History Main / SoleSurvivingScientist

* ''Film/TheDayOfTheTriffids'': Marine biologist Dr. Goodwin becomes this by accident; while simply trying to fight off the attacking plant creatures, he discovers that [[spoiler:[[SaltSolution salt water kills them]]]] and quickly moves to work on this.

* The {{Narrator}} of ''ComicBook/{{Supergod}}'', though he's already [[DespairEventHorizon given up all hope]] and is just dictating an ApocalypticLog to another SoleSurvivingScientist in another country.

* ''Series/{{Jeremiah}}'': The main characters father and his assistant Libby look for a cure to ThePlague that killed everyone over the age of thirteen from within the Ravenrock Mountain bunker, while at Thunder Mountain, Meghan does the same, using herself as a ProfessorGuineaPig. Theo also sheltered and groomed a bunch of nerds from her school to be this on a small-scale, such as by making a working generator.

* ''Literature/TheHost'': Doc is the only member of the group with the skills to work remove the Hosts from people as a way of fighting the invasion. That being said he's consistently unsuccessful (killing both the hosts and their subjects in a way similar to a lot of examples on this page related to zombie fiction), although unlike many examples on this page he eventually gets better at that (with Wanda's help) and survives, still being able to do it well. All the other scientists aren't really dead but they are prisoners losing their consciousness. He's also a bit of a ClosestThingWeGot since he seems to be more of a BackAlleyDoctor than a trained research scientist.

* ''Film/{{Finch}}:'' After a deadly solar flare ravages Earth, one of the few surviving humans is a roboticist who builds an android to take care of his dog once he dies.

* ''Film/{{Finch}}:'' After a deadly solar flare ravages Earth, the last known surviving human is a roboticist who builds an android to take care of his dog once he dies.

* ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'': An interesting non-human example is, arguably, Cornelius and Zira in [[Film/EscapeFromThePlanetofTheApes the third film]] when they escape their nuclear war and go back in time

-->--''Series/TheLastShip''

* ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'' doesn't start out this way, with lots of brilliant minds, recourses and infrastructure dedicated to the HomeworldEvacuation, but by the film’s last act, on Earth NASA is crumbling, along with society, with the death of their leader and TheReveal that [[spoiler:his research giving them hope was a MotivationalLie]]. However, Murph Cooper and her colleague Getty press on trying to find a way that will let their ships escape the gravitational pull. Meanwhile, in space, the last of the scientists is [[spoiler:Amelia]], who can’t figure out a way to help those still on Earth and is alone and prepared to set up a new colony with genetic samples on the one life-bearing planet that the expedition found.
* In ''Film/BlastFromThePast'', Creator/ChristopherWalken's character thinks he's one, after fleeing into a bunker with his family for thirty years during the outbreak of the Cuban missile crisis, but the fact that the world didn’t end in nuclear war averts this and sees it played for laughs.

* The Netflix movie ''Film/{{Io}}'' takes the interesting step of having different scientists taking two different directions for this after most of the Earths’ atmosphere becomes deadly due to pollution. First, we have a surprisingly low-tech version of this in the form of Sam Walden (continuing a project started by her dead father, who also broadcast messages urging lingering humans not to leave Earth) who tried to clear out the toxic atmosphere by raising and training bees to pollinate enough oxygen producing plants. By the time Sam succeeds she may be the last person left on Earth and it’s unclear if anyone else will come back. On a larger scale, the prologue mentioned that as the atmosphere first got bad a few other examples of this trope started building a power station to harvest energy from other planets instead, but things got so bad that power station turned into an escape colony orbiting IO, with the people there having little faith in Sam's project and looking for new planets to colonize.

* ''Film/{{Daybreakers}}'': In an interesting variation of the scenario, there’s a vampire plague and humans are in hiding while vampire society is strong but struggling due to lack of blood. Edward one of the vampire scientist working to produce a blood substitute shifts his efforts to creating a cure, after an encounter with the human resistance. He's hardly the sole surviving scientist but the sole one on the right side that we see. The film has a {{bittersweet|Ending}} but hopeful ending as his effort succeeds and could be widely administered.
* ''Film/IndependenceDay'': While the work that Dr. Okun and his team do along with their disheveled appearances scream this trope, they’ve been like that before the alien invasion started. Dr. Isaacs becomes a more literal version of this when all of the others are killed or incapacitated, although his role afterwards isn’t that huge.

* ''Film/{{Cooties}}'': Doug the {{Cloudcuckoolander}} science teacher fits this role a lot, figuring out what’s going on and speculating on the potential for a cure.

* ''Literature/TheHost'': Doc is the only member of the group with the skills to work remove the Hosts from people as a way of fighting the invasion. That being said he’s consistently unsuccessful (killing both the hosts and their subjects in a way similar to a lot of examples on this page related to zombie fiction), although unlike many examples on this page he eventually gets better at that (with Wanda’s help) and survives, still being able to do it well. All the other scientists aren’t really dead but they are prisoners losing their consciousness. He’s also a bit of a ClosestThingWeGot since he seems to be more of a BackAlleyDoctor than a trained research scientist.

* ''Literature/ThePostman'': There’s some of these at Corvalis, although they aren’t nearly as advanced as they try to get the outside world to think.

* ''Literature/UndeadOnArrival'': Dr. Judy Bloch, the last doctor in town, keeps a couple of chained-up zombies (with their jawbones removed to prevent an outbreak if they get loose) in her basement, which she studies trying to find a way to understand and potentially stop their herd migratory tendencies. The town still isn’t happy when they find out but Novak is able to keep them from lynching her. She also knows enough about the nature of zombie transformation to recognize a ZombieInfectee, and tries to keep the gene pool for getting too small (including by [[BabyFactory getting herself pregnant]]).

* ''Series/TheLottery'': In a world that’s spent six years ravaged by a SterilityPlague, we have Allison and her assistant, who’ve managed to fertilize a hundred new eggs. The plot (and the title) comes from the governments decision about what to do with them.

* ''Series/TheSarahConnorChronicles'': Catherine Weaver is an unusual version of this who with her shadowiness, methods and scientist schtick is doing a lot that fits this before the actual apocalypse due to time travel. Also unusually, she’s a robot.

* Dr. Curling in ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' saw himself as this while working on a virus that would wipe out all of the mutated people on the surface to make way for the people who'd survived in Vaults and government bunkers to come out and reclaim the country. Depending on the players choice, he can be talked into a HeelFaceTurn.
* Doc Henry from ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' was a contemporary of Dr. Curling who wanted to cure the mutants instead of eradicate them. In the decades since, following the collapse of his former faction, he became a high-functioning FrontierDoctor, using his expertise to cure one disease plaguing the Wasteland at a time, largely just because he can.

* ''Film/TheVirus1980'': Zigzagged in both the film and the book. Most of the surviving humans left in the world were stationed at scientific research stations in Antarctica. Still, only a few have skills that are actually relevant for preventing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* Senku Ishigami in ''Manga/DrStone'' is a high school age science prodigy who takes it upon himself to use science to rebuild civilization thousands of years after an unknown apocalyptic event turned the entire world's population into stone.

* ''{{ComicBook/Crossed}}'': Generally {{averted|Trope}} due to the grim and/or {{deconstructi|on}}ve nature of the series but not entirely absent. Jack from "Shrink" is an interesting version of this, a psychologist trying to study Crossed. The human antagonist of volume 3 claims to know of a convoy of these but it’s quickly revealed to the audience that he’s lying. Professor Nelson looks like an example of this given that before the apocalypse he spoke about something that sounds a lot like the Crossed virus and is hiding in a bunker afterwards with a rescue mission looking for him and his work, but he didn’t survive, and it’s never revealed if he was actually right with his theory. In ''Wish You Were Here'', the narrator lampshades the absence of these after the first two years, noting that when they actually do find someone who might be TheImmune if there was a movie they’d rush him to some bunker to make a vaccine out of his blood but there’s nowhere left to do that anymore.
* Nei Rin in ''ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy'': Has shades of this, being more of a fugitive than a survivor but after the Sith overthrow the Jedi, she spent years in the shadows trying to complete her terraforming work and find evidence to exonerate herself and the Jedi of having been behind its disastrous failure.

* ''ComicBook/{{BPRD}}'': When the Bureau gets its new headquarters, a disaffected nuclear-proof bunker in the mountains, they find an old scientist whose been living there since its was shut down, writing down notes on a typewriter for so long the keys wore out and it punched holes in the paper, he was so far gone he didn't notice. [[spoiler: He later releases an EldritchAbomination into the base thinking it some kind of angelic creature.]]

