Why do bad guys have the guns in post apocalyptic movies?

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I watched The Road last night and was wondering why every post apocalyptic movie has the bad guys with almost all of the guns? Do all good people die or something? Surely if something like that happened there would be areas where regular people banded together or more likely would hunt gangs like that.

 

[darthgordon]

While I haven't seen the movie, I can think of a few reasons:

1. Your standard "bad guy" has no or fewer morals than your "good guy." They'll stop at nothing attain the power they crave. They'll murder innocents, steal... whatever it takes.

2. Post-Apocalyptic movies are based on the idea that lawlessness reigns. Where these people once had to deal with the system… the system is now chaos… in which they flourish.

3. It’s done to make the villain more intimidating. The more powerful the villain, the more peril the hero is in. It gives you the sense that the hero can lose… or at least that almost anyone can die. If the story is about an armed to the teeth hero and a villain that doesn’t have much in the way of firepower, the movie would be over quickly.

 

[Wes R]

The bad guys will also attract any survivors who have weapons and ten to one they will have either stockpiled them before the fall or they are willing to send people into ruins to find them such as police stations and such. There is also the chance that during the apocalypse they raided the stations and armories or were actually in power with access.

 

[terryr]

If you have no gun, anyone with a gun is the bad guy.

In The Road Warrior, half the Humongous' gang are traffic cops.

There would be groups of families banded together with heavy weapons. But the scavengers would stay away from them.

 

[DavidS]

Cause Guns are bad
Guns Kill people
what the movies are trying to tell you is that guns caused the apocolypse....

 

[mr deckard]

to make him look more bad

 

[rollerboi]

Surely if something like that happened there would be areas where regular people banded together or more likely would hunt gangs like that.

How long have they been in this post-apocalyptic world? If regular people banded together and hunted gangs for their own survival, they would still be likely to have a breakdown of structure or inhibitions once they are on top.

It's a little like Lord of the Flies.

 

[dualedge]

Sorta like if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If a bad guy has no guns, how much of a threat is he? He's not going to make a good bad guy if he can just hurl insults at you, y'know?

 

[OldKen]

When the Poop hits the preverbial fan, the "good guys" will be looking for food, shelter and basically just looking after their loved ones.

Bad guys hear it's going down... they go straight for the guns.

I would go for the guns first too, THEN get food and shelter set up.

Wait... does that make ME a "bad guy"??? LOL!

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

That's what I would do. I'd head straight to the nearest source of guns and that would only be to get more ammo for what I already have.


It's also the same with cars. The bad guys are usually the only people with working vehicles. It could just be the writers are all copying each other. In both of the recent movies I've seen The Road and The Book of Eli the bad guys were the only ones with vehicles.

 

[SSgt Burton]

How about Waterworld?

The bad guys are the only ones who smoke too. :lol



Kevin

 

[Wes R]

I think in reality people would gather resources such as vehicles (and parts for them) and any machinery and supplies in order to survive and at first they aren't "bad guys" but trying to survive. It would be easy for someone with less than healthy plans to rise up in this climate of fear and take over which is how i think half of these groups are thought out in books. If i was running one of these groups i'd be less than thrilled with letting new folks in and would do what it takes to keep my people alive. The problem with this sort of book/movie format is everything is black and white when in the real world there would be no good or bad guys. It would be everyone trying to survive.

 

[Jedifyfe]

...because these types of movies need tention between the protagonist and antagonist.

 

[CB2001]

But the problem with your misconception is that not all bad guys in The Road had guns, just those that banded together have guns. There's one "bad guy" that has a knife and another "bad guy" has a crossbow. And also, didn't Viggo Mortensen's "good guy" have a gun? And didn't Guy Pearce's "good guy" have one too?

Basically, when it comes to guns in post apocalyptic movies is actually quite unrealistic after a point. Look at The Walking Dead, for example. Like gasoline and prepackaged food, bullets would be in rather short supply and then completely rare (if not non-existant) after a while. In fact, though a work of fiction, Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, actually makes a valid point of this. When it comes to anything that is remotely a firearm, you might as well stop using it for shooting and start using it for clubbing if you don't have any ammo. In fact, one of his main points in the book about why using melee weapons are a better in a post-apocalyptic setting, which is that you do not need to reload it. The only other weapon that has a trigger that would be useful is a crossbow or a simple bow and arrow set. Why? Because you can recycle arrows after a target's down. Bullets you can't recycle, unless you happen to know how to make your own and reshell bullets (if you have any supplies to do so in a world where there's a limitation on all items).

Be it a world fallen under the collapse of a lack of gasoline, the zombie apocalypse, the vampire apocalypse (as depicted in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend), despite the fact you have to get close, it's best to switch to a melee weapon after all your ammo is gone.

