History AfterTheEnd / LiveActionTV

** 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 they 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.

* The UK equivalents are ''Films/TheWarGame'' (1965, broadcast 1985) and ''Film/{{Threads}}'' (1984). Both build up to and feature a full-scale thermonuclear holocaust, then - ''Threads'' in particular - keep going and get worse. ''Threads'' continues to scare those who watched it almost 25 years ago.

** The entire franchise is set AfterTheEnd, as shown in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact''. The titular First Contact happens not long after WorldWarThree.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' is a ZombieApocalypse example.

* ''Series/TheWarOfTheWorlds'': The series frequently jumps forward to several years after the Martian invasion. The Earth's natural biosphere is all but gone due to the [[AlienKudzu red weed]] choking the land and clogging the ocean, and the surviving humans in the apocalyptic ruins of London are farming only scraps of food, with the local preacher's PropagandaMachine keeping the village going. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Oh, and Darwinism never took off as accepted fact because of the invasion's timing]].

* The UK equivalents are ''The War Game'' (1965, broadcast 1985) and ''Film/{{Threads}}'' (1984). Both build up to and feature a full-scale thermonuclear holocaust, then - ''Threads'' in particular - keep going and get worse. ''Threads'' continues to scare those who watched it almost 25 years ago.

* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'' takes place in an America which has had most of its major cities wiped out by terrorist nukes. However, the rest of the world is unaffected (except for Iran and North Korea, which were nuked by the remnants of the US military in retaliation) making it a pocket example of a CozyCatastrophe.

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

* 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]].

* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' has two different worlds where the Apocalypse took place and the Winchesters were powerless to stop it. The first was a BadFuture where Lucifer was victorious, creating an Earth inhabitated by zombies and demons. The other is an AlternateUniverse where the archangel Michael was victorious, but his version turns out to be an eternal battlefield where angels stomp on humans and demons alike. They're both bastards and NotSoDifferent.

* ''Series/{{The 100}}'' takes place 97 years after a nuclear holocaust destroys the Earth. the only survivors are the inhabitants 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 Earth's surface using juvenile deliquents.

* As ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' was premised on travelers going to different dimensions of Earth, they encountered examples of this trope quite often, starting with their first slide together.

%%* ''Series/{{Survivors}}''

%%* ''Series/{{Jeremiah}}''
* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'' takes place in an America which has had most of its major cities wiped out by terrorist nukes. However, the rest of the world is unaffected making it a pocket example of a CozyCatastrophe.

* ''Series/{{The 100}}'' takes place 97 years after a nuclear holocaust destroys the Earth. the only survivors 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 Earth's surface using juvenile deliquents.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone'': Many episodes dealt with survivors of nuclear war. One of the most famous of the lot is "Time Enough at Last," where a neurotic bookworm (Burgess Meredith) survives an apocalyptic nuclear war (only by his sheer luck of being inside a bank vault at the time a random nuclear war breaks out). The man stumbles among the ruins of his hometown, finding he is the lone survivor and then comes upon a huge library of books. (It's all for naught, as he breaks his glasses, and the man -- blind without the specs -- is unable to engage in a lifestyle of uninterrupted reading.

* 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 [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} 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.

* 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/TheWalkingDead'' is an ZombieApocalypse example.
* The UK equivalents are ''The War Game'' (1965, broadcast 1985) and ''Film/{{Threads}}'' (1984). Both build up to and feature a full-scale thermonuclear holocaust, then - ''Threads'' in particular - keep going and get worse. ''Threads'' continues to scare those who watched it almost 25 years ago.

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

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' creator Gene Roddenberry made together three separate pilot movies for essentially the same series premise: ''GenesisII'', ''PlanetEarth'', and ''StrangeNewWorld''.

* ''Series/{{Defiance}}'': Between the devastation of the Pale Wars and massive environmental changes caused by malfunctioning Votan terraforming equipment, there is little left of the Earth that existed before their arrival.

%%* ''ArkII''

* ''Series/TheShannaraChronicles'' has shots of ruins that clearly indicate that at one time, the planet the characters are now on was at one time present-day Earth.

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* 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).

* ''Series/{{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 Earth's surface using juvenile deliquents.

* ''ArkII''

* ''Series/{{Jeremiah}}''

* ''{{Series/Spellbinder}}''
** The show 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/{{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.