History AfterTheEnd / LiveActionTV

%%* ''ArkII''

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': "The Wish" causes Cordila to be transported to an AfterTheEnd world, because she wished Buffy never moved to [[HellGate Sunnydale]]

* The Creator/DiscoveryChannel has a pseudo reality series based on this trope called ''The Colony'', where a group of ten people with varying skills, professions, and backgrounds band together to try and eke out a living in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment. It's filmed in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, so you conclude the joke. The second season was set in an abandoned industrial area of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, so TruthInTelevision applies to an extent.

* ''Series/TheStarlost'' takes place on a generation ship launched from an Earth that was destroyed by some unspecified disaster shortly afterward.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':

* ''Series/WaywardPines'' [[spoiler:has the titular town turn out to be in this setting, 2000 years from now. Anyone who attempts to get to Wayward Pines, Idaho in the 21st century is targeted for an "accident", at which point he or she is placed in [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] to be revived some time after the town's founding in the future (usually in order of the freezing). The whole thing is a project by a scientist who predicts the end of the world and wants to preserve some humans to repopulate the world. The only humans in 4028 are the ones who survived through suspended animation. The closest things out there are the "Abbies" (short for Aberrations), feral mutated descendants of humans, who have since become the apex predator in this new world. Luckily, the town is protected by a giant wall, keeping humans in and Abbies out. Anyone who disobeys the town's rules is publicly executed, and most of the inhabitants are unaware of the truth. Only children are told the truth, as they are claimed to be the "first generation" and are forbidden from telling anyone, including their parents. Supposedly, this is because one child ended up doing that, resulting in the parents committing suicide]].

* ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''
** [[spoiler: The 2000s version takes place "after the end" of the Colonial civilization but "before the beginning" of ours.]]
*** [[spoiler: Colonial civilization was in turn "after the end" of civilization on Kobol, which was in turn "after the end" of civilization on the original Earth. All of this has happened before, and will happen again...]]

* The Creator/DiscoveryChannel has a pseudo reality series based on this trope called ''The Colony'', where a group of ten people with varying skills, professions, and backgrounds band together to try and eke out a living in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment. It's filmed in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, so you conclude the joke.
** The second season was set in an abandoned industrial area of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, so TruthInTelevision applies to an extent.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' special "Planet of the Dead", [[spoiler:the Doctor arrives on a once-inhabited world which has been turned into a wasteland by an alien invasion]].
** Also, the entire finale episode of season three explores the Earth a year after the Master has taken control of it.

** How advanced was the old Mongo civilization? Well, of the three moons that orbit the planet, two were constructed as giant processing stations.

** [[spoiler: Iran and North Korea were both nuked to protect the GovernmentConspiracy]], so it's not so cozy.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'', 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.
** The first episode was actually titled "The End". Take that as you will.

* The Australian TV series ''{{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.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' 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 AfterTheEnd stage, known as the Postatomic Horror, is seen in "[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Encounter at Farpoint]]" and ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', although the latter is set in one of the less-wrecked areas, rural Montana.

** 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. An episode of ''Enterprise'' reveals that the war was nuclear in nature and that the losers ended up fleeing the planet, eventually becoming Romulans.

** REMAIN INDOORS
** DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE EVENT!

* Two American TV movies made in the early 80s, ''Film/{{Testament}}'' and ''Film/TheDayAfter'', both attempted to dramatize the horrors of a nuclear war and its aftermath in as realistic a fashion as possible.
** Like the movie features ''Film/ThePostman'' and ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'', ''Testament'' had Kevin Costner in his cast too. Maybe that fact is awaiting for one of those very popular [[EpilepticTrees twisted explanations]].
** Thankfully, the only channel likely to show them nowadays is the SciFiChannel.

** These films mentioned here probably take as their basic inspiration the Khrushchev quote about nuclear war that "The living will envy the dead."
*** Just in case you need more convincing, the second half of "''Threads''" takes place in a nuclear wasteland - post-apocalypse England, which is populated mostly by ill and dying people, people scared to the point of total paranoia, and corrupt military and government officials. The narrator implies that things are MUCH worse in the US and Russia. Eventually the film fast-forwards to 10 years after the nuclear war, where the new generation is made up of thuggish, possibly retarded teenagers and sickly, often insane adults. And it's implied there may not be a generation after that [[spoiler:as a girl's reaction to the baby she's just delivered suggests that it's horribly deformed. The girl herself seems to be so educationally and mentally deprived that she seems almost not to understand what is happening to her as she gives birth and probably has no skills or understanding to enable her to care for a child even if it was healthy. And it's implied she's not unique in this.]]

