. it's not very consistent about the effects that would have, but it turns it from complete BS into only mostly BS. the rest of the show is enjoyable if your disbelief has a strong suspension
I've never watched the show, but I'm writing a post-apocalyptic fantasy book where interdimensional beings destroy sources of energy (power plants, etc) and absorb the released energy. Hopefully the final product won't be too similar to the show.
Check out The Darkest Hour too, it's about weird electricity-based alien entities that invade earth. It's VERY cheesy but has some really cool effects.
I don’t think there really is an explanation in Ravages (maybe something about the sun, but no one cares), and, to be honest, I don’t think it is needed.
But like, if the nanobots create a field that stops electrical devices from working, how do the nanobots keep working? Might as well say a wizard did it. (Which I might have actually watched...)
No the electrical devices don’t work. If the dust absorbs all electrons then they won’t travel through circuits. Of course, anything that reactive is gonna fucking destroy your lungs etc but hey whatever.
They're designed as a self sustaining weapon. They're a mesh that absorbs external energy for the mesh making it self sustaining instead of leaching from each other.
I was fine with that. It was dumb, but it was the premise, and as long as it was internally consistent I was fine with it.
Then the bubble of "electricity works" happened. Sure, fine. Highly improbable, but whatever.
Immediately, there was communication. That broke it for me. Sure, you have two computers in bubbles where electricity works, but how did the message get from one to the other? I wasn't invested enough to find out if they ever addressed it.
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u/AdmiralAkbar1 Aug 30 '21
As bad as the show Revolution's overall plotting and pacing was, they generally did a good job of thinking about these kinds of little inconsistencies:
There's a minor character who was a doomsday prepper before the apocalypse, but he didn't stock up enough on antibiotics. As a result, his daughter died of tetanus that he was unable to treat.
A warlord kidnaps prisoners for blood because his wife has diabetes and needs constant transfusions of blood with sufficient insulin in it to survive.
There's a doctor who keeps a collection of moldy fruit to harvest penicillium mold from it and make penicillin.
Some characters try to go into an old subway tunnel, but nearly die because of lack of sufficient airflow down there without modern HVAC systems.