History Main / ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'':

* In ''Series/{{Babylon5}}'', the Markab species is struck with a deadly plague near the close of the second season. It is specifically noted that because of their refusal to admit to being infected and their government's denial of the threat, the plague spread to all off-world colonies before its effects became too pronounced to ignore. When it progresses to its terminal phase, the species is wiped out ''en masse''. [[DiscussedTrope Mention is made]] that there were probably some isolated individuals on spaceships or more remote colonies who survived, but given how limited their numbers would be the species as a whole has been rendered functionally extinct.

*** It's debatable that this is Stromberg's plan as we were shown a grand total of three women in his organization. He killed one of them and Bond killed another, leaving his utopia with the receptionist and the kidnapped Anya.

* All of the Ronso in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' were killed except for the ones not at their homeland. (Like the Blitzball Team)

* ''Time's Eye'', by Stephen Baxter and Creator/ArthurCClarke - the whole world becomes a temporal mess-up, and a trio of cosmonauts/astronauts on the ISS are part of the handful or survivors.

* In "Phobos Rising", an episode of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' , two opposing Earth-Mars political factions have bases on Mars. As tensions rise between the factions on Earth, suspicious actions at the bases mirror the situation. The two sides eventually annihilate each other on Earth. The last message expresses gratitude that the Mars bases are intact. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, subverted as the bases destroy each other]].

%%Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1648512696031178500
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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Astronaut.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[http://deanreevesii.deviantart.com/art/An-Earth-Shattering-Experience-146786821 "Houston, YOU have a problem."]]]]

* In ''Series/{{Babylon5}}'', the Markab species is struck with a deadly plague near the close of the second season. It is specifically noted that because of their refusal to admit to being infected and their government's denial of the threat, the plague spread to all offworld colonies before its effects became too pronounced to ignore. When it progresses to its terminal phase, the species is wiped out ''en masse''. Mention is made that there were probably some isolated individuals or unknown colonies who survived, but given how limited the numbers would be the species as a whole has been rendered functionally extinct.

* ''Film/ThePostman'' actually mentions this explicitly, the former designer of the Galileo space station talking about his creation with the descriptor of "twelve skeletons orbiting the Earth all grinnin' at each other."

* ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'': '''[[YouBastards YOU MANIACS!]]''' ''[[EarthAllAlong You blew it up!]] [[BeamMeUpScotty Damn you! Damn you all to]]'' '''''[[ItWasHisSled HELL!]]'''''

* In ''Film/TwoThousandTenTheYearWeMakeContact'' the joint Western/[[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp Soviet]] expedition to the derelict ''Discovery'' nearly faces this problem as political tensions back on Earth rapidly deteriorate toward WorldWarIII.

* One ''SelfDemonstrating/{{Lobo}}'' story had him being sent to capture his fourth grade teacher who was offworld when he bioengineered flying scorpions to wipe out his race.

* The 1980's AfterTheEnd action series ''The Survivalist'' by Jerry Ahern has a number of shuttles launched as part of a doomsday scenario -- The Eden Project -- in case of nuclear war. The expedition goes into [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] and returns to Earth after the radiation levels have died down. Only to find the protagonist (who also went into suspended animation) staring at them through binoculars, saying "There goes the neighbourhood." As it turns out the old UsefulNotes/ColdWar enemies have all survived, so everyone just starts shooting from when they left off.

* In the [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci-Fi Channel]] original movie ''Alien Apocalypse'', Creator/BruceCampbell's astronaut character and his shipmates were in cold sleep for forty years, and [[ColdSleepColdFuture wake to a future]] where aliens have enslaved humanity.
* The inhabitants of a spaceship survive in ''The Doomsday Machine'' (it was ''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]]'''d by the Cinematic Titanic gang) when the titular device [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt destroys Earth]]; it turns out they were chosen specifically for an AdamAndEvePlot.
* The old 1985 B-movie ''Def-Con 4'' was slam-bang on this trope. It was AfterTheEnd, and the astronauts had to get back to Earth and then survive there.

* Played with in the 2013 Spanish movie ''Al final todos mueren'', where everyone dies when a meteor wipes out humanity. Two Spanish astronauts are shown in the prologue (5 minutes before the impact) and epilogue (25 minutes before the impact). As they are in orbit, they are convinced that they will become the only two living beings to survive Earth's death, making them metaphorically "eternal". However, in the prologue, unknowingly while they are preparing to take a photo of the event, they are located in the asteroid's trajectory, realizing that when it's too late. They become, ironically, the first two beings to die in the apocalypse.

* Kind of used in Creator/LarryNiven's ''Fallen Angels'' - a radical environmentalist regime rules the Earth and the only people left with freedom and high technology are those living on a moon base or in an orbital habitat made by combining the Mir and (never fully built) Freedom space stations. However, as another ice age is fast descending upon the Earth, it looks like it could become a straight example. Funny detail: The ISS ''is'' basically Mir-2 merged with Space Station Freedom; module design and construction was well along for both stations before the merger...

