How can their be a "post-apocalyptic" anything?

[Matthew]

Listening to one of my podcasts the other day one of the host asked in passing how can there be any sort of post-apocalyptic world. Isn't an apocalypse by definition (at least relative to this definition) the total destruction of something? I mean if things were surviving this apocalypse was it really an apocalypse or just a mass extinction?

[Shad]

Per Dictionary.com, apocalypse is defined as a universal or widespread destruction. If you accept widespread destruction as your definition for apocalypse, than it would be easy to have a post-apocalyptic world.

It is just semantics.

[Derek]

Shouldn't the title of this thread be "How can there..." not "their"?

Other than that, something always survives, even if it's just cockroaches and tax agents. :-D

[Tamahome]

A lot of scifi authors feel really embarrassed right now *face palm*