After the Apocalypse is a serial podcast that tells the story of the survivors of a 21st century plague that has catastrophically wiped out 90% of human population. Will they be able to survive? What happens to our modern world when the great plague comes? Can humankind survive and learn, or will it devolve into a dark ages nightmare of our worst traits? Listen to the story of After the Apocalypse and find out.

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After the Apocalypse is written and produced by Chris Russell (that’s me) aftertheapocalypse.me

The show is narrated by Robert Weinheimer who’s work can be found at https://commandvoices.com/

The intro and outro music is by Bobby Quinn https://www.fiverr.com/bobbyquinnc

Thank you for listening to After the apocalypse. Make sure to subscribe and please tell your friends. Because this show can only survive the apocalypse with your help.

Be a good survivor and spread the word. Go onto your favorite podcast service and write a review.

One of the best ways to directly support the show is through our Patreon page –go to patreon.com/AfterTheApocalypse https://www.patreon.com/AftertheApocalypse

Links to everything can be found in the episode and show notes.

You can find out more about the show at our website www.aftertheapocalypse.me

Until next week. Thank you for listening and keep surviving.

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After the Apocalypse

A Pandemic Survival Story

Season two, Episode Eight “The King”

The King’s given name was Andre Bobette.

No one called him that.

No one had ever called him that.

When he was a kid his hard-drinking, white-trash father had called him ‘Bubba’.

At least he had, as long as that miscreant loser was still living with them in the double-wide trailer.

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S2 E8 The King – Outro

Hello my survivor friends. Welcome back. How’s the apocalypse going for you these days?

This was a long episode. 3500+ words. I thought about breaking it up into two episodes, but it seemed to hang together well enough, and it advances the story line in the right direction.

I just listened to Roberts read of the King’s backstory – OH MY GOD! It was terrifying!

Great work.

Why does Janet care so much about what these bad guys are doing? Because she sees the bigger picture. She sees that this is one of those moments in the arc of time when direct action by a few individuals can determine or alter the broader outcome.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season two, Episode Seventeen, “Change of Management”

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It was like a scene from an old western.

Close ups of scared faces.

The smell of fear pheromones thick in the air.

The momentary stillness of the confrontation was punctuated by the susurration of a dusty wind in the parking lot. Crows cried complaints from the trees. There was the brushing crinkle of clothes and shoe leather as the men shifted nervously.

The mood was broken by Tasker, moaning, half mumbling, his confident swagger erased by the gun in his ear.

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Outro S2 E17

Greetings my survivor friends. How are we all doing in this weird and wonderful apocalypse?

I was reading some of the iTunes and Audible reviews – thanks for those by the way – and there was one grumbling about having to listen through these outros.

Here is your simple solution my friends. As soon as you hear Robert’s narration stop and the outro music play, you can hit that “skip to the end” button and you’re not going to miss anything except a commercial from Acast and my ramblings.

Feel free.

I won’t be offended.

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You can reach me directly at cyktrussell at Gmail.

Have a greats weekend everyone and until next time... Keep Surviving.

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Kindle Vella Story -> https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09LTRC8RH

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After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season One, Episode Eighteen - “The Shot”

(Narrator)

What runs through the mind of a dog?

Not just a dog, but a soldier and a veteran.

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BILL THE DOG (think of him as a soldier grunt. He speaks simply and mostly in the present tense, but with urgency:

Now.

It is quiet. I am alert.

My pack is safe.

I see them on the roof of the building. The large cat waits below.

The pack is my duty. I protect the pack. I fight and die for the pack.

I hold here out of reach of the cat, waiting. It is hot. I am thirsty and hungry.

But I will wait. Until my new man says otherwise.

The new man commands less than my soldier.

The new man gives commands.

But the woman acts like pack leader.

There is only now. There is only the mission.

I can fight. I can harass. I can run.

But I must protect the pack.

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Outro S1 E18 – The Shot

Hello my survivor friends. How’s the apocalypse going? The is Chris your host fro this apocalyptic after-party. Thank you for showing up and joining the old man and KJ for an adventure!

https://shows.acast.com/after-the-apocalypse

I really liked Robert’s read of this one. I think he got the dialogue just right. I had written these two chapters about the animal farm in 2020 during the height of the pandemic while I was experimenting with this universe to see if it merited the effort of my attention.