* In ''[[Series/{{Cleopatra2525}} Cleopatra 2525]]'', humans have been driven from the surface by terraforming machines [[AIIsACrapshoot gone rogue]] with only a few primitive villages of people who worship Baileys (those same machines). The remaining humans live in vast underground tunnels, fighting one another as well as the [[TheTerminator terminator]]-like robots called Betrayers sent by the Baileys to infiltrate the human society. Interestingly, the Baileys have fulfilled their primary programming and have restored the polluted Earth to a lush paradise. Oh, and it's made clear that the humans who live underground have forgotten much of their scientific knowledge and don't quite know how to maintain the tunnels.

* ''[[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined Battlestar Galactica]]''

* ''Series/WaywardPines'' [[spoiler:has the titular town turn out to be in this setting, 2000 years from now. Anyone who attempts to get to Wayward Pines, Idaho in the 21st century is targeted for an "accident", at which point he or she is placed in [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] to be revived some time after the town's founding in the future (usually in order of the freezing). The whole thing is a project by a scientist who predicts the end of the world and wants to preserve some humans to repopulate the world. The only humans in 4028 are the ones who survived through suspended animation. The closest things out there are the "Abbies" (short for Aberrations), feral mutated descendants of humans, who have since become the apex predator in this new world]]. Luckily, the town is protected by a giant wall, keeping humans in and Abbies out. Anyone who disobeys the town's rules is publicly executed, and most of the inhabitants are unaware of the truth. Only children are told the truth, as they are claimed to be the "first generation" and are forbidden from telling anyone, including their parents. Supposedly, this is because one child ended up doing that, resulting in the parents committing suicide]].

* 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.

* ''TheStarlost'' takes place on a generation ship launched from an Earth that was destroyed by some unspecified disaster shortly afterward.

* ''ArkII''

* In ''Series/Cleopatra2525'', humans have been driven from the surface by terraforming machines [[AIIsACrapshoot gone rogue]] with only a few primitive villages of people who worship Baileys (those same machines). The remaining humans live in vast underground tunnels, fighting one another as well as the [[TheTerminator terminator]]-like robots called Betrayers sent by the Baileys to infiltrate the human society. Interestingly, the Baileys have fulfilled their primary programming and have restored the polluted Earth to a lush paradise. Oh, and it's made clear that the humans who live underground have forgotten much of their scientific knowledge and don't quite know how to maintain the tunnels.

* ''Cleopatra 2525''.

** 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.

** In the Original series episode "Let that Be your Last Battlefield", two dual-toned aliens hijack the Enterprise and force it to take them to their home planet Cheron. When the get there, they discover that a civil war over which sides of the body were what color has wiped out the entire planet's population. In the original version, the planet was shown to be dark mesh of shades of grey, whereas in the remastered episode, lights can be seen on the surface. The SceneryGorn that passes through the alien's heads suggests that those lights could very well be fires that are ''still burning'', even though the war is long over.

** In the Original series episode "Let that Be your Last Battlefield", two dual-toned aliens Hijack the Enterprise and force it to take them to their home planet Cheron. When the get there, they discover that a civil war over whichsides of the body were what color has wiped out the entire planet's population. In the original version, the planet was shown to be dark mesh of shades of grey, whereas in the remastered episode, lights can be seen on the surface. The SceneryGorn that passes through the alien's heads suggests that those lights could very well be fires that are ''still burning'', even though the war is long over.

* ''The 100'' takes place 97 years after a nuclear holocaust destroys the Earth. the only susrvivors are the inhabitantss of a space station called "The Ark" which was cobbled together from a dozen other stations in orbit at the time of the war. The plot is about an attempt at recolonization of the Earths surface using juvenile deliquents.

* ''The 100'' takes place 97 years after a nuclear war and the only remnant of humanity live on a space station named "The Ark'' cobbled together from a dozen other stations that were in orbit at the time and is about an attempt to recolonize the Earth using expendable juvenile deliquints

* In ''Series/{{Community}}'' epsiode [[Recap/CommunityS1E23ModernWarfare Modern Warfare]] invokes this trope (and related tropes) ForLaughs. 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.

