After the End: Difference between revisions
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[[File:PostApocalypseLondon001 2039.jpg|link=Hellgate:London|thumb|400px|The book of humanity closes and the words "The End" are given upon us all, yet the story continues in a new location: [[Hell on Earth]].]]
{{quote|"''It was not, as some had predicted, [[The End of the World as We Know It|the end of the world]]. Instead, the [[Apocalypse How|apocalypse]] was simply the prologue to another bloody chapter in human history.''"
|'''[[Ron Perlman]]''', ''[[Fallout 3]]'' intro monologue.}}
[[The End of the World as We Know It|Something hugely nasty]] has happened to humanity. Be it nuclear war (which was once very popular but has gone out of vogue, in part due to [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]), plague (which currently{{when}} seems to be the most popular), natural disaster (which seems the most likely to happen in the near future in [[Real Life]]), [[World-Wrecking Wave|supernatural disaster]] (usually the case with a [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] or missing [[Cosmic Keystone]]), devastating [[Gaia's Lament|environmental changes]] (which are happening in [[Real Life]] right now, debatably) or [[Alien Invasion]] (God help us if ''that'' one happens)-- most of humanity is gone.
The result is generally that you have the remnants of humanity fighting to survive in a [[Crapsack World|crapsacked]] [[Scavenger World]] full of [[Ghost City|Ghost Cities]] and [[Scenery Gorn]], or at least plenty of [[Schizo-Tech]] and [[Lost Technology]] (or even [[Weird Science]]). People inevitably degrade down to [[Disaster Scavengers]] and [[Crazy Survivalist]]s, for whom staying alive may well mean being [[Reduced to Ratburgers]] or [[I'm a Humanitarian|worse]]. If enough time has passed, those born after the end may hear stories of [[The Beforetimes]] from those few who survived the catastrophe, trying to impress upon the children what humanity was and still is capable of. Expect a [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]] who [[Slept Through the Apocalypse]] to wake up to see their world changed.
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Related, if not quite the same, [[Dark Age Europe|is the period immediately after the fall of Rome]]; most [[Film]] and TV set in this time tend to depict it as a time of post-apocalyptic savagery. Thus, expect parallels with humanity's decay into [[Medieval Morons]] [[The Dung Ages|wallowing in filth]]. In fact, while there was a significant increase in banditry and piracy, most areas were peaceful most of the time.
If you're really lucky, you may get a [[
Compare [[Just Before the End]], [[End of an Age]], [[And Man Grew Proud]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime
* ''[[Violence Jack]]'' by [[Go Nagai]] is perhaps the first anime/manga example.
* ''[[Akira]]''
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* ''[[Blue Gender]]''
* ''[[Blue Submarine No. 6]]''
* ''[[Now and Then, Here and There]]''
* ''[[Neo-Human Casshern]]'' takes place in a time when Androids have taken over and a man who placed his mind in a superior android fight back against the androids with the help of his dog, Friender.
** The Series ''[[Casshern Sins]]'' that aired well over thirty years after the original is after the end -- ''of the end'', as now the androids society that conquered humanity is crumbling because of a disaster caused by this version of Casshern, who lost his memories and wanders the ruined Earth searching for answers to questions he doesn't know.
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** A tsunami, that's what!
* ''Future Boy Conan'' by Miyazaki who was well familiar with this trope.
* In [[Gundam]], both ''[[After War Gundam X|Gundam X]]'' and {{spoiler|''[[Turn A Gundam
* ''[[Gun X Sword]]'' takes place on the {{spoiler|prison}} planet of Endless Illusion {{spoiler|after Earth has been destroyed.}}
* ''[[Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind]]''
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* ''[[Robotech]]'', ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'', and ''[[Genesis Climber Mospeada]]'' - In Macross especially, where the remnants of humanity and Zentradi eventually manage to rebuild civilization after the planet suffered nuking. Macross City is the capital, built around the SDF-1, with homes, shops, schools and offices, and situated in a barren Alaska, with other cities miles away (possibly around Canada and some of the USA, although it's not specified where each city is located). The creators of the franchise eventually wanted to show a much cheerier image of the post-apocalypse after the big victory, however, the capture of a Zentradi satellite factory helps humanity to colonize the stars, meaning of course that there is a happy ending for most.
* ''[[Scrapped Princess]]''
* ''[[Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou]]'' - whether or not humanity gets better is up for debate, but it [[
* ''[[Simoun]]'' (After the End on a different planet)
* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' takes place After the End (in fact, [[Epileptic Trees|some people]] think it happens centuries after the [[End of the World Special|conclusion]] of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''). Humanity gets better.
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* ''[[Rave Master]]''. Technically, the world the story is set in is a parallel world created by the last surviving human after famine drought and plague destroyed the original world. The main villain, the only descendant of that sole survivor and, therefore, the only 'real' person, [[What an Idiot!|wants to go back to that world]].
