Looking for Some of the Best Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Audiobooks? Look No Further!
As civilization crumbles around us and the apocalypse looms on the horizon, it can be tempting to just curl up under a blanket and wait as the inevitable comes our way. But instead of facing futility, why not fill your time with something productive — like listening to some captivating post-apocalyptic audiobooks? From tales of ongoing chaos to stories about rebuilding after an apocalyptic event, you'll be sure to find something that fits your interests within this list of all-time best apocalyptic & post apocalyptic audiobooks! Escaping from reality has never been so easy - dive deep into another world without leaving your home. Get ready for the journey ahead – sit back, put in your headphones and let these amazing stories consume you!
Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Audiobook Statistics
Total Audiobooks in this Category:
1,066 audiobooks
Total Authors in this Category:
1,191 authors
Average Audiobook Length:
10.34 hours
Average Audiobook Rating:
3.81/5
Author: Max Brooks
Narrator: Max Brooks, F. Murray Abraham, Alan Alda, René Auberjonois, Becky Ann Baker, Dennis Boutsikaris, Bruce Boxleitner, Mel Brooks, Nicki Clyne, Common, Denise Crosby, Frank Darabont, Dean Edwards, Mark Hamill, Nathan Fillion, Maz Jobrani, Frank Kamai, Michelle Kholos, John McElroy, Ade M’Cormack, Alfred Molina, Parminder Nagra, Ajay Naidu, Masi Oka, Steve Park, Kal Penn, Simon Pegg, Carl Reiner, Jürgen Prochnow, Rob Reiner, Jay O. Sanders, Martin Scorsese, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Henry Rollins, Jeri Ryan, Brian Tee, John Turturro, Eamonn Walker, Ric Young, Waleed F. Zuaiter
Audio Length:
@1x speed 12.00 hours
@1.5x speed 8.00 hours
@2x speed 6.00 hours
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World War Z: The Complete Edition (Abridged): An Oral History of the Zombie War Audiobook
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies.”—Entertainment Weekly
We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the apocalyptic years.
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
“Will spook you for real.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Possesses more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles. Think Mad Max meets The Hot Zone. . . . It’s Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style. Creepy but fascinating.”—USA Today
“Will grab you as tightly as a dead man’s fist. A.”—Entertainment Weekly, EW Pick
“Probably the most topical and literate scare since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view.”—Dallas Morning News
“A sober, frequently horrifying and even moving account…Brooks has delivered a full-blown horror novel, laced with sharp social and political observations and loads of macabre, gruesome imagery…The real horror of World War Z comes from the all-too-plausible responses of human beings and governments to the menace.”
— Fangoria
Author: Stephen King
Narrator: Grover Gardner
Audio Length:
@1x speed 47.75 hours
@1.5x speed 31.83 hours
@2x speed 23.88 hours
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The Stand: Complete and Uncut Audiobook
Here is the desolate landscape the next day: a new world with all its institutions destroyed, and 99 percent of the population dead. A world where a few terrified survivors take sides—or are taken. A world in which hope survives on the fragile shoulders of 108 year old Mother Abigail—and the greatest evil of the darkest nightmares is manifested in Randall Flagg, the dark man with inconceivable power and a deadly smile.
Originally published in 1978, The Stand is widely considered among Stephen King's greatest novels. However, it was incomplete—more than 150,000 words had been edited out of the original epic manuscript.
Now King's post apocalyptic tale of a land ravaged by disease and caught in a fundamental battle between good and evil is available in its entirety for the first time. The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition features more than 500 pages of previously deleted material, plus new material added by King as he reinvented his epic story for a new generation. New characters are introduced, and familiar characters are brought even more vividly to life. The beginning and ending are both new.
This new edition is King's gift to the countless fans who read or listened to the original version and wanted more. Those who are listening to The Stand for the first time will find an imaginative and haunting apocalyptic epic that tackles the issues that will determine the survival of mankind.
Stephen King is the author of more than fifty worldwide bestsellers. In 2003, he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives with his wife, novelist Tabitha King, in Bangor, Maine.
“THRILLING! This was not only my first audiobook on this site but my first Stephen King book. I was hooked immediately and have purchased several others just from the description. None of them have disappointed. With a 40 minute one way commute to work, the time flies by and I find myself sitting in the parking lot just to listen to one more track. I am HOOKED!”
— Vickie Watts
Author: Margaret Atwood
Narrator: Scott Campbell
Audio Length:
@1x speed 10.50 hours
@1.5x speed 7.00 hours
@2x speed 5.25 hours
Overall Rating:
Oryx and Crake Audiobook
Oryx and Crake is an astonishing novel in the tradition of Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, and her own The Handmaid’s Tale. It is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.
