It doesn't, or at least didn't originally, mean 'the end of the world', and the phrase 'post-apocalyptic' existed long before the site.
edited 27th Apr '11 1:06:47 AM by halfmillennium
The Final ECW Champion
You sure?
I'm pretty sure the book of Revelation is about the end of the world and the books of Daniel is about what is leading up to it. As opposed to the Gotterdammerung, where the world would continue after all the gods except Balder were dead.
Lost in Space
We keep having this little debate whenever a definitional problem comes up. This wiki does not attempt to be prescriptive, or to enforce proper usage. We describe the common usage of words and terms. Whether "apocalypse" specifically and only means "total destruction" is irrelevant given that the majority of people seem to have no trouble understanding tropes with that word in it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Cider, sticking to etymology, Apocalypse pretty much means Revelation if you go back far enough. But that's not the point. In modern context, it doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world. As he said, people understand it.
edited 27th Apr '11 9:36:14 AM by halfmillennium
Zzzzzzzzzz
Even if you're sticking strictly to etymology, "apocalypse" means "revelation, disclosure, to bring out from concealment", not "the end of the world." And "Gotterdammerung", strictly speaking, is not "the end of the world" either; it's "the twilight of the gods".
edited 27th Apr '11 11:44:59 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
The Final ECW Champion
I meant Gotterdammerung is about how the time we live in has declined from a better age and how its going to keep declining. An event that cause the end of the world as we know it, but life on Earth goes on would be a Gotterdammerung. Twilight of the gods is just the literal translation. The apocalypse referred to in revelation is the end of days. Humanity is done. If you're around post apocalypse it wasn't the apocalypse.
Since its a term older than the Wiki I'll leave it be, I didn't know. I just saw something we had that looked wrong.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
This wiki seems to have a very wide range of acceptance of what counts as an apocalypse, and it bugs me because the word means the end of the world. There shouldn't be a such thing as a post apocalyptic landscape because if its still there the world isn't over, but hell, that's its own trope! I think most cases the word people were really looking for is Götterdämmerung, which is about decline rather than the end.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack