Reflections on a video game post Pandemic.
I can’t say I am totally sold on predictive programming as an influencer of future events. I don’t understand the underlying mechanics of how it could work. I view it mainly as coincidence. For example, before the Titanic sank someone wrote a novel about a ship that strikes an iceberg and sinks. The mind can create a multitude of scenarios which can develop from fiction to reality given enough time. The Titanic example is not illustrative of cause and effect. One can muse about ships sinking in a variety of ways. Can an interjection of a Meme grow and then birth into an event? Some believe that this is possible.
Mad Max is known as one of the better video games from a movie, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. The video game plot is vastly different from the movie where Max (Tom Hardy) plays as a supporting character to Charlize Theron’s lead. Even after 5 years the graphics are very well done.
It is, however, noticeable how far reaching the developers of Mad Max were in the back story regarding the collapse of civilization and law and order. Released in 2015 in support of the movie, Max’s story the oceans and waterways of the world dried up (no reason given) resulting in the demise of civilization and the division of society into fiefdoms of warlords. In fact many incidents of this fictional collapse mimic events going on in the United States in 2020.
As seen from the screenshot above, one of the things to collect in the game are historical artifacts which are basically grainy photos with messages on the back. These artifacts serve as the backstory for the apocalypse. In them we see things happening that are similar to 2020. Riots, protests, police cars being burned, epidemics, destruction of property, random killings and mass exodus from the cities.
What is not happening now is cannibalism, eating pets, military arrests (except outside of the USA), people forced into camps, military police making arrests and the loss of the internet. But is that the predictive future? Time will tell.
Some of the backstories are poignant. One is a card from a boyfriend to his girlfriend telling her he is taking his parents to his uncle’s farm. As he tells her in parting, “It’s not about love…it’s about survival.” The mass migration from the cities to the country is a recurring theme, one of fleeing to safety. Ultimately, the bad guys have the same idea. In the end there is no safe place. The same applies to bunkers. Eventually the rabble finds a way into the bunkers as well.
One telling comment by Max is how little people realized when the waters started receding that the end of all things had started. Life went on as usual. An analogy for 2020? The current unrest started as protests that as events unraveled have gotten increasingly darker with businesses ransacked and then burned to the ground, targeted killings and assaults. Revolution is in the air. Yet the media is telling how we can return to a normal life and how the economy is on the rebound.
We are being told how life can return to normal if everyone gets a vaccine. As if that will change anything. We have experienced a year of world wide pandemic, shortages, political division, riots, street violence, lockdowns and arrests for normal activities that would normally never be considered crimes. The epidemic has left the democratic countries of the world in a semi-police state founded on the orders of government health agencies, doctors and scientists. Of all of the books written on the rise of tyranny, from actual historical events to novels, no one envisioned this type of dystopian scenario.
So is Mad Max the video game being predictive? Right now it seems more of a coincidence and the developers have a good grasp of the histories of societal collapse due to a catastrophic event. On the other hand, some predictive programming can be no more than a revealing of truth via fiction—i.e., novels, TV programs, movies, etc.