 

[exoray]

bullets would be in rather short supply and then completely rare (if not non-existant) after a while.

How long is 'a while'? There are people even right now that have stockpiles of 10s of thousands of bullets, use 1000 to make and example and prove you are willing to shoot, after that initial intimidation and a shot here and there would prevail for the most part... Yes it's a finite amount but it could last for decades in many senerios... Find an abandoned military stockpile and you would literally have millions of rounds... The Russians have been dumping surplus ammo on the US mark decades now, there's A LOT out there...

In fact, one of his main points in the book about why using melee weapons are a better in a post-apocalyptic setting, which is that you do not need to reload it.

Cue up Indiana Jones... YouTube - Indiana Jones : Sword vs. Gun

 

[BDK]

But the problem with your misconception is that not all bad guys in The Road had guns, just those that banded together have guns. There's one "bad guy" that has a knife and another "bad guy" has a crossbow. And also, didn't Viggo Mortensen's "good guy" have a gun? And didn't Guy Pearce's "good guy" have one too?

Basically, when it comes to guns in post apocalyptic movies is actually quite unrealistic after a point. Look at The Walking Dead, for example. Like gasoline and prepackaged food, bullets would be in rather short supply and then completely rare (if not non-existant) after a while. In fact, though a work of fiction, Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, actually makes a valid point of this. When it comes to anything that is remotely a firearm, you might as well stop using it for shooting and start using it for clubbing if you don't have any ammo. In fact, one of his main points in the book about why using melee weapons are a better in a post-apocalyptic setting, which is that you do not need to reload it. The only other weapon that has a trigger that would be useful is a crossbow or a simple bow and arrow set. Why? Because you can recycle arrows after a target's down. Bullets you can't recycle, unless you happen to know how to make your own and reshell bullets (if you have any supplies to do so in a world where there's a limitation on all items).

Be it a world fallen under the collapse of a lack of gasoline, the zombie apocalypse, the vampire apocalypse (as depicted in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend), despite the fact you have to get close, it's best to switch to a melee weapon after all your ammo is gone.

It would take a LOOOOONG time for some areas to run out of ammuniton, others maybe shorter time frames, odds of surviving to or past the point of them being non-existant would be quite long.

 

[Wes R]

The big city would run out of food and ammo fast. You'd have better chances out in rural areas and i'm sure alot of folks would save their ammo for emergencies and learn to hunt for food other ways. Smaller towns would be a better source of supplies in some instances but you'd end up having to go house to house scavenging in like the book version of "The Postman".

 

[Russ257]

ammo is heavy you can only carry so much. If you have a a base ammo stockpiles are cool. If you need to move (especially on foot) weight will become an issue

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

It would take a LOOOOONG time for some areas to run out of ammuniton, others maybe shorter time frames, odds of surviving to or past the point of them being non-existant would be quite long.

I'm in Ohio, so as long as a large enough amount of people don't make it, then I've got plenty of extra ammo to loot.

 

[CB2001]

How long is 'a while'? There are people even right now that have stockpiles of 10s of thousands of bullets, use 1000 to make and example and prove you are willing to shoot, after that initial intimidation and a shot here and there would prevail for the most part... Yes it's a finite amount but it could last for decades in many senerios... Find an abandoned military stockpile and you would literally have millions of rounds... The Russians have been dumping surplus ammo on the US mark decades now, there's A LOT out there...

I'm guessing anywhere between a few months to a couple of years, depending on the scenario. If it's the zombie apocalypse, where you have people who panic fire, are learning to shoot and/or are dealing with massive groups of the undead, it'd be a couple of months to at most a year (depending on how much ammo they saved up and conserve). If it was something like seen with The Road, it'd be a year minimum, two at most, again, depending on what they are used for (and also depending on the caliber of guns and the type of gun it is. For example, if the only gun you have is a fully automatic machine gun, even with semi-auto, goes through a fifteen round clip rather quick). Even if either scenario occurred, after five years, ammo and supplies to make them would be completely gone (unless you happen to be a science wiz and can scratchbuild your own gunpower and primers). Then, all guns are practically useless as the way they were designed for and could only be used for as blunt objects. Of course, this is just a guess.

Cue up Indiana Jones... YouTube - Indiana Jones : Sword vs. Gun

The only flaw with that is that you're looking at it from the point of view of someone who A. has a gun and B. has ammo for that gun. What if this scenario occurred after all the ammo in the continent had completely used use, including supplies to make them? Then the person with the best weapon, which would be the swordsman, would have the upper hand while the person with the empty gun would be screwed.