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The definitive apocalypse masterpiece, maybe until reality writes a better story.

Many different characters in slowly escalating situations of despair and tragedy.
With the extra King spicing of terror, torture, and horror, this makes one, or maybe the best, description of armageddon. And it´s not worldbuilding or über cool enemies, it´s this combination of crazy, not always good, protagonists, antiheroes, and great, sheer lunatics that make this unbelievable rollercoaster the best end time ever. Apocalypse rocks if the King is in the house.

Don´t trust the government
Seriously, it´s not as if anyone is still doing stupid things like that, but how it happened, how politicians and the military reacted, how they didn´t have any problem with mass murdering their own citizens to avoid a panic, censor the media, go full Gestapo mode and, of course, causing the whole mess with secret biological warfare programs is, well, completely realistic. They would have to do, because as long as it doesn´t escalate completely, it would be the only ethical decision to sacrifice some for the sake of the country, not just for patriots, but just following simple logic. Better lose some cities and dozens of millions of people than all of them. Although I guess if a resident evil style biological warfare project would go really wrong, or be used by an enemy, nothing would help.

Comparison of The Stand and It
It´s one of Kings´most complex, interwoven, and ultra many, often one time use, character spiked works, which is the biggest difference to the only real (single novel) opponent, It. It has its small crew and stays with it, close to no disposable sidekicks, and especially no big picture, meta, worldbuilding level. Probably that´s the reason why some prefer The Stand and King himself says too that his fans are often telling him that it´s their favorite, although he doesn´t understand why. It simply can´t reach the epic, big scale, world ending level, because Kings' intention was to write one of the best novels about childhood, wrecked American dreams, small town terrors, and the Lovecraftian, lurking evil inside all of us. Mission accomplished.

The Stand, on the other hand, is a battle of good versus evil, a dark fantasy horror milestone so intense, dense, and completely absorbing, because it combines the unbelievable characterization skills with a good, and that´s truly nothing King can always deliver because he is no plotter, story with a satisfying, credible end. And all the details, the world, the extremely slow beginning with the escalation towards overkill, all the crazy characters entering and leaving the stage, and, of course, many average people´s problems given to the mix. No matter how dead the world is, we still have freaking everyday issues and relationship problems.

Big city vs one horse town.
So good to live on the countryside� Sorry if this may seem insensitive, but the really brutally penetrated ones will always be the metropolitan areas, not just because the slums and hellhole district actually are already a nightmare, but because the collapse and chaos will be worst there. Maybe because it´s generally kind of incredible how these megastructures, these ape hive mind super colonies function, but are much more fragile than one might expect. Take away food and the possibility to escape and one doesn´t even need Captain Trips to get the population quite wacky.
King uses this difference to construct completely opposite kinds of fear, the seemingly infinite solitude of the wild with some grains of small towns and the disturbing rests of a megacity now populated by corpses, cannibals, and crazy people.

Characters and writers' block.
Many cool secondary and one time use characters, extra plotlines, and groups consolidating and escalating together.
The reason for the extremely dense atmosphere is the combination of different sets of characters, weirdo antagonists, and a perfect mixture with the stellar characterization and atmosphere King is famous for.
I do also get why he had his writers' block while creating this ingenious masterpiece, because he is no plotter and nearly scribbled his way towards an abyss because he had too much of everything for someone who didn´t know how it should end. Luckily, he found his way back, but just how he got until the point of hitting the wall without confusing the reader or himself, especially because, ahem, you know, booze and drugs and stuff, is amazing.

A grain of magic
There´s not really that much high fantasy or complex witching around system, one could also say plot over people focus, and that´s why it´s so absorbing, why having terrible, frightening, wonderful nightmare adventures together with the crew feels so damn good. Some psi, mind control, precognition, animal magic, elemental powers, but the real driving engine here is the madness, evilness vs goodness, and especially the shade of grey in between with protagonists switching sides, developing new disgusting goals, or refraining from doing necrophilic cannibalism and stuff. If there would be more, today (2021) standard epic fantasy with real überhuman god power magic, it couldn´t have such a unique, dense, and not really that action focused atmosphere, without any unnecessary words on freaking endless pages of pure ecstasy.

The real philosophies and ideologies behind the good and evil fractions are manifold, one could waste a great load of time overanalyzing it, but I´ll let everyone find her/his own interpretation and add mine to the mix:

The Lovecraftian big bad new government
The darkness of confused, evil souls who unite under a new leader who combines elements of many of Kings´most beloved big cosmic horror and barbarian human traits to mix the perfect, bloody cocktail. Could be seen as a homage to the inherent bad in all of us and systems constructed by mentally unstable apes, philosophically vivisected until regurgitation, or just appreciated at what it most likely is. One of the most realistic, without the demonic superpower elements except secret military research has already reached new levels, descriptions of how a collapse of civilization would most likely end in new dictatorships.

The better, progressive, eco and human friendly alternative
The good ones are seemingly helpless, just have their will, community, and some dream controlling power and soft psi magic to fight the armed to the teeth demonic hordes, but similar to many other deus ex machina solutions, the mind is stronger than tons of steel. What makes it especially satisfying is the multifaceted characters´ evolution towards good or bad and how extremely stylish and cool the real and mental confrontations of big bad and old as dirt good and their team members play out. Of course, in reality, our good team of friends would immediately be raped, tortured, and eaten, rape torture eat repeat style as some like to call it (and not necessarily in that order), but hey, even King has to integrate some optimistic moments to help his readers to better handle the horror. And to get a story too, of course.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: