History Main / ApocalypseNot

* The DMZ that divides North and South Korea. Due to mines and the armistice boundary, wildlife and plantlife thrives in the area. There are no hunters, only UN observers and the few people allowed to live in selected areas, though only for anything light enough to not set off one of the many landmines in it. Every so often a deer gets too heavy and sets one off.

* In ''VideoGame/AfterTheEndACrusaderKingsIIMod'', distantly post-apocalyptic America is rebuilding quite well. Certainly, it's a patchwork of often-warring feudal states with all that implies, but [[TheGoodKing benevolent]] (or even [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatically ambitious]]) kings can build universities, libraries, magnificent gardens, infrastructure, and other things. This can lead to a fairly high quality of life for their people, complete with flourishing cultural and educational institutions.

* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'''s first season focused on a small town struggling to survive after nuclear attacks destroy major US cities. Although the town itself isn't ruined, they increasingly struggle against typical post-apocalyptic challenges: finding food and medical supplies, fending off raiders, generating power, relations with neighbouring towns. In season two, many of these challenges go away, as the focus shifts to [[spoiler:adapting to life under a new government, with supplies and jobs provided, but with mysteries about this government's involvement in the attacks]].
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': The TwistEnding of the episode ''Shelter Skelter'' has [[spoiler: a CrazySurvivalist alone in his bunker, convinced he's the last man on earth one year after a nuclear explosion destroys his hometown...only for it to be revealed the world outside is alive and well. A nuclear missile accidentally went off at the nearby airbase and the ruins of the town were bulldozed into a pile and sealed under a radiation-proof dome, which has since become a symbol of peace and unity for the world.]]

* Mentioned in the background of ''VideoGame/BlasterMasterZero''. Humanity suffered an apocalyptic meteor shower, which drove them into massive underground habitation facilities. This was centuries ago, and society has recovered enough to return to the surface entirely, leaving this underground sectors abandoned. They're so thorough disused and unmapped a major mutant infestation took root without anyone noticing. It's not quite a full recovery, though, as ways to restore lost biospheres on the surface is a point of study.

* PlayedForDrama in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan''. We're lead to believe that the coming of the Titans a century ago lead to the near-extinction of mankind, with the last survivors being those inside the walls. However, as the series progressed, we learned that at least some of humanity seemed to have survived outside the walls and were hell-bent on getting back at the people there for abandoning them. Come the Return to Shingashina arc and we learned the full truth: [[spoiler: not only is humanity is alive and well outside of the walls, but those inside the walls- which are located on an island- are the remnant of an ancient empire called Eldia, whose people are the ones who can transform into titans and who spent the last 1,700 years subjugating the other races of the world. The current global power, the Kingdom of Marley, is an expansionist military state with 20th century-level technology and [[FantasticRacism a serious hatred for the Eldians]] for what they did to their ancestors, and who are fond of now using their Titan abilities for their own expansionist campaigns. Both sides are now set to clash, and it's feared by many that it'll only end with full-on genocide of one side.]]
** [[spoiler: By the end, this becomes much closer to a true ApocalypseHow courtesy of Eren and the Rumbling, which results in the death of 80% of humanity and untold damage to the world's ecosystem.]]

* ''Anime/MaiOtome''. Apparently, despite the claim that the war 300 years ago left the world devastated, the desert extends to just the immediate surroundings of Windbloom, and everywhere else it is lush and beautiful.

* In VideoGame/AfterTheEndACrusaderKingsIIMod, distantly post-apocalyptic America is rebuilding quite well. Certainly, it's a patchwork of often-warring feudal states with all that implies, but [[TheGoodKing benevolent]] (or even [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatically ambitious]]) kings can build universities, libraries, magnificent gardens, infrastructure, and other things. This can lead to fairly high quality of life for their people, complete with flourishing cultural and educational institutions.

[[folder:Anime]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'''s first season focused on a small town struggling to survive after nuclear attacks destroy major US cities. Although the town itself isn't ruined, they increasingly struggle against typical post-apocalyptic challenges: finding food and medical supplies, fending off raiders, generating power, relations with neighboring towns. In season two, many of these challenges go away, as the focus shifts to [[spoiler:adapting to life under a new government, with supplies and jobs provided, but with mysteries about this government's involvement in the attacks]].