With breathtaking command of her material and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects a conceivable future of the world, an outlandish yet wholly believable place left devastated in the wake of ecological and scientific disaster and populated by a cast of characters who will continue to inhabit dreams long after the book is closed.
This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For those who experience Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.
“I wasn't sure about this one at first. I'm into dystopias lately, but Atwood is so dark and depressing that I wasn't sure I would make it through. And Snowman the narrator is not a likeable guy, so it was hard to stick with it at first. But I got into it eventually and the world was compelling with lots of things to ponder. I eventually became addicted.”
— Sierra
Author: William R. Forstchen
Narrator: Joe Barrett
Audio Length:
@1x speed 13.25 hours
@1.5x speed 8.83 hours
@2x speed 6.63 hours
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One Second After Audiobook
Retired Army Colonel John Matherson returned to his rural North Carolina hometown when his wife was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Now a respected college professor, he is the father of two children. Narrated through his eyes the story takes us through what happens if the worst case scenario becomes reality. When the telephone communication system fails, and all electrically powered items suddenly stop working; it is quickly apparent that the townspeople are not prepared for life as it was in centuries past.
The former colonel suspects the weapon used was an electromagnetic pulse or EMP and his thoughts go quickly to his insulin-dependent daughter. Food supplies dwindle quickly with no refrigeration, those interred in nursing homes and needing refrigerated medicines and medical equipment such as John's father are suffering; and no one is answering who or how this happened.
Through the use of older technology that is not affected by the black-out the citizens slowly begin to discover how to survive in this new world. However, tragedy strikes often and without remorse. Skills that were once part of our heritage are missing such as the growing of crops. If the people cannot feed themselves they will starve or turn to cannibalism. John Matherson finds himself more involved with the other citizens to find ways to survive and go on in this new era.
While a work of fiction, the book has been used as an example of what our future could become if we are not careful. Author William R. Forstchen wrote his first novel in 1983, and has now penned over 40 books. A graduate of Purdue University, he is a Professor of History with specialties in technology and military history. One Second After spent several weeks on the New York Times best seller list and is quite a popular audiobook here at Audio Book Store.
“If you want to know what life after an EMP would be like, read this book. This book paints an extremely vivid image of this type of attack, and the consequences it would have on our society. The problem is that this could happen exactly as laid out in this book - very plausible.”
— William
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrator: Kirsten Potter
Audio Length:
@1x speed 10.75 hours
@1.5x speed 7.17 hours
@2x speed 5.38 hours
Station Eleven (Television Tie-in): A novel Audiobook
A New York Times Bestseller
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.
“In Station Eleven , by Emily St. John Mandel, the Georgia Flu becomes airborne the night Arthur Leander dies during his performance as King Lear. Within months, all airplanes are grounded, cars run out of gas and electricity flickers out as most of the world’s population dies. The details of Arthur’s life before the flu and what happens afterward to his friends, wives and lovers create a surprisingly beautiful story of human relationships amid such devastation. Among the survivors are Kirsten, a child actor at the time of Arthur’s death who lives with no memory of what happened to her the first year after the flu . . . A gorgeous retelling of Lear unfolds through Arthur’s flashbacks and Kirsten’s attempt to stay alive.”
— Nancy Hightower, The Washington Post
Author: Justin Cronin
Narrator: Scott Brick
Audio Length:
@1x speed 36.75 hours
@1.5x speed 24.50 hours
@2x speed 18.38 hours
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The Passage: A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy) Audiobook
“This was wonderfully written and full of suspense and intrigue. Rather apocalyptic but thrilling with a survial flow of readabilty. I loved this and can not wait for the sequel(I read he was writing book 2). Characters developed well, story flows, growing and growing. I couldn't put it down.”
— Nancy
Author: Peng Shepherd
Narrator: James Fouhey, Emily Woo Zeller
Audio Length:
@1x speed 17.00 hours
@1.5x speed 11.33 hours
@2x speed 8.50 hours
The Book of M: A Novel Audiobook
Brad Thor's Summer 2018 Fiction Pick for THE TODAY SHOW!
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Elle • Refinery29 • PopSugar • Verge
""Eerie, dark, and compelling, [The Book of M] will not disappoint lovers of The Passage and Station Eleven."" —Booklist
WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER?
Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.
One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.
Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.
Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.
As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.
Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.
“A beautifully written existential apocalypse, following everyday people on a search for love, memory, and meaning across the richly realized and frighteningly familiar ruins of America.”
