A Boy and His Dog - Setting

Setting

The novella and the film adaptation have the same alternate timeline setting, which started after President John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt in 1963. During his terms of office and that of the other Kennedys, society concentrated on the advancement of technology instead of on the space race. Technological progress took place far faster than in our timeline, as androids became common household servants in the United States before the end of the decade. Extensive research was done in the fields of extra sensory perception, telepathy, and animal intelligence, which are all proved possible. This new form of technological race only intensified the Cold War, which had begun in June 1950 with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, eventually becoming an arms race, as the world became divided along the lines of the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. Eventually, World War III broke out and was fought by conventional means very similar to World War II, yet lasting decades, with both sides suffering heavy losses and neither gaining the upper hand. World War III ended in an uneasy truce—the "Vatican Armistice"—in March 1983. Tensions continued for the next 25 years and the world economy never recovered. In 2007, global negotiations finally broke down and World War IV broke out. This time, the war was fought with nuclear weapons and lasted only five days, just long enough for the last nuclear missiles to be launched on both sides. Civilization was almost entirely obliterated, leaving the surface of the Earth reduced to a desolate, irradiated, desert wasteland.

The year in which A Boy and His Dog takes place is 2024. The few survivors who remain above ground must forage and fight for the remaining food, clean water, clothes, weapons, ammunition and women. Of these necessities, women are the rarest; most survivors are male because while the males were off fighting in the wars, their enemies bombed and destroyed their homes. Among these survivors it has become a rule of "dog eat dog". In the novella, nuclear fallout had created horrific genetic mutations. One type of mutants is referred to as "burnpit screamers" because of the noise they make. The screamers are widely feared by the survivors of the nuclear holocaust, and references are occasionally made to them in the novella. Screamers feature in the film, although only in one scene, and are not actually seen, but only their screams are heard, and their green bio-luminescence seen through a wall.