* Unfortunately works in the CelestialBureaucracy's favor in DemonFist: Opening Pandora's Gate combined heaven and hell with earth, destroying all civilization and most of the population in the process. 3,000 years later, the CorruptChurch controls half of the world through advanced technology and mass propaganda, while the other half is controlled by various demons ranging from NobleDemon to total evil. Humanity has never been so technologically progressed and the Earth has almost fully recovered from industrial pollution, yet the average human is now stuck in their lot in life while demons and angels plot world domination with unexplained and dangerous artifacts that threaten the planet, if not the solar system.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1980'': The TwistEnding of the episode ''Shelter Skelter'' has [[spoiler: a CrazySurvivalist alone in his bunker, convinced he's the last man on earth one year after a nuclear explosion destroys his hometown...only for it to be revealed the world outside is alive and well. A nuclear missile accidentally went off at the nearby airbase and the ruins of the town were bulldozed into a pile and sealed under a radiation-proof dome, which has since become a symbol of peace and unity for the world.]]

** On the other hand, the presence of [[CrazyAwesome Hajikelists]], [[MartialArtsAndCrafts Shinken users]], and [[StopHavingFunGuys Idiot Killers]] all show that the world of ''Bo-bobo'' is still a WorldGoneMad, just in different ways than your standard post-apocalyptic setting.
* The initial premise of ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'' is that 99% of the Earth population was wiped out by the mass [[ColonyDrop colony drops]] that marked the end of the last space war. And sure enough, in the first few episodes we see a few ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar''-style thugs and a deserted landscape that led to the rise of the Vultures, a class of scavengers [[WalkTheEarth wandering the Earth]] on cool [[BaseOnWheels land-ships]]. But, as the series goes on, more and more thriving city-states are encountered, and both mankind and the environment are seen to be recovering amazingly fast. The AfterTheEnd angle is seemingly almost completely forgotten torwards the end when the characters get more and more tangled in main plot, involving both TheFederation and [[TheEmpire the Space Revolutionary Army]] with almost fully restored forces (and the colonies housing the latter obviously intact) about to start a new devastating war all over again.

* ''VideoGame/TheSims 2'' SelfImposedChallenge "The Apocalypse Challenge" actually [[TropesAreNotBad has this as its goal]]: your starting sim has survived a nuclear meltdown that wipes out Sim City, and must establish a dynasty that rebuilds civilization. This is represented by the player following a harsh set of gameplay restrictions for the neighborhood, a few of which are removed every time a sim from the family reaches the top of a career path.

* The world in ''Manga/BoboboboBobobo'' supposedly got rocked by an apocalypse in the year 3000, but the worst it did was reduce the world to much fewer cities, and made snack foods come to life. Even places ruled by Hair Hunters seem completely fine. Of course, since the show is one big parody of ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'', this is a gimme.

* Bikini Atoll represents this trope on a small environmental scale. Today, mere decades after several apocalypse-level nuclear tests, it is a thriving wildlife habitat.
** It's still dangerous to land mammals, however, since the edible plants have absorbed radioactive minerals. Long lived apex predators like humans in particular couldn't survive there as the radioactive material accumulates (which is less of a problem for animals lower in the food chain or which only live single digit years anyway)
* The Chernobyl exclusion zone is by no means a safe area even decades from the disaster, but the destruction of everything living that many foresaw would happen through horrible mutations never took place. There have been mutations, and certainly many animals have died from the radiation in their food, but through natural selection vegetation and wildlife in the area has grown more resilient to radiation damage, and has been reclaiming the area with fervor.
** Radiation has quickly fallen to levels where it takes years to kill a large animal. Considering that wolves, beavers and ungulates survive in the wild up to 10-15 years and breed every year from the age of 1-2, they proliferate faster than die out. Natural causes tend to kill them before the radiation does. Humans, on the other hand, live long enough to suffer from it.
** The fact that humans tend to avoid Chernobyl exclusion zone helps a lot.
* The DMZ that divides North and South Korea. Due to mines and the armistice boundary, wildlife and plantlife thrives in the area. There are no hunters, only UN observers and the few people allowed to live in selected areas. Though only for anything light enough to not set off one of the many, many landmines in it. Every so often a deer gets too heavy and sets one off.

* Throughout most of the ''Franchise/Metro'' series, it's believed that the 50,000 or so people living within the subway tunnels underneath Moscow are all that's left of humanity after [[WorldWarIII the war]], scrounging for a meager existence as mutants close in to finish them off. Come ''VideoGame/MetroExodus'' and we learn [[spoiler: the Moscow Defense Command is actively shunning radio contact with the outside world and killing anyone who tries to make contact. They believe the war is still ongoing, the rest of the country is under occupation, and the only way to survive is to play dead. As it turns out, there are survivors all over the world.]]

** The world of Draenor was already on its way to become a completely barren planet when it exploded at the end of ''VideoGame/WarcraftII:: Beyond the Dark Portal''. The largest of its chunks went on to become the FloatingContinent called "Outland" stuck in the [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace Twisting Nether]]. ''In VideoGame/WarcraftIII'', Outland is a barren wasteland and an easy target for demons and other interdimensional threats. But in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft: The Burning Crusade'', several regions of Outland apparently survived relatively untouched. Nagrand is particularly noticeable as lush GhibliHills full of life.

** ''VideoGame/Fallout76'' has the least apocalyptic-looking setting of the series to date, taking place in the Appalachia mountains of West Virginia. As opposed to other games, the mountainous forests of this region are virtually untouched by the Great War. Towns are abandoned, but their infrastructure is intact (there's even a nuclear power plant still standing!). This extends to the eponymous Vault 76, which is one of the few "control vaults" that were not designed for use in Vault-Tec's social experiments: it was built to serve the explicit purpose sheltering people from nuclear war and open after twenty-five years to resettle the region.

*** ''VideoGame/Fallout76'' has the least apocalyptic-looking setting of the series to date, taking place in the Appalachia mountains of West Virginia. As opposed to other games, the mountainous forests of this region are virtually untouched by the Great War. Towns are abandoned, but their infrastructure is intact (there's even a nuclear power plant still standing!). This extends to the eponymous Vault 76, which is one of the few "control vaults" that were not designed for use in Vault-Tec's social experiments: it was built to serve the explicit purpose sheltering people from nuclear war and open after twenty-five years to resettle the region.

* Without explanation, the CrapsackWorld of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianSun'' has somewhat improved, in contradiction of what the backstory says, by the sequel ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars''.
** ''Somewhat'' justified. Around the time in ''Tiberian Sun'', GDI had little means of stopping Tiberium spread and not even the most advanced cities were protected from Tiberium spread or Ion Storms. In addition, GDI had not yet assumed the role of government, leaving most civilian services crumbling and national governments barely keeping control. When the situation got too bad, GDI would simply mass-evacuate citizens to its un-touched arctic colonies. The change we see in ''Tiberium Wars'' is the combined result of discovery of sonic weapons' effectiveness against Tiberium, the decision to wall cities up (blue zones) and GDI assuming the role of government, and the aid of the Tacitus' secrets after ''Firestorm''.
** However, the non-canonical novel ''Tiberium Wars'' shows that, for most people, it's still a CrapsackWorld. Only select few get to live in the tiberium-free Blue Zones. A reporter in the book goes to a Yellow Zone and sees people desperately struggling to survive and blame the GDI. The blame is partly justified in that that particular Yellow Zone was originally supposed to be turned into a Blue Zone. However, at the last moment, they discovered that tiberium has contaminated an underground stream and chose to cut their losses. Food is scarse, and anything growing in the wild is likely contaminated by tiberium. Hospitals get daily terminal cases of hungry people throwing caution to the wind and eating berries from a bush or something similar, and painfully dying hours later.

* The ''Literature/MortalEngines'' novels suffered greatly from this, to the point that it seemed that the only thing that civilization had lost was the technology of the WaveMotionGun and modern era [=CD-ROMs=].

** It's still dangerous to land mammals, however, since the edible plants have absorbed radioactive minerals.

** The Commonwealth presented in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' is even better off than New Vegas. During the Great War, in contrast to the utter carpet bombing Washington DC received, only ''a single'' nuclear missile was fired at Boston, and said missile ''missed'', landing several miles southwest of Natick instead of hitting the city proper. Skyscrapers are mostly intact and quite a few places even have running water and electricity, making the city and surrounding area a bastion of civilization rivaling the NCR on the west coast. However, the regional flora and fauna were still horribly mutated by the Black Rain, and the area the missile hit is now this nasty bit of irradiated wasteland called "the Glowing Sea", where exploring without some serious radiation protection is ill-advised.