* ''ComicBook/LeTransperceneige'': Alec Forrester was the scientist who first created the idea of perpetual motion (a train going non stop) which is keeping people alive during the EndlessWinter, and remains onboard his creation, ([[ThereIsAnother one of them, anyway]]), keeping the engine maintained to ensure the survival of those onboard, while trying to stay out of the power struggles.
* ''ComicBook/JustAPilgrim'': About a decade after the solar flare that killed nearly all of the world's people and dried up the oceans, the main character stumbles across a HiddenElfVillage of these in the Marianas Trench, formerly the deepest known part of the Ocean. Oceanologists and NASA engineers who fled there right after the burn with a lot of genetic samples and a half-finished rocket ship, and have since been preparing for a HomeworldEvacuation.
* 'ComicBook/SweetTooth' gives us Dr. Singh, who is a cross between this and ReluctantMadScientist, experimenting on human/animal hybrids while trying to find an origin and cure for ThePlague. While he does experiment on the hero as a result of this goal, unusually, he ends up joining him after suffering a HeelRealization.

* Before Logan, in ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'', there was Dr. Rausch, who appeared on several TV emergency broadcasts, describing the zombies abilities and behaviors for anyone still listening and proposes feeding them any dead bodies that don't reanimate as a way to distract them.

* Another ice age apocalypse example is Wilford, the Big Bad of ''Film/{{Snowpiercer}}'', who built the train that serves as a refuge from the blizzard and keeps it running at the cost of oppressing hundreds. It’s [[PlayingWithATrope played with]], though, as Wilford supposedly wanted to build the train to go around the world before there ever was an apocalypse, meaning that it was only by accident that he had the technology to save humanity and install himself as its leader.

* In ''Film/BlastFromThePast'' Christopher Walken’s character thinks he’s one, after fleeing into a bunker with his family for thirty years during the outbreak of the Cuban missile crisis, but the fact that the world didn’t end in nuclear war averts this and sees it played for laughs.

* ''Film/TwelveMonkeys'': As a framing device there's a small cabal of these working to find a cure for the plague in an underground bunker, who send the protagonist back in time to get a pure sample of the virus.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' spin-off novel ''The Eyeless'', the Doctor visits a planet where most of the population was wiped out in an incomprehensible catastrophe. Professor Jeffip does his best to fill the Sole Surviving Scientist role.

->'''Dr. Rachel Scott:''' I was able to isolate the mutation in Niels' lungs that make him so contagious. And I introduced it to my vaccine. I injected myself with it about an hour ago, and then I breathed on an infected mouse, the same way that Niels used to breath on people as a way to kill them. If this works, if the mouse survives, in effect I'll be able to breathe the cure onto people.\\

* ''{{ComicBook/Crossed}}'': Generally averted due to the grim and/or deconstruction nature of the series but not entirely absent. Jack from ‘’Shrink’’ is an interesting version of this, a psychologist trying to study Crossed. The human antagonist of volume 3 claims to know of a convoy of these but it’s quickly revealed to the audience that he’s lying. Professor Nelson looks like an example of this given that before the apocalypse he spoke about something that sounds a lot like the Crossed virus and is hiding in a bunker afterwards with a rescue mission looking for him and his work, but he didn’t survive, and it’s never revealed if he was actually right with his theory. In ''Wish You Were Here'', the narrator lampshades the absence of these after the first two years, noting that when they actually do find someone who might be TheImmune if there was a movie they’d rush him to some bunker to make a vaccine out of his blood but there’s nowhere left to do that anymore.
* Nei Rin in ''ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy'': Has shades of this, being more of a fugitive than a survivor but after the sith overthrow the Jedi, she spent years in the shadows trying to complete her terraforming work and find evidence to exonerate herself and the Jedi of having been behind its disastrous failure.

