Behind the Curtain - Why I Built Remnant
Most apocalyptic fiction has no soul. Here's why Remnant is different & why it had to exist.
After Monday’s launch recap went out, a lot of people asked the same question in different ways.
Why did you build this? Why now? What makes it different from everything else out there?
Fair questions. So today I’m pulling back the curtain.
The problem with apocalyptic fiction
I’ve been a consumer of apocalyptic and survival fiction for decades. Books, audiobooks, movies, shows - I’ve worked through most of the genre. And I’ll tell you what I noticed.
Almost all of it is hollow.
The technical details are there. The action is there. The collapse scenarios are sometimes well-researched. But the people in these stories - the families, the fathers, the mothers, the children - they’re written like cardboard. They survive on instinct alone. They make decisions based on nothing but self-preservation. They have no faith. No prayer life. No moral framework that holds them together when the world comes apart.
And when the worst happens, these characters have nothing to fall back on except their gear and their wits.
That’s not how real American families actually live. And it’s certainly not how they would face the end of the world.
What’s missing in the genre
Walk into any small town in this country. Talk to the families who’ve been there for generations. The ones who go to church on Sunday morning, who say grace before dinner, who teach their kids to shoot before they teach them to drive. The ones who keep extra food in the basement not because they’re paranoid but because their grandparents taught them that’s just what responsible people do.
Those families exist by the millions. They’re the backbone of America.
And they’re almost completely invisible in apocalyptic fiction.
When the genre does include faith, it’s usually a punchline. The religious character is the fanatic. The Bible-believer is the one who loses his mind first. The praying mother is naive and gets her family killed because she trusted God instead of locking the door.
I’m tired of it. I think a lot of you are too.
What Remnant is
Remnant is the story of one American family - the Smiths - facing the end of the world they knew.
They’re not preppers in costume. They’re not military operators. They’re a regular family. A father who works hard, a mother who holds the household together, kids who are still figuring life out, and a dog who doesn’t know anything has changed yet.
What sets them apart isn’t tactical training. It’s that they have something to fall back on when everything else fails. They have faith. They have each other. They have a quiet kind of preparation that most people would walk past without noticing.
When the lights go out, they don’t panic into chaos. They pray. They think. They move.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean they all make it. It doesn’t mean faith is a magic shield. The story doesn’t pull punches and it doesn’t hand out cheap miracles. The world ends. The characters face it. And what happens next is what the whole series is about.
Why now
I’ll be honest with you. The headlines tell me we don’t have a lot of time.
Strait of Hormuz. Domestic terror cells. Power grid vulnerabilities. Cartel networks operating on American soil. Open borders feeding threats most people haven’t even heard about. Fuel disruptions. Food chain fragility. A federal government that can’t agree on what year it is, let alone how to defend the homeland.
Anyone paying attention can see we’re closer to the edge than we’ve been in a long time.
Most people will not prepare. They won’t store food. They won’t learn to shoot. They won’t stockpile medicine. They won’t even have a conversation with their spouse about what to do if the power doesn’t come back on.
But fiction reaches people that lectures cannot. A story can plant a seed in someone’s mind that a thousand SITREPs can’t. Someone listens to Remnant, gets pulled into the Smith family, sees the choices Mark and Sarah make - and starts thinking about their own family. Their own house. Their own pantry. Their own faith.
That’s the mission.
The bigger vision
Remnant is going to run for a long time. I have over 100 episodes mapped out. The Smith family is the entry point, but the world is bigger than them. There are other families. Other locations. Other stories happening in parallel as the country comes apart and a remnant of believers figures out how to live through it.
This isn’t a limited series. This is a universe. And every Saturday and Sunday, you’re going to step further into it.
If that’s the kind of story you’ve been waiting for, you’re in the right place.
A note to listeners
To everyone who’s already listened, reviewed, and subscribed, thank you. The response has been beyond anything I expected, and it’s confirming everything I believed about what was missing in this genre.
To everyone still on the fence - there’s a reason no one else is making this. Fiction this honest about faith and family doesn’t get greenlit in the secular industry. It only exists because independent platforms like this one exist, and because subscribers make it possible.
Episode 3 drops Saturday.
Stay sharp. Stay faithful.
Godspeed,
Chris Heaven, CEO
Survival Dispatch
The world ended. They didn’t.
Remnant is the story of one American family fighting to survive what most people refuse to prepare for. Cinematic fiction. Real survival lessons. New episodes every Saturday and Sunday.
Subscribe to Remnant to get every episode, exclusive behind-the-scenes content, and access to the inner circle of listeners going through this story with me.