** And we have an [[Eldritch Abomination]] [[Clock Roaches|Clock Roach]] trying to destroy the parallel world to boot.
* ''[[Utawarerumono]]'' Due to [[Gaia's Vengeance]] (kinda), humans can no longer live on the surface. In fact, at the beginning of the story, ALL humans are dead. (They are seen in flashbacks, just to prove that [[Humans Are
* Possibly ''[[Naruto]]''. Between the severe levels of schizo tech, the bizarre structures in Rain country, and the wreckage that the Uchiha weapons stash appears to be located below, it's never been explicitly stated but it would explain a lot. The probable source of said apocalyptic event is most likely the {{spoiler|Juubi}}. The wreckage in particular has an after the end feel to it.
* In ''[[Él|EL]]'', the Megaro Earth Project is implied to be the last remaining city populated by humans after nuclear war devastated the Earth. At the end of the second OVA, it is revealed that the situation is far worse {{spoiler|as only El and a single human male have survived, kept in a coma-like state by sentient AI hoping to find a way to breed them.}}
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* The world of ''[[Toriko]]'' was ravaged by war in the past. Then the legendary chef Acacia invited the world leaders to a full-course meal consisting of ingredients from the Gourmet World. After eating the main course called "GOD", the world leaders experienced enlightenment and worked together to bring about peace.
* In [[The World God Only Knows]], the civil war between the [[Noble Demon|good demons]] and their former rulers rendered Hell a desolate wasteland, forcing the New Devils to live in floating cities. As a result, {{spoiler|[[The Remnant|Vintage]] plans to [[Hell on Earth|resurrect Old Hell in the bountiful human world]]}}.
== Fan Fic ==▼
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7233104/1/The_10th_Level The 10th Level] nicely covers the fridge logic of the Code Geass ending.▼
* The ''[[Nineteen Eighty Three Doomsday Stories]]'' all take place after a nuclear war broke out in [[The Eighties]], and what happened after ''that.'' From the perspective of [[Axis Powers Hetalia|the Nations themselves]].▼
* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4797162/1/The_Faceless The Faceless]'' is a ''[[Death Note]]'' [[Alternate Universe Fic|AU]] which explores the [[Fridge Horror]] of having an entire realm of Death Gods that only need your name and face to kill you and [[Dying Like Animals|what would happen]] once the [[Broken Masquerade|Masquerade Broke]].▼
* Part of the premise of the [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]] fanfic, [[End of Ponies]].▼
** A popular fan speculation takes the show's [[Schizo-Tech]] and some apparently human-oriented objects (benches, tools, a train with a locomotive engine but is pulled by manual power) and draws the conclusion that Equestria is a distant post-apocalyptic [[Scavenger World]] built on the ruins of human civilization.▼
== Comic Books ==
* ''[[Y: The Last Man]]'' is a comic series that takes place in a world where a biological event has wiped out half the mammals on Earth; specifically, the males. The main character and his monkey, plus a few exceptions, are the last living Y-chromosome carriers, and since our protagonist's fiance was in Australia at that time and he's still loyal to her, things are nowhere near as rosy as that scenario might suggest. The civilization of the world falls into chaos as infrastructure and industry collapse (not so much because [[Stay in the Kitchen|women can't run things]], but because there aren't ''enough'' of them, and even fewer with the necessary training) but, a few years into the series' real-time run, the all-female society has more-or-less started to function again.
** The DC comic miniseries ''Me and Joe Priest'' postulated a lower-key version of ''Y'', with all human males (save the eponymous cleric) and most human females losing the ability to sire children. Much like ''Children of Men'', the population largely gets older and older and waits to die.
* In the ''[[
** And then there's the time Silver comes from (200 years in the series' future), where an unexplained disaster has completely destroyed the world, except for a few isolated pockets of civilization.
* ''[[Kamandi]], The Last Boy On Earth''. This Jack Kirby series had [[Schizo-Tech]] run rampant and [[Funny Animal]]s ruling feudal nations. Done by [[DC Comics]], although it didn't originally tie into [[The DCU]].
** Kamandi's world later became the setting for a bevy of other post-apocalyptic DC comics that got lumped in with it when they were incorporated into [[The DCU]], including the Atomic Knights, Hercules Unbound, and Hex.
* ''[[The End League]]'' Post apocalyptic superheros who suck really hard at what they do.
* ''[[Killraven]]'' was set in a world where the Martians from ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'' came back in the '90s and won this time. It focused on one of the few free human rebels and his attempts to overthrow the alien scourge.
* The [[Esperanto, the Universal Language|Esperanto]] comic book ''[[Ten Jarojn Poste|10 Jarojn Poste]]'' ("10 Years After") is set after a devastating nuclear war; the subsequent plague of male sterility, from which only a few men are immune, threatens humanity with extinction.
* ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' is set After the End where outside of a few giant city-states (and a Lunar colony, for some reason), the entire world is a barren radioactive desert filled with bizarre mutants.
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* ''[[The Walking Dead]]'', and the TV series based off of it.
▲* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7233104/1/The_10th_Level The 10th Level]'' nicely covers the fridge logic of the ending of ''[[Code Geass
▲* The ''[[
▲* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4797162/1/The_Faceless The Faceless]'' is a ''[[Death Note]]'' [[Alternate Universe Fic|AU]] which explores the [[Fridge Horror]] of having an entire realm of Death Gods that only need your name and face to kill you and [[Dying Like Animals|what would happen]] once the [[Broken Masquerade|Masquerade Broke]].
▲* Part of the premise of the ''[[My Little Pony:
▲** A popular fan speculation takes the show's [[Schizo-Tech]] and some apparently human-oriented objects (benches, tools, a train with a locomotive engine but is pulled by manual power) and draws the conclusion that Equestria is a distant post-apocalyptic [[Scavenger World]] built on the ruins of human civilization.
== Film ==
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* ''The Quiet Earth'', in which an attempt at building a global energy grid reduces the population of the world to three New Zealanders, who only survived because they were on the brink of death at the time. For a while, [[Mayor of a Ghost Town|the survivors enjoy everything the abandoned world has to offer]] while trying to work out what happened: then the disaster happens again, and [[Gainax Ending|the movie ends with only one protagonist left, staring up at an]] [[Alien Sky]].
* ''[[Sky Blue]]''
* ''[[Star Trek:
* ''[[Logan's Run]]'' is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where the only survivors live in a hermetically-sealed domed city—except for one crazy old man who lives in the U.S. House of Representatives with his cats.
* Taken to an extreme in ''The Time Machine'' where Alexander travels to the year 802701, where humanity has started over and split into the normal-looking Eloi and the savage Morloks, and then again to the year 635,427,810, where the latter has taken over the planet.
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* ''[[Zardoz]]''
* ''[[Dead End Drive-In]]''
== [[Literature]] ==
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** ''[[The Stand]]'' opens right before a viral bioweapon brings about [[The End of the World as We Know It]].
* Sterling Lanier's ''Hiero's Journey'' and ''The Unforsaken Hiero'' are set mainly in what used to be [[Canada, Eh?|Canada]], prior to [[World War III]] (now long past). The protagonist's mission in the first book is to rediscover computer technology, because his people are running into information management problems and have enough historical knowledge to realize that computer information retrieval could solve them.
* ''[[World Made By Hand]],'' by James Howard Kunstler, is set in a future where industrial civilization has collapsed simply from petroleum depletion and resultant stresses on socioeconomic systems .(Terrorists also destroyed Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles with nuclear bombs, but there was never any all-out nuclear war.) This is one of a fairly new genre of [https://web.archive.org/web/20120714113737/http://www.energybulletin.net/node/44031 post-oil novels].
* In [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]'s ''[[Narnia|The Magician's Nephew]]'', Charn is absolutely dead except for Jadis herself.
* Robert McCammon's ''[[Swan Song (novel)|Swan Song]]'' is a post-apocalyptic novel with fantasy/horror underpinnings.
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** ''Star Man's Son'' (a.k.a. ''Daybreak - 2250 A.D.'') opens generations after [[World War III]]. The protagonist is suffering from his culture's prejudice against [[Mutants]].
* In [[H. Beam Piper]]'s short story "The Answer", the protagonists - an American and a Russian - managed to survive the destruction of their respective nations, and are now working in South America. The titular answer is to the question, why was Auburn, New York, the first casualty of [[World War III]] - particularly since the Soviets then threw away the advantage of a first strike and didn't follow it up? {{spoiler|The town wasn't destroyed by the Soviets, but by a [[Colony Drop]] - specifically, of an antimatter meteor - and nobody recognized it for what it was until after one of the protagonists, who witnessed the destruction of Auburn and investigated it, witnessed the results of a similar, artificial antimatter experiment in South America.}}
* Reeves' ''[[Mortal Engines]]'' takes place after not only the Sixty Minute War, a conflict so devastating it caused centuries of geological instability and fundamentally changed the geography of the Earth
* M.P. Shiel's 1901 novel ''The Purple Cloud'' finds a man returning from a Polar expedition to discover that seemingly all other humans and animals on the planet have been killed by the purple cloud of the title.
* In Olaf Stapleton's ''[[Last and First Men]]'', 99% of humanity is wiped out in a huge geological upheaval, with humanity thrown back to the [[stone Age]] and forced to crawl back to dominance over several million years, and evolving into the 2nd, 3rd, etc Men. Eventually Earth must be abandoned when the [[Colony Drop|Moon comes crashing down]], and later Venus, Man's new home, is threatened and must be abandoned for a final home on Neptune. The book ends with the 17th (Last) Men awaiting the end as the Sun threatens to go nova.
