I have always loved reading science fiction. As I was earning my undergraduate degree in Chemistry, learning the limits of the scientific method, reading science fiction allowed another side of my mind to explore what if: "What if there were no limits?"; "What if the impossible where possible?"; "What if we humans were something else?" Strictly fun, so to speak. Not reality at all.
My second exposure to post-apocalyptic fiction was Lucifer's Hammer, a 1978 Hugo-nominee by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It's the story of the buildup to and early follow on of a comet strike. (My first post-apocalyptic novel was Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank.) In Lucifer's Hammer, Harvey Randall is the producer of a documentary series about the coming approach of a small comet and the story of earth scientists' efforts to gather data about the comet. While gathering "man in the street" interviews about the approaching comet, he discovers rising end-of-the-world alarm, and a desire by some for escape from the existing world order.
For Harvey Randall himself, it's the mortgage on the house and the tuition for his son's school that keeps him trapped in his job. For his next door neighbor, Gordie Vance the banker, it's the embezzlement. For Maureen Jellison, the Senator's daughter, it's the life of a socialite, empty of purpose. And so on.
Suddenly, the comet strike that is a million-to-one odds against occurs, and millions of people are dying. People lose that modern world, lose all that technology, and discover that the simpler life they had romanticized wasn't such an easy life.