** Eugene Porter claims to be this when he encounters Rick's group. He tells them he is a scientist who knows what caused the zombie outbreak and is working on a way to combat it. [[spoiler: However it is later revealed to be a lie, as Eugene only used this claim as a cover story to make himself seem important so stronger people with more practical skills for surviving the end of civilization would be willing to protect him]]
** Alice Warren is a self-taught version of this (before the ZombieApocalypse she was an interior design student) but makes a game, albeit futile effort at studying a captive zombie for clues to a way to prevent humans from reanimating after they die.
* There was a ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'' spin-off comic with a scientist who played a role in the creation of the [[HatePlague Rage Virus]]. He admits this to a girl that he had escaped a holding facility with, [[TheAtoner and plans to atone]] by becoming one of these, being that he's one of the few people alive (maybe the only one) who knows anything about the virus and has the best chance of curing it. Unfortunately, she had lost her parents earlier during the initial outbreak, and lost her brother during the escape. Apparently learning that the guy she'd been helping was the root cause of those things is too much for her, so first she kisses him, then grabs his gun and shoots him. Then lets herself be killed by the soldiers pursuing them. [[SubvertedTrope So much for that.]]
* ''{{ComicBook/BPRD}}'': When the Bureau gets its new headquarters, a disaffected nuclear-proof bunker in the mountains, they find an old scientist whose been living there since its was shut down, writing down notes on a typewriter for so long the keys wore out and it punched holes in the paper, he was so far gone he didn't notice. [[spoiler: He later releases an EldritchAbomination into the base thinking it some kind of angelic creature.]]
* TheNarrator of ''ComicBook/{{Supergod}}'', though he's already [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt given up all hope]] and is just dictating an ApocalypticLog to another SoleSurvivingScientist in another country.

* ''ComicBook/JustAPilgrim'': about a decade after the solar flare that killed nearly all fo the worlds people, and dried up the oceans, The main character stumbles across a HiddenElfVillage of these in the Marianas Trench, formerly the deepest known part of the Ocean. Oceanologists and NASA engineers who fled there right after the burn with a lot of genetic samples and a half-finished rocket ship, and have since been preparing for a HomeworldEvacuation.
* 'ComicBook/SweetTooth' gives us Dr. Singh, who is a cross between this and ReluctantMadScientist, experimenting on human/animal hybrids while trying to find an origin and cure for ThePlague. While he does experiment on the hero as a hesult of this goal, unusually, he ends up joining him after suffering a HeelRealization.

[[folder:Film - Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Nine}}'': The Scientist in the backstory, after watching a dictator use his inventions to destroy humanity, survived long enough to create the Stitchpunks and allow some form of life to endure.

* Dr. Logan from ''Film/DayOfTheDead1985'' is a prime example. His obsessive pursuit of understanding the undead was a harsh critique on the pursuit of scientific knowledge without practical application. He ''does'' manage to train a zombie to be peaceful and empathic, and even remember parts of his past life.But when confronted, he didn't bring up practical applications (like using "tame" zombies to perform tasks out in the open without fear of being eaten, and even potentially influence an entire horde's behavior) but simply raved on about a need to understand, indicating his focus was on satisfying his own curiosity rather then accomplishing anything productive.

* ''Film/LandOfTheDead'': Although he's more of a fighter than a scientist, Riley Denbro created a zombie-killing [=APC=] that provides a lot of security to his community. Riley has become disillusioned with the FantasticCasteSystem around him and wants to strike out on his own, but his skills are too valuable and his group's leader won't let him go.

* Another ice age apocalypse example is Wilford, the Big Bad of ''Film/{{Snowpiercer}}''; who built the train that serves as a refuge from the blizzard and keeps it running at the cost of oppressing hundreds. It’s played with though as Wilford supposedly wanted to build the train to go around the world before there ever was an apocalypse, meaning that it was only by accident that he had the technology to save humanity and install himself as its leader.
* ''Film/ZombielandDoubleTap'': a cutaway scene shows a scientist in eking out an existence in a hi-tech lab several years after the end of civilization before being attacked and apparently killed by an evolved Hawking zombie (using a BorrowedBiometricBypass from the body of a second scientist).
* ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'' doesn't start out this way, with lots of brilliant minds, recourses and infrastructure dedicated to the homeworld evacuation, but by the film’s last act, on Earth NASA is crumbling, along with society, with the death of their leader and the reveal that [[spoiler: his research giving them hope was a MotivationalLie]] but Murph Cooper and her colleague Getty press on trying to find a way that will let their ships escape the gravitational pull. Meanwhile, in space, the last of the scientists is [[spoiler: Amelia]], who can’t figure out a way to help those still on Earth and is alone and prepared to set up a new colony with genetic samples on the one life-bearing planet that the expedition found.