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* The Pelbar heptalogy by Paul O. Williams is set in North America 1,000 years after a nuclear war, describing how the communities along the Heart River (formerly the Mississippi) are trying to reforge anything resembling a nation.
* ''[[The Chrysalids]]'' by [[John Wyndham]], who liked this sort of thing, is about a society recovering after a catastrophe, which the hyper-Christian characters call "The Tribulation" and is implied to be a nuclear war/disaster. In the protagonist's community, any living thing showing signs of genetic abnormality is considered a Satanic abomination, including human beings. His having telepathy is therefore something of a concern.
* [[Roger Zelazny]]'s ''This Immortal'' (which was originally serialized as ''...And Call Me Conrad''), which is better than his book ''Damnation Alley'' (which the movie of the same name is based on [[In Name Only]]).
* In the ''Pendragon'' novel, ''The Pilgrims of Rayne'', Bobby discovers that {{spoiler|the tropical island paradise of Ibara is actually part of Veelox, after three hundred years have passed since Aja Killian's time. The rest of Veelox is a crumbling wasteland and the people not living in Ibara aren't much better than animals.}} In ''Raven Rise'', {{spoiler|Third Earth}} could probably also fit this trope well.
* The Gold Eagle adventure series ''[[Deathlands]]'' takes place in a post-[[WW 3]] United States plagued by crazed mutants and power-hungry barons.
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* Manuel de Pedrolo's Mecanoscrito del segundo origen (Second origin typescript) deals with two young survivors of an alien attack on earth trying to repopulate it and preserve human culture, with the few other survivors they come across no longer being quite as sound of mind as they may once have been.
* Nevil Shute's ''On The Beach'' follows the {{spoiler|short}} lives of people living in southern Victoria, Australia, after the rest of the world has blown each other to bits with nuclear bombs. {{spoiler|Everybody dies, All of them. Yes even the baby. And the dog. They all die. Incredibly depressing, but still a brilliant book.}}
* In John Birmingham's ''Without Warning'' [[Alternate History|in 2003, just before the Iraq War]] a mysterious energy field called "the Wave" wipes out all higher primates (and about half of an apparently random selection of any species with a spine) in the greater part of North America (about half of Canada, 95% of the Lower 48 states, and about 80% of Mexico as well as about 75% of Cuba). [[It Got Worse|Things get worse]] when
* Most of the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' novels and adventure modules are set after the Cataclysm, an event in which a fiery mountain (i.e., meteor) fell on the city of Istar and destroyed it and much of civilization with it.
* Fred Saberhagen's ''Empire of the East'' and its sequels series ''The Books of Swords'' and ''The Books of Lost Swords'' are set on earth thousands of years after civilization was ''not'' destroyed in a nuclear war. Instead, the United States activated a device that actually changed the laws of nature to prevent the destruction of humanity by making nuclear fission so much less likely that the nuclear bombs wouldn't work. The good news is that it worked. The bad news is that changing the laws of nature also caused advanced technology to stop functioning, and caused magic to start working. As a result, civilization collapsed anyway, but it did eventually rebuild, albeit along rather different lines.
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* ''[[The Last Ship]]'' is last because of a nuclear war that left most of earth uninhabitable.
* ''[[Summer Of The Apocalypse]]'', a YA novel set after a deadly flu pandemic.
* [[Ray Bradbury]]'s "I, Mars" (titled "Night Call, collect" in some anthologies) features one man left behind in a large colony on Mars, after everyone else is evacuated to help in a nuclear war on Earth. All the infrastructure is intact, including a lot of food, so he just has to amuse himself for sixty years or so.
== Live
* ''
** {{spoiler|[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|The 2000s version]] takes place "after the end" of the Colonial civilization but "before the beginning" of ours.}}
* ''[[Jeremiah (TV series)|Jeremiah]]''
* ''[[Jericho]]''
* ''[[Survivors (TV series)|Survivors]]''
* ''[[Whoops]]'' was an actual ''
* ''[[Ark II]]''
* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', though it diverges wildly, being, not after the end of ''Earth'', but after everyone on the spaceship Red Dwarf died, except Lister, who was in stasis. Since it's 3 million years after, the characters assume that all other humans are deceased.
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* ''[[The Starlost]]'' takes place on a generation ship launched from an Earth that was destroyed by some unspecified disaster shortly afterward.
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' creator Gene Roddenberry made together three separate pilot movies for essentially the same series premise: ''[[Genesis II]]'', ''[[Planet Earth]]'', and ''[[Strange New World]]''.
