Functioning technology in post-apocalyptic setting?

I'm working on a post-apocalyptic comedy-drama told from the point-of-view of a young man who survived the viral outbreak that killed practically everyone else on the planet. I originally planned for technology to still function (even though it's been a few months since the outbreak killed everyone), so he could watch movies and listen to music and other such things (with him wondering how it's possible), but I started to reconsider. What do you guys think?

That's sounds fairly plausible. He may need to hook up some form of generator since the power grid may have failed after a few months. Coal and gas plants, no matter how automated, are probably out of fuel. Hydro-electric, nuclear and geothermal may still be operational but without someone making adjustments for the suddenly lowered load there's the possibility of something going wrong and them going into emergency shut-down.

But technology isn't going to break down in that short a period of time. When you say watching movies and listening to music what do you mean specifically? Because radio stations are going to be off the air because they're no one to queue up the music, but music players (be it a smartphone, mp3 player, CD or cassette) should all still be working fine as long as their power. Movies... well you don't have to replace a DVD player every couple of months so they'll be working fine, even if your protagonist does decide to get a new one via a five-fingered discount. As far as the cinemas go, I'm not that familiar with modern cinema projectors but given that they're not exposed to the elements they and the films they use should still be in good order.

Thanks for the response. I really appreciate it, especially its depth.

Alternately, an uncomfortably large percentage of the lifeline utilities may already have been automated by the time of the plague. (That the last human alive doesn't actually have to maintain or operate a whole lot makes for an amusing joke at humanity's expense.)

And modern cinemas are digital. If the files aren't sent digitally to the cinema, they plug in and play from hard drives or disc media.

There's one thing that modern post-superplague settings always seem to gloss over or handwave away: all the dead bodies.

If a majority of the population dies, there's going to be a shit-ton of corpses lying around and stinking up the place, with flies, rats, and other vermin feeding on them as they decompose. I would tend to think that, rather than hanging around to clean up the mess, a survivor would simply gather up what he needs and run off into the wilderness, well away from the ginormous charnel house that populated areas have become.

edited 18th Jun '17 11:26:39 AM by pwiegle

There's actually a pretty good explanation to sidestep that. If there was a quarantine order, the corpses would largely be indoors to begin with, and human decomposition is generally complete after a couple of months of exposure anyway.

Now, if the plague could jump species from human to, say, flies and scavengers... That's when the horror really starts, because then it wouldn't be just human corpses lying around.

(The funny thing about population density is, there's always going to be spaces that are easy enough to secure and clean, that will be relatively safe from these sorts of hazards, simply because people don't go there for extended periods of time. I can't guarantee the science behind it, but the top floor of a 10-story building ought to be a safe enough place to set up a tent on?)