* In ''Film/{{Cyborg}}'', a group of doctors, the last ones in the country, are working on a cure for ThePlague in an old [=CDC=] facility. Prior to the movie's beginning, they created the titular cyborg to venture into dangerous territory and collect data for their experiments.

* ''Film/TwelveMonkeys'': as a framing device there’s a small cabal of these working to find a cure for the plague in a underground bunkers who send the protagonist back in time to get a pure sample of the virus.

* ''Film/{{Daybreakers}}''; In an interesting variation of the scenario there’s a vampire plague and humans are in hiding while vampire society is strong but struggling due to lack of blood. Edward one of the vampire scientist working to produce a blood substitute shifts his efforts to creating a cure, after an encounter with the human resistance. He’s hardly the sole surviving scientist but the sole one on the right side that we see. The film Has a ray of hope ending as his effort succeed and could be widespread
* ''Film/IndependenceDay'': While the work that Dr. Okun and his team do, along with their disheveled appearances scream this trope, they’ve been like that before the alien invasion started. Dr. Isaacs becomes a more literal version of this when all of the others are killed or incapacitated, although his role afterwards isn’t that huge.
* ''Film/{{Pandorum}}'': Nadia is a biologist who helped collect Earth's biosphere on the colonization ship. When she wakes up to find the ship infested by cannibals, she guards the area her work is gathered and works on an (incorrect, it turns out) theory about where the Hunters came from. Notably Nadia probably isn't the only scientist left but any others are still cryogenically frozen.

* ''Film/TheDayOfTheTriffids'': Marine Biologist Dr. Goodwin becomes this by accident, when while simply trying to fight off the attacking plant creatures, he discovers that [[spoiler: salt water kills them]] and quickly moves to work on this.
* Subverted in ''Film/StateOfEmergency'': Where it initially looks like one of these is appearing to experiment on one of the survivors of the zombie outbreak near the end [[spoiler: only for him to tell them that his test have determined that they're not infected, that the localized outbreak has been dealt with and that their free to go]].

* ''Film/{{Cooties}}'' Doug the {{Cloudcuckoolander}} science teacher fits this role a lot, figuring out what’s going on and speculating on the potential for a cure.
* ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'': An interesting non-human example is Corneiluis and Zira arguably in the third film when they escape their nuclear war and go back in time

* ''Film/TheVirus1980'': Zigzagged in both the film and the book. Most of the surviving humans left in the world were stationed at scientific research stations in Antarctica. Still only a few have skills that are actually relevant for preventing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* Edmond Haminton has a story where all the humanity has died except for a single immortal scientist. See CameBackWrong for a description of his efforts.
* ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'': the whole plot turns out to have been caused by the Bureau, a society of these conducting experiments on the people of the city in an effort to fix perceived genetic damage [[spoiler: although there goal ultimately isn't treated with much sympathy]].

* In ''Literature/TheGirlWithAllTheGifts'', [[spoiler:Dr. Caldwell]] is that, because [[spoiler:although quite competent, she wasn't among the scientists chosen to research the virus that caused the ZombieApocalypse. Those scientist then disappeared, leaving only Dr. Caldwell to do the job]].
** the prequel novel, ''Literature/TheBoyOnTheBridge'', [[spoiler: centers around those scientists and their military escort before they disappeared]].
* ''Literature/TheHost: Doc is the only member of the group with the skills to work remove the Hosts from people as a way of fighting the invasion. That being said he’s consistently unsucsesful (killing both the hosts and their subjects in a way similar to a lot of examples on this page related to zombie fiction), although unlike many examples on this page he eventually gets better at that (with Wanda’s help) and survives, still being able to do it well. All the other scientists aren’t really dead but they are prisoners losing their consciousness. He’s also a bit of a ClosestThingWeGot since he seems to be more of a BackAlleyDoctor than a trained research scientist.
* In ''Literature/ThePassage Dr. Leer feels like one of these for having been involved in the project that started everything and surviving the initial outbreak but unusually for this trope he died during the TimeSkip without working on anything that might try to save humanity in the aftermath.
* ''Literature/ThePostman'': there’s some of these at Corvalis, although they aren’t nearly as advanced as they try to get the outside world to think.
* ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'': several of these are responsible for the backstory, in the aftermath of a war against alien invaders who slaughtered all of mankind except for a couple colony ships. They had a schism about whether or not to get rid of all technology and rewrite history to deter the other survivors from eventually striking back against the aliens, or whether doing so would just cause their descendants to re-establish technology on their own in several generations and go back to the stars, unprepared for any encounter with the aliens. By the present day, the populace remembers the former group as angels and saviors, and the later group as fallen angels, although this viewpoint changes by the final book.

