Not entirely apocalypse related , but there are societies in the Pacific who worship john frum , a mythical entity who came during WW 2 to give them cargo . Basically US soldiers put military bases on remote islands and then left , and the locals now build and worship runways , etc . awaiting the return of john frum . I think if that could happen in the real world , I ' m fairly certain we ' d fetishize preapocalypse stuff fairly quickly too . It might be concepts , rather than actual objects , but it just strikes me as reasonable and in a story , helps hammer that you ' re in a very different place than you should be . You ' d have a traumatized , decimated population , and they ' d look at their ancestors in awe simply because the preapocalypse world was much more powerful than their own according to the survivor ' s own value system . I can see it definitely happening .