The problem with these post-apocalyptic movies is that they always seem to miss at least a few points of reality here and there, such as how long technology lasts without maintenance and what kinds of basic products and services would be in short supply. Let's work with the initial premise.
It's 1 year after what appears to be, the entire population of the world is killed off by virus or aliens (lol):
If space aliens had conquered our planet, the obvious thing to do would be to leech off of their civilization while attempting to rebuild ours. Extraterrestrial invasion being a good bit more unlikely than any of the other kinds of disasters for a good many reasons (i.e. we don't even know whether any extraterrestrials exist, or how they'd manage to get across the enormous distances between their solar system and ours) let's presume the virus scenario, which would probably play out something like the Black Death in medieval Europe except with a higher mortality rate. Such a scenario, though improbable, is at least plausible in view of drug-resistant "superbugs" and the fact that we have seen such plagues in some places in the past. At the same time, it's likely at least a few people would have some immunity or develop it, so there would definitely be survivors.
1. Would you go to look for survivors, if so, where? This is a good psychological question because you aren't questioning where others would go, but where others would think everyone might go. It could be a risky plan. You would also have to plan accordingly with the season, nobody wants to go to colorado in the winter.
My own survival would tend to depend on finding other survivors to help rebuild civilization, so I probably would go looking. At the same time, I'd be seeking out the most defensible structures, both in hopes of living in them myself in the long term and because this would improve my chances of finding and recruiting other survivors out doing the same thing.
2. If you chose to stay put and possibly go on living life alone, what type of life would you establish for yourself? What would be the home or place that you would live, or would you simply move from home to home around the city? If you would rather live in a dwelling more in the country - specify
Since I live in the country at present, I probably would stay put in the short term; my house is fairly defensible against the odd lone wolf bandit and we country folks do have some supplies stored away for just this kind of emergency. In the long term, though, my house probably wouldn't be quite as defensible against large bands of marauding bandits, so I'd be seeking out a better position.
The city, for its part, would be best to avoid: most of the marauding bands would probably get their start there, since our cities are already infested with predatory street gangs. The only reason I would go to the city would be to seek for salvage in the ruins, and only if the plague had hit the cities hard enough to leave virtually no survivors.
3. What would be the necessary supplies, including for back-up plans? What would be some unusual supplies or things you might gather or build?
My family and I already have a good store of food and weapons in our emergency supplies, so obviously I'd be able to live a good while without gathering anything. However, I'd probably be out gathering various perishable hygienic products from the other various abandoned structures around me, since no one's going to be making any more of them for a while. (Shampoo and deodorant would increasingly be considered luxury items.) The same is true of a great many other common objects I'd be gathering, such as office supplies, contraceptives, cookware, and cutlery. As for building things, I wouldn't be doing that until much later; there should be plenty of abandoned structures available for my use in the short term.
4. Mode of travel? How would you overcome obstacles such as breakdowns or running out of gas, risking possibly dying in the middle of nowhere? Would you take chances on a motorcycle that could unexpectedly crash and have you with major injuries?
Since I live out in horse country, the obvious way to avoid some of these problems would be to save my gasoline for the generator in my home and go out on horseback instead. (My family and I don't own any horses or ranch land, but our hypothetically soon-to-be-deceased neighbors do.) I might drive a car or truck in the early stages while out scavenging goods, but live transportation is better for the long term; with civilization gone to seed, the supply of gasoline would be in sharp decline, whereas the biomass that serves as horse fuel (among other things) could only be increasing.
5. Where would you take refuge if on the road?
If necessary, I might stay overnight in one of the abandoned structures I'd have all around me, but I probably wouldn't be out on the road any more than I absolutely had to.
6. A city is big, would you attempt to open communication to let others know of your presence, if so, how?
The city I would avoid altogether, as mentioned earlier. As for dealing with other survivors, I would always be trying to see them before they see me; first strike capacity is always good to have when dealing with the unknown. Of course, if they're potentially beneficial to me in any way (i.e. have something to trade or might be willing to join forces with me), I'd hail them from a safe distance. One thing I would certainly do soon after the plague blew through would be to go look up every old acquaintance in the area to see if any of them have survived, since these would be the most likely candidates for setting up a new civilization with me and there is a certain safety in numbers when one is out scavenging for goods.
7. Food. Woud you rely on the canned supplies of what may be left. Also consider if you are travelling on a motercycle you would not have room to store such food so you'd have to work on an assumption that you could readily find the food. Or would you hunt? Hunting isn't easy, nor is learning how to properly handle the meat.
