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{{trope}}
{{quote|''All the greatest wishes are granted, let us sing, let innocence reign''
''All the prayers are finally answered, blessed and free of all pain''
''Towers of fire rise ever higher, magical flags will be unfurled''
''The power of song, the young are the strong''
''The night that children rule the world''
|"When Children Rule the World", [[Christmas Songs|traditional Christmas carol]]}}
Somehow, the social order has gone all topsy-turvy. Instead of the old having power over the young, the young are free to do as they will, and may even have power over the old. This is pretty much inevitably portrayed as a bad thing, [[Most Writers Are Adults|regardless of the state of the world today with the old having power]] (which of course is exactly the way it was when those who are now old were young). The young in question might attempt to [[Promotion to Parent|build some sort of new society]], or they might [[Kids Are Cruel|degenerate into]] [[Teens Are Monsters|complete barbarism]], or there might be a [[Order Versus Chaos|conflict between the former and the latter]]. The most famous example is ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'', but it's not too uncommon, since it's a useful device to explain why teenagers are going on whirlwind adventures. '''Teenage Wasteland''' settings tend to be rather dark, since they often involve [[Child Soldiers|children and teenagers fighting for their lives]], and quite possibly doing horrible things to each other. [[Children Are Innocent]] has no place in a Teenage
'''There are a few ways this might come to be:'''
# A group of teenagers are lost, stranded, or otherwise isolated from society (e.g. ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'').
# Adults simply do not exist any more. They are gone, either because the children have instigated a teenage revolution and killed all the adults (e.g. ''[[Children of the Corn]]''), or because of something that was [[Only Fatal to Adults]] (e.g. ''[[Logan's Run]]'', ''[[Shade's Children]]'').
# A society where the old nominally still hold power, but groups of youths have become too powerful to be truly controlled. (e.g. ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'').
# A society where the young and the old coexist, but the young call the shots
This is not to be confused with [[There Are No Adults]], though types 1 and 2 probably overlap with that. Also not [[A Child Shall Lead Them]], in which only one youngster has authority.
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Not to be confused with [[Refrain From Assuming]], about songs with titles that are different from the refrain. For once, the correct name isn't [[The Who|"Baba O']][[Trope Namer|Riley"]].
{{examples
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Infinite Ryvius]]'' is pure Type 1, being basically ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' [[Recycled in Space|in Space!]]
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* The 1972 cult film ''Gas-s-s-s'', an industrial accident releases a poison gas that [[Only Fatal to Adults|kills everyone on earth over the age of 25]]. In the rest of the film, the main characters have to learn to survive on their own.
* Subverted in ''[[Sleepaway Camp]] 3: Teenage Wasteland'' {{spoiler|"They're all wasted!"}}
* The 1968 film ''[[Wild
* ''[[Class of 1984]]'' plays like a Type 3; the sequel, ''[[Class Of 1999]]'' moreso.
* In ''[[Mad Max|Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome]]'', Max discovers a fertile valley where the children of plane crash survivors have been left alone while the adults went to find help. It being [[After the End]], there was no help to be had, and the kids wound up having to raise themselves.
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* The teen gangs in ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'' can't be controlled by the adults, so they're a type 3.
* The original ''[[Logan's Run]]'' is about a cross between a type 2 and type 4, where everyone is killed when they reach 21. The film version raises the age to 30, which doesn't fit this quite as well.
* In ''[[Gone (novel)]]'', [[Only Fatal to Adults|everyone over the age of 15 disappears in an instant]], leading to a type 2.
* ''Diario de la Guerra del Cerdo'' (it was translated as "Diary of the War of the Pig"), a 1969 novel by Argentinean writer and Cervantes Prize winner Adolfo Bioy Casares. A dystopic world where old people is deemed as "useless pigs", any kind of healthcare or benefits has been removed by the government and youngster's mobs are given tacit right to kill them in the streets, forcing them to hide and live a miserable existence in the underworld. Thus, type 3; though the approach to this subject is both grim and comedic at the same time.
* There was a short-lived [[YA Novel]] series called ''2011'' where this scenario happens in a type 3 situation.
* The titular ''[[Shade's Children]]'' are almost a type 2 except for Shade himself, and he's... well, [[Brain In a Jar|unusual]]. All other adults have disappeared. Shade treats the children in his care like soldiers, but they all trust him because he's older than them. In a world where most people don't survive beyond the age of 14, it is shown that people generally sort themselves into a hierarchy based on age, with the main character practically falling down to worship Shade when he first sees him.
* The kids in ''[[Battle Royale]]'' are type 1-ish, but they [[Teens Are Monsters|don't have much civilization to speak of]].
