Trying to write a post apocalyptic story with no guns or vehicles

I had an idea for a post apocalyptic story where people no longer use guns but return to medieval weapons like swords. Vehiclar transportation has become extinct and people have taken back to traveling on horseback and by foot. No democracy only anarchy. Is there a way to justify such plot elements besides a poor Hand Wave?

(that goes in World Building)

Well, if it's post-apocalyptic, you'll need to set the time-frame of your story far enough after the Big One that any surviving pre-war technology has long since ceased to function and has been broken up for its useful scrap metals. Rifle barrels re-forged into swords that have been passed down for generations, or something like that.

Gasoline only has a shelf life of about four years before it goes stale and begins to lose its volatility. But ammunition can last indefinitely if it's not subjected to extremes of temperature and humidity, especially if it's sealed in a waterproof, airtight container. That's assuming, of course, that it wasn't all used up during the war and its immediate aftermath, including the stuff in civilian hands. I think you'd have to skip ahead at least a century, probably more like two or three.

edited 15th Apr '16 8:55:51 PM by pwiegle

Gun are never going away I'm afraid without a major hand wave. Modern weapons yes, but I've never held a gun in my life and I know enough to make a musket out of a pipe, and someone else likely knows how to mix up some explosive to make it work, and with a bit more machining i could easily rifle that sucker.

The chemistry of nitrocellulose is even easier than that of gunpowder and is more reliably predictable (gunpowder is heavily dependent on the quality of the charcoal) and those two are hardly the only fairly-easily-manufactured explosives that could be used to propel a projectile down a tube.

Manufacturing anything from a muzzle-loader to breech-loaders of various complexities is simply a matter of time, effort and aptitude.

Considering "firearm" has encompassed everything from a metal pot on a stick with a simple fuse to the most complex modern weapons, the only post-apocalyptic civilisation that wouldn't have the knowledge to make firearms would involve the deaths of every living human on the planet and humankind being supplanted by mutant cockroaches.

Even that might not be enough!t

You could take a look at The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I'm about 3/5 of the way through it and so far there has been exactly one functioning vehicle, easily removed from the setting (it drives by the protagonists and is never seen again) and the protagonists have a gun with two bullets, again, easily removed from the setting (though not the plot—the gun is very significant in that the main character carries it as a way to kill himself and/or his son if absolutely necessary, since they're traveling through one of the most desolate Crapsack World wastelands imaginable).

Reading that book may give you some ideas for how to write a post-apocalyptic setting with no guns or vehicles, because even though there are a few guns and one vehicle, they're so few that they could be kept out of a story in the setting without altering the setting at all.

By the way, even medieval ages had cannon.

I'm wondering if it has to be distant future apocalypse at all if a medieval swords (and bows, slings, ballistae etc) and horses/walking thing is wanted.

Is there anything about the story that requires it to be set after the fall of our current world? If not, have you considered the possibility of an alt-history apocalypse set in Medieval times after some form of disaster wipes out the ruling classes (which would have to include the Church of Rome which weilded immense political power then), plunging the land into anarchy?

It seems to me that it would require less Hand Waving to explain how all the kings, queens, barons, lords and the upper echelons of the Church got wiped out, leaving only the Middle and Lower classes running about in total anarchy, than it would to explain the lack of firearms and mechanised transportation - and the lack of ability for anyone to replicate them - after the collapse of our civilisation.

edited 21st Apr '16 8:59:54 PM by Wolf1066

It could be explained by a charismatic and powerful anti-technology cult or some sort of generalised loss of the ability to transmit information person-to-person (e.g. future generations post-apocalypse with different or simpler mental characteristics). I've read stories that use both of those premises.

That would do for a small part of the world, but people elsewhere would still gear up with firearms.

If it's an anarchy, no one but adherents of the cult would eschew firearms, the rest would call them "easy prey".

Well, the Road seems to imply that whatever disaster happened killed off most of humanity, disabled electronics (probably an EMP), and rendered virtually all land untenable. The inability to grow food makes humanity completely dependent on preserved foods and, for many, cannibalism.

Alternately, Doomsday goes the medieval route instead of the Fallout route, but in that film it's a plague and a country-wide quarantine that plunges the land into chaos, so it's not a global situation, but it does have an example of the "post-apocalyptic society reverting to medieval stuff".

edited 22nd Apr '16 7:01:48 AM by SolipSchism

Even if there's no gasoline left, someone might still be able to keep an old car or truck running, using home-brewed alcohol for fuel, or modified with a wood-burning gassifier.

As an analogy, take for example all those old pre-1960 "yank tanks" in Cuba, that they've managed to keep running despite a fifty-year embargo on replacement parts.

come to think of it: does it have to be post apocalyptic Now? Dark souls is pretty much "post apocalyptic fantasy", and any work set in the bubonic plague could be called "post apocalyptic", I get you want to use today for your setting, and to be honest where poking holes an in idea you can ignore, who cares WHY they don't use guns any more, that's what will suspension of belief is for, but these are some other ideas you could use.

Here are very simple two ideas.

1. Make the apocalypse happen before the discovery of gunpowder.

2. Make it that whatever caused the apocalypse make it impossible for gunpowder to be used. For example, maybe it did something to the atmosphere that makes gunpowder ultra toxic and such.

Throwing on a blind guess based on , maybe the apocalypse made the atmosphere somehow too damp for gunpower to go off, thus rendering most guns useless.

Or the apocalypse scoured the Earth in a way it rendered all deposits of gunpowder material useless somehow..

It doesn't work that way, not without some major handwaving and re-writing of the way chemistry, physics, and the world's climate works.

In the Gor series of novels, Medieval Stasis was enforced by a mysterious group of aliens known as the Priest-Kings, because reasons. Anyone who constructed firearms or other technological weaponry (like rockets or cannon) would "die the flame-death," which was much like being struck by a heat-ray from the sky.

edited 25th Apr '16 7:29:29 PM by pwiegle

, Or you could increase the oxygen levels by a factor 5 or so (to be in tune with the levels of the time of the dinosaurs). So the problem isn't that there isn't combustion, but rather that there is too much.

So, you can use a gun or a vehicle, but it risks blowing up.

As a posssible bonus to your story, this also allows for larger animals (particularly insects), and possibly plants. Also, people can run/walk/exert themselves longer.

edited 26th Apr '16 1:42:30 AM by Sharur

Aren't excessively high oxygen levels toxic?