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' itself could be considered an "After The After The End" story - centuries before the show, humans almost destroyed themselves in a nuclear war, but then climbed their way back up to become greater than they were before. The After the End stage, known as the Postatomic Horror, is seen in "[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Encounter at Farpoint]]" and ''[[Star Trek:
** Likewise, it is stated that the Vulcans fought a similar world war which left their planet in ruins (and may explain the desert-like state of the planet). However, they learned to embrace logic and became a major power in the Galaxy.
** More than one episode involved the Enterprise or Voyager discovering a planet or civilization in this trope.
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** REMAIN INDOORS
* The Australian TV series ''[[Spellbinder]]'' is partly set in an alternate, rustic universe where a reasonably-sized pre-industrial society exists in the midst of an incalculably-large wasteland. It's eventually determined that the Wasteland was created by the Darkness, a nuclear winter created by the Spellbinders' failed attempt at increasing power. As a result, though the Spellbinders have electromagnetic capability in the "Power Stones", they've forgotten how it works, and only really know how to use the stones to power the flying ships and powersuits.
* ''[[The Tribe]]'' has a selective [[Depopulation Bomb]] called [[The Virus]], [[Only Fatal to Adults|which has wiped out all the adults]], [[Teenage Wasteland|leaving kids and teenagers]] in a [[
* ''[[Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future]]'' is set after the invention of robotic soldiers has resulted in decades of unending war. And that's how things were ''before'' the [[Big Bad]] Lord Dredd came to power and started digitizing humanity en masse.
* ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' takes place in the third and final year of a [[Robot War]] which had, in the earlier years, gone nuclear. The city the series takes place in is explicitly stated to be ''the only one left on Earth'' due to its protective shield.
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* The History Channel's [[Speculative Documentary]] ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r97xoSOEjM&feature=related After Armageddon]''.
* In ''[[Community]]'' epsiode [[Community/Recap/S1/E23 Modern Warfare|Modern Warfare]] invokes this trope (and related tropes) [[For Laughs]]. After Dean Pelton announced the prize to the school's paintball competition (priority scheduling), almost all of the students destroy each other and their school almost immediately.
* Happens in ''[[Aftermath:
== Music ==
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* [[Running Wild (band)|Running Wild]]'s song "Straight to Hell" is about bunch of survivors trying survive in post-apocalyptic world and "Land of Ice" is about [[Time Travel]] to a future where the world is caught on nuclear winter.
* [[Judas Priest]]'s "Cathedral Spires" from ''Jugulator'' is about mankind in post-apocalyptic world waiting to die in the titular structure.
* [[Steely Dan]]'s [https://web.archive.org/web/20130814000231/http://www.steelydan.com/lyrcountdown.html#track8 King of the World], not very clear, but can be interpreted as such.
* The second and third verse of [[Neil Young|Neil Young's]] song After The Gold Rush describes the physical world and humanity's attempt to rebuild respectively after the end.
* [[Stereolab]]'s "One Small Step"
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* [[The Decemberists]] song "After the Bombs" follows two lovers in such a world.
* German heavy metal group Rage have a song named "Take me to the Water", which deals with a lone survivor in an already dried-out Earth looking for a mythical source of water.
* [[Gotye]]'s music video for ''Eyes Wide Open'' shows a band of strange, thin limbed creatures wandering Earth, starting with the aftermath of a nuclear war and going back in time to the beginning of life on Earth.
== Newspaper Comics ==
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* ''[[Gamma World]]'' is set on an Earth which, centuries after some ill-defined global catastrophe, is populated with mutants of every mental and physical stripe, sentient animals and plants, insane malfunctioning robots and even humans. The players are strongly encouraged to not take this very seriously. The RPG credits Lanier's ''Hiero'' books, Aldiss' ''[[Hothouse]]'', and [[Andre Norton]]'s ''Star Man's Son'' as influences (see [[Literature]]).
** As for how the apocalypse happened, it varies with each edition. Earlier ones used nuclear war, the previous one used Nanotechnology combined with a heaping helping of [[And Man Grew Proud]], and the current one involves [[Reality Is Out to Lunch|every timeline getting smushed into one]] due to a [[Magical Particle Accelerator]]
* In the backstory of ''[[Warhammer
** Humanity's golden age was brought to an end by the [[Horus Heresy]], where fully half of the human race turned to worshiping demons and wiping out the other half. The God-Emperor was permanently injured in a lethal duel with their leader, Horus (in a way, the Emperor's son), to the point that he is only kept alive by an extremely complex life support device. Since then, it has stood on the brink of destruction for 15,000 years... and considering that it has been said there are flaws in the device beyond repair, it may be coming soon.