* In [[Larry Niven]]'s "A World Out Of Time", most of the Earth was ruled by immortal boy-children who kept a supply of grown-ups around as breeding stock (The immortal girl-children were wiped out by a gender war and environmental changes making their territory uninhabitable). All new boy-children are taken from the adults and join troupes of the immortal boys; the ones that demonstrate "superior qualities" are sent back to the adults to become new breeding adults, while the rest become immortal and stay boys forever. Girls remain with the adults and grow into new breeding adults.
* Just about anything by [[Bret Easton Ellis]] before ''[[American Psycho]]''
* In the second novel in the ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' series, Lyra visits a world where a lot of the adults have been killed off by Specters, monsters that can only harm and be seen by those who have reached puberty. Much of the world is covered in abandoned cities left to gangs of spectre-orphans (until they grow up and get spectre-eaten themselves) while caravans with adults try to keep ahead of the spectres.
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* ''Evil'' by Swede Jan Guilliou is set in a 1950s boy's boarding school in which the boys are given to govern themselves in their lives outside the classroom - at one point does the principal step in to stop the beating of the main character during lunch, but only because splatters of blood land in his food. So, type 4.
* A E van Vogt's ''[[Children Of Tomorrow]]'' is a type 4: so many men have gone to war that there aren't enough left on Earth to enforce the law, and the children are organized into "outfits" with police powers.
* [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[Tunnel
* Charlie Higson's 'The Enemy', in which fourteen years ago, all people were infected with a disease which took this long to develop. Only people born since then remained. The adults either died or went mad and became cannibalistic zombies.
* Type 1 happens to the nation-state of Canyonar in ''[[Legends of Laconia|Waking Echoes]]'' by Donaya Haymond, as a result of [[The Virus]] that is [[Only Fatal to Adults|Only Fatal To Adults and Prepubescent Children]]. A few of the teens strive for order and peace, but because the place was ''already'' a [[Crapsack World]] before the Famine Fever hit, most of the kids either become cannibalistic looters or join a Fascist-style army with the aim of conquering the currently unaffected neighboring countries.
* This apparently happened in the backstory of [[Timothy Zahn]]'s ''A Coming of Age'', which takes place on a colony planet where some unknown environmental factor gives preadolescent children powerful telekinetic abilities. This led to an extremely destructive period known as the Lost Generation; by the time of the novel adults have reasserted control, but only by isolating the kids and strictly limiting their access to information.
== [[Live
* There was an early episode of ''[[Sliders]]'' where [[Howard Stern]] had been elected president and lowered the voting age to nine. The young were in power, the mandatory retirement age was in the mid-
* ''[[The Tribe]]''. An [[After the End]] world where [[The Virus]] is [[Only Fatal to Adults]].
* ''[[The New Tomorrow]]'', set some unspecified (but presumably quite long) period of time later, wherein the tribes are now settled in to their new world and, for the most part, more peaceful or at least more spread out. Except there are still no adults alive (surely the child survivors from ''[[The Tribe]]'' should've grown up and had kids and they too would....well, there should be * some* adults somewhere...)
* The ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'' episode "Miri" featured a planet where a virus had killed off all the adults, leaving the children to look after themselves.
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* ''[[Jeremiah (TV series)|Jeremiah]]'' takes place fifteen years after an [[Only Fatal to Adults]] plague.
* The Canadian series ''[[The Odyssey (TV series)|The Odyssey]]''.
* ''[[
* One chapter from ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' featured a tribe of kids from age 25 and down. After they reached 25 they committed suicide, but only because they had to keep the population small due to being kept safe by a shield that was slowly becoming smaller. But they didn't know that...
* The ''[[Farscape]]'' episode "Taking The Stone'' had a slightly similar premise, with the members of a hedonistic tribe suffering from cumulative radiation poisoning in their early twenties. Most of them "[[Suicide Is Painless|Take The Stone]]" at around twenty-two years of age, or else join the outcast "Lost People" wandering the abandoned catacombs for the rest of their lives.
* Non-teenager example from ''[[Green Wing]]'': When the girls in the office realise that the HR manager isn't coming back, it takes them roughly 10 minutes to devolve into a savage tribe. Human sacrifices and all.
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''[[Probe]]'': "Quit It" had a group of teenagers who had discovered a form of mind control that only affected people who had exited puberty. They nearly ran their entire neighborhood into the ground, ordering their parents to have constant block parties, buy boats and expensive cars, etc.
