I ended up taking this here. We've got a hot tipped note about the source of the name being an phrase Aldiss used for The Day Of The Triffids which was meant to be pejorative. But it isn't accurate — at least as we define the trope.
Wyndham is the opposite of the trope. His middle class characters are typically distressed. They experience direct hardship of all kinds. They aren't blind to the horror and suffering around them. They know in their bones its all over and cosy middle class life is through. Not fine. Some commentators think it's at heart a metaphor for the U.K.'s loss of Empire.
We could cite it as a non-example but that's just clutter — no need to waste the readers time with defensive chatter.
- In the mind of some commentators, the works of John Wyndham (but see later): The Day Of The Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, Chocky and The Midwich Cuckoos * Wyndam doesn't exibit the trope. Take The Day Of The Triffids: in this work middle class values ultimately crack and fall as civilisation does. Cozy is probably the wrong word: the characters face threat, loss, grief, and permanent radical change for the worse.
- It should be noted that The Day Of The Triffids was singled out by Brian Aldiss when coining the term Cosy Catastrophe.
Yes, I agree, but catchy wording sticking in the public mind with the opposite of their originally intended meaning is itself a common trope!
Can someone explain what exactly are the criteria for something to be or not to be a "cosy catastrophy"?
IMO either it is being mis-applied to a lot of things, or is so broad ("any catastrophy in which not everyone dies horribly") as to be meaningless. Mad Max is currenly listed as one, of all things.
Does "When The Wind Blows" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090315/)
belong here ?
There seems to be a rather whiny class-war undercurrent to the desciption and examples here, and I'm not sure how it fits the trope. Isn't this just "people decide to enjoy newfound freedom instead of worrying about all the dead people, or their own future"? Seems to me working class people are just as capable of doing this, and several examples show exactly that happening...
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- Polish RPG Neuroshima among its many flaws has some fractions who do precisely that - some wander through the ruins, looking for old C Ds or books, others participate in car wars, and basically only one small fraction decides to do something with Robot Apocalypse attempting to attack US (as seen from Polish perspective)
- Have you ever read rulebook? Outpost is not just small but elite fraction (creating something big on their level of technology is impossible, almost everything what they have is stolen from robots), and not the only that doing something, because there is also New York and Federation that are also going to join forces and attack robots. And there are many fractions that try to protects others, survival, rebuild society or help mutants and humans to coexist. And we are talking about Crapsack World just 40-50 years after apocalypse, robots from the north are not the only problem in the verse, there is also mutated jungle on south. People from south didn?t even seen a single robot (until creation of Smart, robots merged with jungle) with communication that bad it is nearly impossible to communicate with near village it?s nothing surprising that they don?t help. It?s also hard to make people do something because of Tornado drug that allows to have a dream about living before apocalypse. Everybody is sick. And it?s even more complex because game allows you to chose one of four colors ? what kind of world is after apocalypse. In steel it?s all about fighting robots and rebuilding society, rust is about being human in the world that is about to end, mercury is about dying in horrific world. Only in chrome this trope is followed.
Apart from the Wall of Text, the it also seems that the original edit was poorly written.
Edited by SantosL.Halper
I agree with this whole WHITE PEOPLE GRR MIDDLE CLASS ROAR being irrelivant to the trope. I heartily recommend heavy excision of the offending definitions until people can remember why the trope name is relevant.
Klendt pointed out exactly what was bothering me. The class warfare issue was bad enough, this site already has too much race baiting going on.
Many if not all instances of Cozy Catastrophe assume that the heroes who make sure the water and gas mains, the electricity and the supply of gasoline to the gas stations keep hanging on long for at least the duration of the movie. IRL failures and shortness of supplies would kick in frighteningly fast.
This is because you cannot have it both ways: either 99,999% die instantaneously and you have your pick of everything, but then these workers are gone as well and things break down fast; or utility workers survive but the death rate has to be lower and the demand for dwindling resources runs down the clock very quickly.