Before the world I live in started feeling too closely pre-apocalytic, as a younger callow youth, I was fascinated by post-apocalyptic movies and games (thanks much, Max Kochansky!).

The Morrow Project, Gamma World, Twilight 2000, Aftermath, Car Wars, etc. were all in my collection.

I liked Morrow Project and just learned there was a lot more decent to great fan-made material that I didn't even known existed back then. I'm revisiting that concurrently with my low berth dive in Traveller.

The problem I had with TNE and Twiilight 2000 ended up being what kept me from playing most of these anymore: The thought of our civilization blown back do a more primitive state, with the huge loss of life attendant, and with the 'Star Viking' or 'Hardened Survivor' mentalities that one needs to navigate the post-apoc settings... it just makes me sad and I don't know that I'd want to struggle on. It's like Zombie games - if the world was being overrun by zombies, I doubt I could protect my wife or child and that notion is just horrifying. I think too much about these games and the nature of the world a setting embodies. I just don't like the paths my head went down and where they ended.

But I do find looking at how various people have imagined an apocalypse. It's sort of like reading about anti-fragile systems and about how to collapse softly in these scenarios.