* Of course we can't have a trope without an example from ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]
* One of the first episodes of ''[[Andromeda]]'' had an old High Guard supply station inhabited by the descendants of the original staff, who all died in their twenties or sooner due to radiation poisoning or raids by Magog and Nietzscheans. They were also religious fanatics who worshiped the High Guard and considered a cabinet full of schematics (that they couldn't read) sacred scripture. And when Dylan accidentally unlocked the [[Star-Killing|Nova Bombs]] they attempted to send suicide Slipfighters to nearby systems.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* An interesting case was that of China when the Communists first took over. For a society that had always relied on an extremely rigid age-based hierarchy, suddenly teenage and young adult members of the Communist Party were given life-or-death power over their elder family and community members. Some of them went a little drunk with power for a while.▼
** Curiously, many of those who were members of the original revolution as well as the Cultural Revolution are now leading the Chinese government. Considering that they seem obsessed with keeping things orderly, one wonders if it is a case of a [[Full-Circle Revolution]] or [[My God, What Have I Done?|a result of lessons learned from an anarchic period]]. YMMV of course.▼
* Parts of the UK for complex reasons. If you take high youth unemployment, a society that runs on rampant consumerism and then an unarmed man is shot by police you have a recipe for social disorder. At first it was supposed to be a protest against the shooting and then it became a case of want, take, have.▼
** Type 3 during the 2011 England riots entire city centre's became teenage wastelands of looting and ultraviolence for about 4 nights. Not all of them were teenagers but many were under 25, including one 11 year girl arrested for looting.▼
* Given the demographics of prehistoric times, it wasn't unusual for a Neolithic community -- especially a newly-established one, or one recently struck by contagion -- to consist almost entirely of young adults and small children.▼
* The Internet. Enough said.▼
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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* In ''[[Bliss Stage]]'', alien invaders triggered the Bliss, an condition that's [[Only Fatal to Adults]] - and continues to be so: Turning 18 is a death sentence.
* This is the entire point of the RPG ''Kidworld''.
* The
** The desert domain of Sebua is home to a colony of feral children who don't grow any older, and who live like wild animals.
* In the [[Fighting Fantasy]] gamebook ''Starship Traveller'', the player can encounter a planet where the kids are in charge because the alien race suffers from extremely rapid and severe senility and dementia as soon as they reach adulthood.
== [[
* The play ''Rabbit'' is set in a Type 2 scenario where all the 'olduns' have presumably perished.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The first level of the PC game ''[[Sanitarium (video game)|Sanitarium]]'' has a town whose inhabitants are creepy deformed children controlled by an evil being which they refer to as "Mother," who killed all the adults in the town after seeing how [[Humans Are
* The game ''[[Rule of Rose]]'' features a society run by little girls.
* [[
* ''[[Fallout 3]]'''s Little Lamplight is a cross between a type 1 and 2. Of course on becoming adults, they're shipped off to "Big Town".
** ''Fallout'''s spiritual predecessor, ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]'' has Camp Highpool.
* ''[[MapleStory]]'' subverts this with the Demon Children in Crimsonheart; once you rescue them, they manage to cope surprisingly well. Although, as [[The Leader| Pepper]] tells you, they ''are'' demons - they are, if nothing else, resourceful.
== [[Web Original]] ==
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** ''[[Reassigned to Antarctica|Actually]]'' they were shipped off because otherwise they could (and, for a couple of times, did) cause a rebellion on the planet, and [[God Save Us From the Queen|the Condesce]] felt safer in conquering the galaxy ''because'' of this decentralization.
* Elves in ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'' die young, as a result of the loss<ref>Even the knowledge of ''how'' it was lost (accident, war, etc.) was lost</ref> of a priceless artifact that compensated for a poorly-formulated wish. This induced the complete collapse of their civilization.
* ''[[Aurora Danse Macabre]]'' is a mix of type 1 and type 3, Vermin children are socially isolated and the few adults they interact with are content to leave them to their own devices.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* An episode of ''[[Martin Mystery]]'' had a town were adults were sent to the [[Cyberspace]] {{spoiler|to an evil alien that uses the energy of others to get out of his web prison}}.
* Happens to the children of Springfield in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode [[Whole-Plot Reference|"Das Bus"]], which was a parody of ''[[Lord of the Flies]]''.
* In ''[[The Fairly
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* An interesting case was that of China when the Communists first took over. For a society that had always relied on an extremely rigid age-based hierarchy, suddenly teenage and young adult members of the Communist Party were given life-or-death power over their elder family and community members. Some of them went a little drunk with power for a while.
▲** Curiously, many of those who were members of the original revolution as well as the Cultural Revolution are now leading the Chinese government. Considering that they seem obsessed with keeping things orderly, one wonders if it is a case of a [[Full-Circle Revolution]] or [[My God, What Have I Done?|a result of lessons learned from an anarchic period]]. YMMV of course.
▲* Parts of the UK for complex reasons. If you take high youth unemployment, a society that runs on rampant consumerism and then an unarmed man is shot by police you have a recipe for social disorder. At first it was supposed to be a protest against the shooting and then it became a case of want, take, have.
▲** Type 3 during the 2011 England riots entire city centre's became teenage wastelands of looting and ultraviolence for about 4 nights. Not all of them were teenagers but many were under 25, including one 11 year girl arrested for looting.
▲* Given the demographics of prehistoric times, it wasn't unusual for a Neolithic
▲* The Internet. Enough said.{{context}}
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Parental Issues]]
[[Category:Orphaned Index]]
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