In The Postman, the future of 2013 is a desolate, low-tech landscape following an unspecified collapse in the late 1990s. The world has regressed into a neo-Western frontier where isolated farming communities in the Pacific Northwest live in constant fear of the Holnists—a brutal, feudalist militia. Technology has largely vanished, replaced by horseback travel and primitive subsistence living, as the former United States exists only as a memory of a "civilized" past.

The film depicts a societal dynamic defined by the destruction of communication infrastructure. This void allows for the rise of fascist paramilitarism, where the "Holnist" ideology replaces democratic law with the rule of the strong. Earth remains the central setting, specifically a balkanized North America where the lack of a central government has led to the emergence of city-states and nomadic war bands. The divergence from our reality lies in the film's premise of a total collapse of global systems, resulting in a world where a physical mail carrier becomes a revolutionary symbol of legitimacy and connectivity.

As a predictive piece, the film's 2013 setting failed to foresee the digital revolution, instead imagining a return to analog necessity. While the literal return of a horse-mounted Postal Service did not occur, retrospective analyses suggest the film correctly signaled the rise of militia-style political violence and the fragility of shared institutional trust. The film's core prediction—that society is held together primarily by its networks of communication—remains a poignant, if hyperbolized, reflection of how modern stability relies on the invisible threads of logistics and infrastructure.