book help!

three things i’ve read before, but don’t remember their names. internet, anybody? HALP.

1. (read this as a child. is definitely a book, was located in the young adult area of my local library) science fiction dystopian theme. about a boy and a girl, though their stories are told separately, both before and after a great event (possibly nuclear?) that wipes out not only a large part of humanity, but also its infrastructure, government, and global community.

the boy’s story involves his father who has a post-apocalyptic plan to keep humanity alive by raising rabbits as a easy source of protein. his father dies during the great event, but the boy becomes a bit of a messiah figure after people emerge from the bunkers underground. if i remember correctly, he neither physically scarred nor genetically damaged from the devastating event. other survivors he encounters didn’t follow the boy’s father’s instructions to the letter and weren’t protected from radiation.

the girl’s story involves her being taken away from her family at a young age to live with some distant and cold queen or reigning female figure. she spends all her days reading and learning global history. she is also given an elaborate and beautiful necklace. she survives the devastating event and learns that she has been groomed to lead the surviving humans. Her necklace is a repository of seeds that can be used to re-diversity earth’s flora (which has been completely destroyed. entire surface is mostly flat like a prairie and covered in grass, which is why the rabbits were a great idea). she has also been physically protected and thus not disfigured.

story is left open ended. the remaining humans have seiged the building where the girl is staying (one of the only buildings left) because they think there might be resources inside. clearly the girl and boy are meant to rule humanity together. conveniently they are the only people with DNA untainted by radiation. also, she’s got seeds! and he’s got smarts! 

2. a science fiction short story i read online. set in a vague and undefined distant fugure. the story was written about a girl who did investigative work for clients who would contact her online. societal pay structure has changed so that people are paid based off of how many calories the job consumes. something about how it was hard to keep subsidizing farmers to produce food. the girl does some sort of underwater related job (like diving for abalone?) in tandem with her online investigating. this is all i remember.

there are more that i can’t remember at the moment. i would love to find the names of these because they were kind of awesome when i read them and totally fed my imagination as a kid.