* The final season of ''Series/{{Fringe}}''; [[spoiler:The Observers have completely taken over Earth, and killed most of it's population. Those who remain are either on their side (The Loyalists) or fugitives (The Resistance).]]

* ''Series/{{Survivors}}''
* ''{{Woops}}''! was an actual ''sit com'' based on a small group of survivors living in a barn after a nuclear war, and the hijinks they got into.
* ''ArkII''

* ''Cleopatra 2525''.
* The season 4 finale of ''Series/BabylonFive'' [[spoiler: shows Earth being bombed back into the Dark Ages about 500 years after the end of the series only to emerge as Vorlon-like creatures a million years later]].
* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' special "Planet of the Dead", [[spoiler:the Doctor arrives on a once-inhabited world which has been turned into a wasteland by an alien invasion]].
** Also, the entire finale episode of season three explores the Earth a year after the Master has taken control of it.
* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' is set 300 years after the collapse of [[strike: the Federation]] the Commonwealth so it's AfterTheEnd on a galactic scale.
* The Creator/DiscoveryChannel has a pseudo reality series based on this trope called ''The Colony'', where a group of ten people with varying skills, professions, and backgrounds band together to try and eke out a living in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment. It's filmed in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, so you conclude the joke.
* The ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'' episodes "Epitaph One" and "Epitaph Two" take place [[spoiler:after massive remote wiping and imprinting is used as a weapon, resulting in the fall of civilization.]]
* A recurring sketch in the third season of ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'' parodied the concept through an AfterTheEnd GameShow, "The Quiz Broadcast"; turns out, having a quiz show after 'The Event' is quite difficult when almost all human knowledge has been eradicated.
** 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.
* ''Series/TheTribe'' has a selective DepopulationBomb called TheVirus, [[OnlyFatalToAdults which has wiped out all the adults]], [[TeenageWasteland leaving kids and teenagers]] in a CosyCatastrophe world.
* ''Series/CaptainPowerAndTheSoldiersOfTheFuture'' is set after the invention of robotic soldiers has resulted in decades of unending war. And that's how things were ''before'' the BigBad Lord Dredd came to power and started digitizing humanity en masse.
* ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' takes place in the third and final year of a RobotWar 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.
* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' is an ZombieApocalypse example.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': "The Wish" causes Cordila to be transported to an AfterTheEnd world, because she wished Buffy never moved to [[HellGate Sunnydale]]
* The History Channel's SpeculativeDocumentary ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r97xoSOEjM&feature=related After Armageddon]]''.
* In ''Series/{{Community}}'' epsiode [[Recap/CommunityS1E23ModernWarfare Modern Warfare]] invokes this trope (and related tropes) ForLaughs. 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 ''Series/{{Aftermath}}''. ''Population Zero'' deals with the aftermath of humanity's sudden disappearance. Every other episode, in one way or another, always involves an apocalyptic scenario, but ''World Without Oil'' and ''Population Overload'' have optimistic outcomes. Despite the hypothetical scenarios in those two involving TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, [[WorldHalfFull the world is still half full]], as shown by humanity getting back on its feet by the end. However, [[{{Anvilicious}} the narrator is quick to point out that the scenario resulted in destruction and death in each of said episodes]].
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' is set 15 years after all electricity-based technology mysteriously shuts down, causing the collapse of modern tech-dependent society.
* In Season 2 of ''Series/OnceUponATime'' [[spoiler: Emma and Snow are sent back to the Enchanted Forest where they find that it still exists and there are survivors.]]
* The final season of ''Series/{{Fringe}}''; [[spoiler:The Observers have completely taken over Earth, and killed most of it's population. Those who remain are either on their side (The Loyalists) or fugitives (The Resistance).]]
* The version of Mongo in the ''Series/FlashGordon'' series is this, after a massive explosion known as the Sorrow on one of the moons causes a toxic mineral to rain down on the planet, killing anyone who wasn't able to evacuate and contaminating most of the water. Currently, Mongo has only one city, built atop a clean water source and ruled by a Third World dictator-like Ming "the Benevolent Father" and his Patriot army. All the other tribes (or cantons) live in small villages and are forced to rely on Ming for uncontaminated water. Those who drink the "grey water" go insane and become mutated Deviates. Even many of the tribes suffer from some mutations (some beneficial, such as the Dactyls' ability to soar on winds).