Wondering about RealLife? The people onboard the International Space Station rely on constant resupply from Earth, so their prognosis for staying in space is grim. Air, water, food, all are shipped in. Over a longer term, space is a decidedly hostile environment, between higher radiation levels and the effects of zero-g. Realistically, the astronauts only have months to live. However, the station has lifeboats in the form of Russian Soyuz spacecraft, so they could (in theory) return to Earth. Other space missions could do so, as well. Without MissionControl, though, it is of course more dangerous, as no one can double check your reentry plan or monitor your approach. (They might be stranded in the middle of the ocean, even if they make it down safely.) It is physically possible for spacecraft to return to Earth safely, so astronauts might make it back. Assuming there's an Earth that can still support them, of course.

* ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'': ''[[EarthAllAlong You blew it up!]] [[BeamMeUpScotty Damn you! Damn you all to]]'' '''''[[ItWasHisSled HELL!]]'''''

* Like in the comics, General Zod and his cronies managed to survive the destruction of the planet Krypton because they were trapped in the [[PrisonDimension Phantom Zone]] in both ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'' and ''Film/ManOfSteel''.

* When this is brought up in the WWIII novel ''Literature/DownToASunlessSea'', by David Graham, RealityEnsues. During a bout of self-pity, the narrator, the pilot of a passenger jet that is left struggling to find a place to land (nearly everywhere he could have landed was either wiped out by the missiles or is being irradiated by fallout) contemplates how the four astronauts who were on the moon at the time, noting that they have it far worse off than he does and are even less likely to survive.

* ''{{TabletopGame/Neuroshima}}'' has the Orbital, a still functional pre-war international space station. At least five astronauts are still alive up there, but, as the communication was cut off relatively early, they know little beyond the fact that the world was devastated in a war and can only speculate on the details. The station seems to be equipped with some sort of [[HumanPopsicle hibernation device]], so most of the crew is asleep with only one person actively manning the station at any given time. They spend most of their time using the comm-station to transmit stuff like survival tips, cooking recipes, music, unassorted stories and mental breakdowns. Those transmissions can be received using even crude radio equipment, although only for short period when the station is passing overhead, and they are a popular source of entertainment, as regular radio stations are long gone. Practically no one possesses a transmitter powerful enough to send anything back to the Orbital, so the astronauts have no way of knowing, if anyone even listens to them.

* In speculative documentaries like ''Series/LifeAfterPeople'', they'll sometimes talk about space stations but not any astronauts. The thought experiment is pretty much "What if all humans vanished tomorrow?" but they don't speculate how it would happen, so presumably it would affect the astronauts too. An interesting take on this subject -- the episode [[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462251/?ref_=ttep_ep9 "Roads to Nowhere"]] indicates that within 200 years every vehicle on earth will no longer exist, due to some corrosive nature; however, the lunar rovers, now untouched on the moon since the late 1960s, will continue to be perfectly pristine for centuries.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'' episode "Quarantine" has an engineer from the 20th Century who was cryogenically frozen revived by a post-WWIII community of psychics because a United States spacecraft that enabled the nation's leaders to escape the nuclear war by traveling through space at speeds causing time dilation is now returning to Earth after centuries. The ship is carrying weapons and the post-apocalyptic community fears that they will try to take over their now-peaceful society. They trick the engineer into using an old killer satellite to destroy the spacecraft before it can land on Earth.
* In ''Series/{{Babylon5}}'', the Markab species is struck with a deadly plague near the close of the second season. It is specifically noted that because of their refusal to admit to being infected and their government's denial of the threat, the plague spread to all offworld colonies before its effects became too pronounced to ignore. When it progresses to its terminal phase the species is wiped out ''en masse''. Mention is made that there were probably some isolated individuals or unknown colonies who survived, but given how limited the numbers would be the species as a whole has been rendered functionally extinct.

** Later in the game you find ruined human colonies on most planets. Most of them survived destruction of colonies on Rhea and Gaia, tried to live on, to wait until Calypso arrival or to fly to meet Callypso, but everybody were DrivenToSuicide or got killed in seemingly random accidents. The last human died a year before your arrival. It is speculated that they could have survived if Tantalus wasn't dismantled, [[spoiler:and they didn't loose most of their fleet fighting the seedship. At least they managed to destroy the seedship defences.]]

* Specifically averted in ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'', where it's pointed out that even though the astronauts might survive [[spoiler: the impending destruction of all cellular life on earth]], there will be effectively nothing for them to come back ''to''.

* In ''FanFic/LeftBeyond'', this is actually a major plot point, since the Omega hope that people living in space will be spared the White Throne Judgement. [[spoiler:(They aren't, but the fact that their souls get to the Judgement last due to travel time means that they are able to restart the human race).]]
* In ''FanFic/WorldwarWarOfEquals'', The Race boarded the ISS and take all on board hostage two days before the invasion.

* Subverted in ''Manga/HellstarRemina'' as the Martian and Lunar colonies are the first to be destroyed as the PlanetEater approaches Earth.

* ''Down in the Dark'' by William Barton takes place after a failed asteroid intercept causes asteroid fragments to vaporize most of the Earth's surface, [[RacialRemnant leaving less than 2000 scientists and engineers]] scattered across the solar system with only one working interplanetary ship and no tech base to maintain their slowly failing equipment, with many [[DrivenToSuicide survivors killing themselves]] or going insane. The leaders on the largest base on the Moon plan to use a ''[[DeathWorld Venus]] lander'' to land on what remains of the Earth to try to salvage any machinery that survived the impact. [[spoiler: The story ends on a relatively positive note - the protagonist discovers StarfishAliens on Titan, who have the technology to maintain the survivor's tech base]]