*** For the majority of humanity, the "Dark Age of Technology" was a greater golden age than the height of the Imperium, but the attitudes and lifestyles of that era are not well regarded by the Imperium. The [[Horus Heresy]] occurred 5,000 years later, in A.D. 30,000, and some, including Tzeentch, one of the four main Chaos Gods, theorize that if the Emperor dies, [[A God Am I|he will be reborn as a full-blown god, destroy the Chaos Gods, and lead humanity to eternal victory]].
*** To elaborate, in 40K, where all emotions are shadowed in the Warp, faith is ''literally'' power - and the Emperor is the object of worship for an unbelievably huge and ridiculously fanatical state-enforced cult.
** Known apocalypses in the ''[[Warhammer
*** Now, now people, let's not be humano-centric here. There have been at least several other apocalypses involving other races going on, the most recent and significant must be the fall of the Eldar, although there is of course the apocalypse that wiped out the Old Ones as well. In fact look at any race (bar the Tau) and you'll find an apocalypse or two somewhere in their background (though with Chaos they were usually CAUSING them).
**** With the exception of the Eldar's apocalypse, which is widely believed to have caused Slaneesh, rather than the other way around.
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* ''[[Exalted]]'' takes place after 3 different Ends, and is set at [[End of an Age]]. First was the Primordial War (named after the Primordials, the creators of the universe, who lose), involving the extinction of scores of civilizations and races; most of Creation was burned up by a sore loser's last act before surrendering. Then the [[Atlantis|First Age]], was ended by the Usurpation. Lastly, a plague made by a ghost of a Solar killed in the Usurpation, and powered by the corpse/ghost of a killed Primordial, killed 90% of the population, and was followed by a invasion of [[The Fair Folk]], who succeeded in unmaking half of Creation (by area).
** The good news? You play EXALTS. They can do just about anything, including flattening the Fae Folk and pushing them back to reclaim parts of Creation from the Wyld and in the past they beat down the creators of the Gods themselves...Problem is the forces of the Underworld have Exalts too, and then there's that [[It Got Worse|Great Curse]]. The Potential to fix the world is there, it'll just take a lot of work, and the Exalts overcoming the effects of the Great Curse along with every possible threat to Creation...But hey, if anyone can pull it off, its the [[Memetic Badass|Exalted]]
* The Dark Sun campaign setting for ''[[Dungeons
** Game designers' early descriptions of what [[Dark Sun]] would be like actually referred to it as "the Forgotten Realms after they dropped the Bomb".
* Palladium's ''[[After The Bomb]]'' setting (originally a spin-off of their ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' RPG, now separate) takes place in a post-apocalyptic world populated by both human survivors and [[Funny Animal|mutant animals]] as a result of a virus followed by a grand nuking of the population. (They assumed the virus was a bio-weapon, it was just a prank. Oops.)
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* ''Mutant Future'' is a close-as-you-can-get-it retroclone of post-apoc RPGs such as Gamma World using the Labyrinth Lord rules.
* ''Aftermath!'' is an old [[Scavenger World]] game, and it's slim pickings since it's a few generations after the end. There's lots of scenarios for the setting, lots of little rules systems for simulating special cases, lots of genetically engineered life forms and [[Schizo-Tech]] and you are as likely to die of [[Wizard Needs Food Badly|starvation and exposure]] as violence.
* ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'' is by default [[Hit So Hard the Calendar Felt It|set ten years after]] [[The End of the World as We Know It|the Fall]], in which [[
== Toys ==
* The Bara Magna setting in ''[[Bionicle]]'', the [[Desert Punk]] remains of a larger planet after an [[Earthshattering Kaboom]].
== Video Games ==
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* In ''[[Legacy of Kain]]: Soul Reaver'', Raziel is thrown into the abyss at the height of his empire's power and comes back 1,000 or 10,000 years (or more) later to find it a crumbling, decaying wasteland. Although in this case, there was no cataclysm, just a gradual downward spiral.
* In ''Rayforce'', Earth has been overtaken and transformed by the supercomputer-turned-[[Eldritch Abomination]] "Con Human". The game, of course, ends with an [[Earthshattering Kaboom]].
* ''[[Super Robot Wars Alpha|Super. Robot. Wars. Alpha. Gaiden.]]'' Starting with chapter 10, it's a future that had, as part of it's backstory, the backstories of [[Xabungle]], [[After War Gundam X|Gundam X]], and [[Turn A Gundam
** It's actually ''worse'' : {{spoiler|Alpha Gaiden is set after ''three'' ends. THREE. The gravitational shockwave the heroes were trying to prevent before the time travel, a massive attack by the underground forces (aka [[Getter Robo|the Dinosaur Empire]] and [[Great Mazinger|the Mycenae civilisation]]), and the aforementioned fusion of ''[[After War Gundam X|Gundam X]]'''s massive [[Colony Drop]] and [[Turn A Gundam
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker]]'', the entire world had been flooded, and only the Chosen people survived; the rest were killed off. The [[Cel Shading|graphics]] are so light-hearted that it might never dawn on the player that ''over 90% of the population of the planet was drowned.''