Canned supplies and my family's personal cache of food would last a good long time in the short term, but for the long term I'd probably be busy gathering whatever food could be gotten in whatever way. Hunting and handling the meat are indeed complicated tasks, but some of my fellow survivors would surely know how to do these things, being rural as we are, and the population of game to be hunted would be surging even more than it already is in lieu of our civilization's extermination of most of the natural predators and the plague's extermination of most of us. The only real difficulty would lie in finding enough containers and storage space for all the food; I'd also have to brush up my cooking skills, which are a bit rusty at present.
8. Would you spend any time at the library gathering books, if so what type of books would you be collecting?
My father is a major bibliophile, so my family and I have pretty much got a library of our own already. In fact, we've got more books than we can handle at present. I might well raid some of the local libraries for any good books we don't already have while out scavenging, but that certainly wouldn't be a very high priority on my to-do list. If anything, I'd probably be looking for ways to dispose of some of our books!
Fortunately, an efficient solution is ready at hand: my home has a wood-burning stove and not much wood to put in it. Some of the most worthless books we have are also some of the thickest and largest, so come Winter, into the fire they go. Before we even get to those, however, we've got reams and reams of Dad's worthless documents from the office (which should be even more worthless after civilization collapses). They'll be very useful for kindling and feeding the fire as well. If we ever start running short of kindling, well, those libraries will still have plenty of worthless books in them after all the good ones are taken.
9. Would you seek out a pet? Knowing that if humans died, their pets probably starved in shelters and in homes or tied up in backyards? The only remaining might be hard to find or aggressive.
We already have several pet dogs; after the plague, I might not have a hard enough heart to go killing them off, but I certainly wouldn't let them breed anymore. I might keep one of our watchdogs for security purposes, however, or possibly find a more aggressive breed of dog to be my traveling companion and serve as a little extra security when I'm out on scavenging runs. Herding dogs will probably be in demand as well with all the livestock out here, as will any pet that can do anything useful.
Cats probably won't be as much in demand, but most of them will probably go feral and live off the land anyway, so we won't have to do much with them. (We might keep a few on hand to keep down a burgeoning rodent population, however.) How well our domesticated animals will do in the aftermath of a plague depends on whether any of them are susceptible to the plague, and what their deceased masters did with them while still alive; there might be packs of vicious dogs out roaming the streets in addition to those other marauders. We survivors might also run across the grizzly sight of pets living off of their former masters' corpses while we're out scavenging.
10. Would the rules/laws still apply, or would you become a bad guy?
My personal moral code would be much like that of the Old Testament patriarchs: that while might may not always make right, you'd best acquire some might of your own, or else seek the favor of the mighty. (Father Abraham had God's special favor; realistically, God probably won't grant very many of even the most faithful among us the same protections.) Asocial as I am, I would still be seeking the comforts of safety in numbers and authority in banding together with other survivors. If my girlfriend still happened to be alive, I'd definitely be getting married to her, and if not, I'd be seeking out a wife from among the surviving women.
Certainly the old rules and laws would be--for the most part--swept away: no more income taxes, compulsory schooling laws, zoning ordinances, copyrights, and other noisome regulations from no-longer-existing government bureaucracies need apply. At the same time, however, new rules and regulations would replace the old ones as survivors band together. While no one would take the state's age-of-consent laws half so seriously as they do today, for instance, survivors would doubtless enforce their own customized versions of these laws with their shotguns.
(Of course, as demonstrated by the children in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, these laws would still be a lot laxer. On the other hand, anyone who lives to see puberty in a post-apocalyptic world would have to be at least as mature and independent as anyone who's lived to the age of consent these days. In other words, that thirteen-year-old gal with the shotgun might be willing to put out for you, but not until you bring her a ring and sign a wedding contract she drew up for herself with a little help from her tribe's minister. The stepfather her tribe assigned to her will probably have something to say on the subject too.)
And finally, what would be your one guilty pleasure knowing you had the entire city to yourself? drive around the baddest cars, go to the mall, what?
Well, if I were really THAT much alone, I'd probably enjoy going around vandalizing buildings that used to house certain elements of society that really ticked me off back in the old civilized days, i.e. "testing" a Molotov Cocktail on the former headquarters of the city's main "news" rag and using a now-deserted Planned Parenthood office for target practice with a scavenged bazooka. ("Ha ha ha! I'm free to choose gun rights! See you in Hell, Patricia Ireland!") Society's done enough evil in my time that I certainly wouldn't miss such a golden opportunity to have a big laugh over its demise.
Again, though, if even one tenth of one percent of the population were to survive this plague, I wouldn't be going to the city in the first place.