I wrote it originally as a two-parter with the cliff-hanger. This time around I tried to cram it into 1 episode but it would not be crammed so we left the original 2-parter structure with the cliff hanger and fleshed out the dialogue a bit.

I think it works.

We are 2 episodes away from wrapping up season 1. Like I said before, we are going to take a break after episode 20 and turn the first season into a paperback, ebook and audio book. The mechanics of this are not unfamiliar to me. I have done it before, but not for a couple years.

I contracted a starving artist to work on a cover for me and another to edit it back into book form. The difference between writing for an audio read and a regular read is minor but I think it’s worth the help.

When I write for audio I break up the paragraphs into smaller chunks and phrases to reinforce the cadence. So I’m having a nice lady from Jamaica go through and pull some of those back together for readability. Also she’ll delete all the audio instruction notes, look for typos and blatant grammar issues, like dangling participles.

I would love to have any of you who are readers support the book launch if you’re game. I could use typo hunters. You get a pre-release of the book. Come over and join the FaceBook group for After the Apocalypse and join the team.

I’ll apologize for making you work hard, but There are a bunch of Facebook groups and pages called After the Apocalypse, mine is https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldmanapocalypse/

Another thing I’ll be recruiting for is a book launch team. In couple months when all this comes together I’ll need help in, for lack of a better word, marketing. Again, FaceBook, After the apocalypse.

Since we last talked I’ve been reading a Robert Heinlein, retrospective called Requiem, which if you are interested you can procure on Thriftbooks for $5.29. It a collection of “unreleased” stories and other stuff. One of the stories is a novella he wrote in 1950 called Destination Moon.

You may know him from his more famous works, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

This novella or short story depending on your appetite is followed by piece, penned by Heinlein about the mak...

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Fourteen, “Run”

Janet ran...

...and the obscenities pouring from the man she had just left bleeding in the dirt faded away...

like the man himself.

He was nothing. He was a threat that had been dealt with.

Like she always dealt with threats.

She had the hard skills, built up over years of practice. She could dominate most situations. Her force of will bent others to her path.

And if they didn’t bend, they got run over or shoved aside.

KJ the Killer.

...and she ran.

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Outro S1E14

Hello my fellow survivors. How is the apocalypse treating you?

This is Chris your host. And a fine Saturday morning it is up here in New England.

We had a storm fly through yesterday with wind and rain and snow.

I was worried about our friend Tim who has been helping with the story ideas and editing. He’s been out on the Appalachian trail for 2 weeks. He’s currently passing through the area near where Janet and the old man are struggling to survive the apocalypse in our story.

Imagine if a storm like this hit out in the Smoky Mountains while they’re out in the trail? I’ll have to see if we can work a storm into the story.

When I was a teenager, I spent a week hiking in the Joyce Kilmer National Forest which is near there, a bit south. It would have been this time of year.

I remember we did get an ice storms a couple days, but you just crawl into your tent and wait it out. I remember waking up an hitting the plastic tarp overhead and the ice shattering and sliding off.

But we survived. I would have been 16 and just rolling out of wrestling season, so stupid but indestructible.

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Speaking of hiking adventures in the wilderness, my wife forced me to watch a movie called Into the Grizzly Maze from 2015, mostly because she likes to look at the actor James Marsden.

I’ll be honest it was a silly movie about an angry Grizzly bear who likes to eat people. For some reason they talked some A-list talent into it. Billy Bob Thorton is underused as the bear hunter, think Quint from Jaws.

Thomas Jane was one of the main characters, who is one of my favorite actors, you may know him as detective Joe Miller in The Expanse, which is one of the best hard space Scifi shows to come out recently.

Or, for you Marvel fans, Thomas Jane was the original Punisher who went after John Travolta in 2004.

God knows how these actors got caught up in the hot mess that is ‘Grizzly Maze”. I suspect a paycheck was involved.

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Looking out my office window this morning, the forsythia is out and my cherry tree is about to bloom.

What did you think of this week’s story?

Janet is discovering or rediscovering her strength and how it can help her in the Apocalypse.

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I’ve been reading through a SciFi series called the Lost Fleet over the last year. I’m about to crack into the 8th and final book. It’s a Space Epic but I also realized last night that it parallels Xenophon’s Anabasis.

Bear with me, here. Xenophon was a Greek mercenary with a force of 10,000 other Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to help him seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II, in 401 BC.

Note this is before Rome, and a70 years before Alexander the Great.

Anyhow, they march deep into Babylon and Cyrus gets killed in b...