* In ''[[In the Hunt]]'', the game takes place after most of the world is submerged underwater via an evil organization's [[Doomsday Device]].
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* ''[[Mutant Rampage Body Slam]]'' takes place after many wars and ecologic disasters ruined the world's cities.
* This may be a stretch, but ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'' may apply, in a sense. Wander travels around the Forbidden Lands, which is devoid of human life, save for Wander himself. However, if one looks carefully (and does a lot of riding), traces of a prior civilization can be found, namely at the altar area in the desert that triggers the 13th colossus, and the "closed off city" that the 14th colossus resides in. Certainly not an end of all humanity or life, but an end to a civilization [[Wild Mass Guessing|(maybe?)]], nonetheless.
* ''Lethal Skies'' is an [[Ocean Punk]] [[Simulation Game|flight sim]] taking place after runaway [[Hollywood Global Warming]].
* The world in ''[[Secret of Mana]]'' turns out to be this, with a past [[Lost Technology|technologically advanced]] [[Abusive Precursors|world civilization]] having long since been wiped out [[And Man Grew Proud|by harnessing]] the [[Lost Superweapon|Mana Fortress]]. Considering this was caused by abusing Mana to power the Fortress, this is also a [[Green Aesop]] for our world's abuse of natural resources.
* The in-game setting for [[.hack GU Games|The World R:2]] is set after a huge war where humanity kills most of the gods from R:1's backstory.
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* ''[[The Wager]]'' takes place after an event known only as "the Shattering," which was powerful enough to permanently alter the world's geography but left humanity seemingly intact.
* Subverted in ''[[The Reconstruction]]''. {{spoiler|The game doesn't start out like this, but an apocalypse happens towards the end that turns the final chapter into an After the End scenario.}}
* Crisis City in ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
* The [[Roguelike]] ''[[Caves of Qud]]'', set in a world of ruins, mutants, and remnant killer robots.
* ''[[Guns of Icarus]]'' is set in a post-apocalyptic world where [[Sky Pirates]] rule the air in [[Zeppelins from Another World]].
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* Implied to be the case in ''[[Portal 2]]'', although its unclear if the world has actually ended or if the computers running the place merely think it has, on account of the fact that the whole facility has fallen apart in the time since the events of the first game
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[A Moment of Peace]]'' is a [[Lighter and Softer]] version of a post-apocalyptic [[Scavenger World]].
* [[UNA Frontiers]]. Notable for taking place three hundred years later, and for the conspicuous lack of biker gangs.
* The Awesome Adventures! Comic [http://awesomeadventurescomics.com/2010/11/heaven Heaven]{{Dead link}} takes place in [[Department of Redundancy Department|post-apocalyptic Detroit]] after most of humanity has apparently been turned into a race of mutant zombies.
* ''[[Blade of Toshubi]]'' is set on a future Earth where the only humans survive in arks orbiting Earth while animals have been artificially 'evolved' into sentient bipeds.
* Similarly, the "[https://web.archive.org/web/20110128120913/http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070205 Aylee]" arc from ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' shows an [[Alternate Universe]] where "ghouls" have overrun the Earth, with most of humanity's survivors living in orbital spaceships.
** There are also a couple [[Alternate Universe|alternate universes]] where, while the most of humanity hasn't ''died'', they ''have'' been transported into [[Another Dimension|other dimensions]], leaving very few people behind. In one there's no one around but an [[Alternate Universe]] Riff and six billion butterflies that replaced every single person on Earth.
* ''[[Magical Misfits]]'' is set in the far future after magic returned & killed some humans while changing others into creatures of mythology.
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* This ''[http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2008/09/vote/ Amazing Super Powers]''.
* ''[[White Noise]]'' takes place 120 years after a hostile alien race temporarily halted the rotation of the Earth, killing everyone and everything not on one of the three space colonies.
* ''[[Post Nuke Comic]]'' takes place following a nuclear war that played out eerily similar to the biblical apocalypse. A mad dictator took over, nuclear fallout's poisoned a third off all water and a third of all land, and there was very little warning of the first shots in the Last War being fired-people say it came like a
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140103215055/http://o31.net/ O31] is set in San Francisco in a world where all electricity has simply and mysteriously disappeared (which was followed promptly by [[Stuff Blowing Up|gigantic explosions]] worldwide).
* ''[[The Ends]]'' is set in a post-nuclear wasteland, but that's only the beginning of the wierdness. Apparently the nuclear apocalypse set up a [[Groundhog Day Loop]], forcing its inhabitants to endure an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
* The world's been "broken" four times in ''[[The Dragon Doctors]]''. Once in a war between evil puppet masters and upstart magic users, a nuclear war, a meteor impact, and a disaster called "The Dimension Fusion" that mixed up parts of Earth with parts of other dimensions. Each time [[Hit So Hard the Calendar Felt It|started a new calendar]].
