This chapter examines the ways in which the notions of threat and trauma link up with the narrative genre of post-apocalyptic fiction, particularly with reference to the temporal and existential stance of the future anterior or future perfect (“what will have been”). The chapter first presents some general outlines regarding the structures of future threat in today’s media culture, and then focuses (with reference to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road) on how the basic coordinates of post-apocalyptic literature, in the context of threat and trauma, may bear on how we make sense of the present. The chapter finally suggests that we should articulate more carefully the tensions and contradictions internal to the future anterior in its various uses; that some of these uses may be elucidated through analogy with the trauma-associated notion of Nachträglichkeit (“afterwardsness”); and that there is a perceptible shift in the cultural role of post-apocalyptic narratives from stories of warning into stories of mourning.