— Christopher Brown, author of Tropic of Kansas
Author: William Brinkley
Narrator: Christopher Lane
Audio Length:
@1x speed 29.75 hours
@1.5x speed 19.83 hours
@2x speed 14.88 hours
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The Last Ship: A Novel Audiobook
Hailed "an extraordinary novel of men at war" (Washington Post), The Last Ship is the book that inspired the TNT miniseries starring Eric Dane, Rhona Mitra, and Adam Baldwin, with Michael Bay as executive producer.
The unimaginable has happened: the world has been plunged into all-out nuclear war. Sailing near the Arctic Circle, the USS Nathan James is relatively unscathed, but the future is grim and Captain Thomas is facing mutiny from the tattered remnants of his crew. With civilization in ruins, he urges those that remain—152 men and 26 women—to pull together in search of land. Once they reach safety, however, the men and women on board realize that they are the earth's last remaining survivors—and they've all been exposed to radiation. When none of the women seems able to conceive, fear sets in. Will this be the end of humankind?
This thrilling tale of postapocalyptic suspense is perfect for readers of Going Home by A. American, Lights Out by David Crawford, The End and The Long Road by G. Michael Hopf, and One Second After by William Forstchen.
“In an appropriately grim manner, Brinkley entertains the ramifications of survival in the aftermath of World War III. In the wake of a nuclear holocaust, a lone American naval vessel, the destroyer Nathan James, sails the seas in desperate search of an unscathed pocket of the earth…Narrated by the destroyer’s reflective captain, this taut adventure relentlessly examines the consequences of the unthinkable.”
— Booklist
Author: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
Narrator: Martin Jarvis
Audio Length:
@1x speed 12.50 hours
@1.5x speed 8.33 hours
@2x speed 6.25 hours
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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch Audiobook
Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon!
“Reads like the Book of Revelation, rewritten by Monty Python.” — San Francisco Chronicle
The classic novel of angels, demons, and Armageddon from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, now a Prime original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.
And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .
“I adored this book. I want to recommend it to several people I love and respect, as it was so pleasurable, so inventive, so witty. This makes me want to read everything by both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchert. The story, the voices that tell it, the ideals, the observations are all genuine, insightful, and truly human. Read this book!!”
— Barb
Author: Richard Matheson
Narrator: Robertson Dean
Audio Length:
@1x speed 5.25 hours
@1.5x speed 3.50 hours
@2x speed 2.63 hours
Overall Rating:
I Am Legend Audiobook
Neville spends his days hunting vampires and seeking to cure the disease. His minority status in a world filled with predators inspires him to discover a more efficient way to kill vampires, other than the traditional stake through the heart. His method includes exposing them to sunlight, killing natural bacteria, then inflicting deep wounds that turn the bacteria into aerobic parasites that consume their hosts.
We learn about Neville's personal life and history via flashbacks throughout the novel, including how both his wife and daughter became infected and eventually died. The plot gets even more complicated when Neville forms a relationship with a woman he assumes is uninfected like himself. She warns him the vampires are rebuilding society, slowly overcoming aspects of their disease and will be coming to arrest him.
How long can Neville survive when society as a whole is against him?
Richard Matheson is an American author and screenwriter. He is primarily known for his work in the fantasy, horror and science fiction genres. Many of his works have been adapted for firm, including The Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes and I am Legend. He has also written numerous short story collections and television series, including 16 episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Original Series.
Matheson was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010. His influence has spanned decades. Authors, including Anne Rice and Stephen King, claim his influence in their works. He has been the subject of documentaries, tributes and characters in other science fiction works.
Delve into one of the original masterpieces of the vampire/zombie genre. Download I Am Legend today and enjoy this now-classic story.
“Excellent... It's a quick read and a great story. I am now completely confused as to why the screenwriters felt the need to change up the original tale so much for the failed Will Smith film. The original story is way more compelling... and offers a much more tragic struggle for humanity. LOVED it.”
— Dani
Author: Jerry B. Jenkins, Tim LaHaye
Narrator: Richard Ferrone
Audio Length:
@1x speed 11.75 hours
@1.5x speed 7.83 hours
@2x speed 5.88 hours
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Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days Audiobook
“I approached the series with a bit of doubt that I'd read much of it, but was pleasantly wrong. The series is captivating and imaginative. I am not a supporter of the idea of Tribulation yet to come as the authors purpose, but can appreciate their telling of such a tale. As a ficiton series I would strongly recommend checking it out. As Biblical truth...I'll leave that to your religious belief system.”
— Mark