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* ''[[Shifters]]'' takes place in 2034 after a "Nuclear Incident" gave rise to [[Mega City|MegaCities]] where [[Our Werebeasts Are Different|Werebeasts]], [[Our Vampires Are Different|Vampires]], and other races live and fight [[Invisible to Normals|unknown to the greater human population]].
* ''[[What It Takes]]'' which takes place after most of civilization has died. Commonly referred to as "the flip."
== Web Original ==
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* The Alternate History Dot Com thread Protect and Survive is set in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, after a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the West. Newcastle is somewhat spared, but suffers in the aftermath of the nuclear war.
* The Alternate History Wiki ''[[1983: Doomsday]]'' takes place after a nuclear war caused by [[For Want of a Nail|a Soviet Air Defense Forces officer being reassigned to a different bunker]] and his replacement mistaking a [[wikipedia:Stanislav Petrov#1983 incident|false alarm]] for an American nuclear attack. The timeline continues to be updated in real time via the [[Kent Brockman News|WCRB NewsHour]].
* [
* The web-published story ''[[Lost Boys of the Cascades]]'' is about a group of children struggling to survive in southern Oregon a year after a plague destroyed almost all of the world's adult population.
* [http://vimeo.com/31894179 Rosa] is set after humans left cyborgs to fix the ecosystem they destroyed by causing all natural life to disappear.
* Several stories in ''[[Hitherby Dragons]]'', although the intro to "[https://web.archive.org/web/20120321151601/http://imago.hitherby.com/2004/09/the-arena-and-what-happened-there/ The Arena and what happened there]" sums it up rather well.
* The Bellerverse is a canon in the ''[[SCP Foundation]]'' where the Foundation failed to prevent the end of the world (exactly how it happened is not stated), and everyone present on Earth perished; humanity survived because some humans were not on Earth at the time. In the Bellerverse setting, which takes place thousands of years later, the Foundation is but a legend (often regarded as gods in their polytheism religion), with humans living in an Iron Age society, either living alongside or warning against evolved descendants of famous SCPs. [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/bellerverse Far more of an explanation can be found here.]
== Western Animation ==
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* Parodied in ''[[Futurama]]'', in which Fry, believing that he has somehow been frozen for ''another'' thousand years, {{spoiler|finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world; as it turns out, it's just contemporary Los Angeles.}}
** Note that in Fry's first millennium freeze, aliens in flying saucers came and leveled civilization on Earth (or, at the very least, New York ([[Fridge Logic|and excluding the cryonics building]])), from which it rose again. ''Twice!'' {{spoiler|One of which was apparently time-traveling Bender's fault.}}
** In Season 6, Fry, Bender, and Professor Farnsworth time travel in a fast-forward-only time machine to the year 10,
* An often overlooked movie called ''Rock & Rule'' (or ''Ring of Power'' as the chopped-up kids version is called) is about a world where, after a nuclear war, humans and animals merged together. The world has become surprisingly civilized, as most everything is done using rock music. The [[Big Bad]] of the film, a person known as "Mok" (a parody Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger) pilots a giant airship shaped like his face, and plans to throw a giant concert in which he hopes will raise the Anti-Christ.
* ''[[Skyland]]'' was set after a point in which the entire world had broken up into sections, and required air vehicles to move between sections.
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* Strongly implied in ''[[Thundercats]]'' and ''[[Thundercats 2011|ThunderCats (2011)]].'' The planet is called Third Earth, there are remnants of [[Lost Technology]], and in the original Mumm-Ra mentions how he remembers when it was once First Earth.
* [[Samson and Sally]] takes place in a world where the environment is all but destroyed, and cities are sunk. And, for some reason, people have started whaling again.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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* Currently the incident is unknown but humanity can be genetically traced back to 50 women. That means that there was once a time when only 50 women (and an unknown number of men) were the only survivors of something that nearly made humanity extinct. We are the result of their after the end.
** It's just as possible that there were many more others alive and we simply didn't inherit their genes. Regardless, there are some evidences (such as the Toba theory above) that the human race did go through a population bottleneck of some kind very long ago.
* The [[Kievan Rus|Rurik dynasts]] were on the brink of founding a fabled civilization. They had beautiful imitations of Byzantine artwork, trade and political contacts with powers all over Europe and Asia. And even the beginning of rule of law and republican government. Then they came up against the [[Hordes From the East]] who went through their territory with [[Rape, Pillage and Burn|their usual procedure]] and left a [[Mother Russia Makes You Strong|hardscrabble lot]] mainly trying to survive in the forests for generations.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Beginning Tropes]]
▲[[Category:After the End]]
[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]
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