* ''Literature/UndeadOnArrival'': Dr Judy Bloch, the last doctor in town keeps a couple chained up zombies (with their jawbones removed to prevent an outbreak if they get loose) in her basement, which she studies trying to find a way to understand and potentially stop their herd migratory tendencies. The town still isn’t happy when they find out but Novak is able to keep them from lynching her. She also knows enough about the nature of zombie transformation to recognize a ZombieInfectee, and tries to keep the gene pool for getting too small (including by [[BabyFactory getting herself pregnant]]).
* ''Literature/VariableStar'': Andrew Hamilton survives the destruction of the solar system onboard the FasterThanLightTravel ship he recently invented. He's is quick to consider ways to use it to rescue as many people as possible from the colonies that will be hit by solar radiation, [[spoiler: although it's someone else who proposes just putting his engine in a bigger ship.]]

* ''Series/{{Crusade}}'': Dr. Chambers is the Medical officer aboard a ship working to FindTheCure in time to keep everyone on earth from dying, and thus the one most likely to make the actual medical breakthroughs for their mission.
* ''Series/TheDayOfTheTriffids2009'' gives us Brian Cox's character, the father of the main character. He is introduced experimenting on the Triffids, trying to make a new strain of the species which will launch sterile spores, and end their infestation. [[spoiler: He does succeed in his efforts, but it's only a HopeSpot, as a subsequent attack kills him and destroys his work]].
* ''Series/Day5'': in a world where sleep has mysteriously become lethal, the first season features a group of scientists led by Dr Abrams and Lex who are testing a drug that keeps sleepers from dying but has failed to save over two hundred test subjects so far.

* ''Series/TheLastTrain'' features Jonathan, who built the cyro chambers that let the main characters survive, is this when he reappears in the future, forty years older.
* ''Series/TheLottery'': In a world that’s spent six years ravaged by an infertility plague, we have Allison and her assistant, who’ve managed to fertilize a hundred new eggs. The plot (and the title) comes from the governments decision about what to do with them.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits'': some are alluded to in the episode ''The Vaccine'' who created the titular vaccine for survivors of ThePlague (although interestingly it is lethal to anyone who is TheImmune). None of them appear in person, and they're represented by a dying soldier delivering samples to various groups of survivors.
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}: Most of the scientists behind the energy experiment which ended up causing the worldwide blackout are still out there, with several attempting to find a way to fix things and restart the power, while others strive to make sure that the power stays turned off.

* ''Series/TheSarahConnorChronicles'': Catherine Weaver is an unusual version of this who with her shadowiness, methods and scientist schtick is doing a lot that fits this before the actual apocalypse due to time travel. Also unusually she’s a robot.

* In the play ''Theatre/{{RUR}}'' (a.k.a. ''Rossum's Universal Robots''), after the robots kill off humanity, the sole survivor is Alquist. It is a significant plot point that Alquist is actually ''not'' a scientist at all (he was the clerk of the works at the robot factory); the robots want him to figure out how to allow them to reproduce, and he doesn't have the knowledge or skill to do so.

* The UsefulNotes/AdobeFlash game ''VideoGame/OneChance'' is all about this - you play a scientist trying to fix an accidentally lethal cure for cancer as it slowly infects everyone in the '''world'''.

* Adam Fenix is Sera's Sole Surviving Scientist in the ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' series. [[spoiler: The Locust get to Azura before Delta. They manage to kill everyone on the island except Adam, and they're literally at his door before being stopped.]]
* The Institute in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' are an entire society of this, leaning towards the macabre, depending on the Player's interpretation and actions.

* Doc Henry from ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' was a contemporary of Dr. Curling who wanted to cure the mutants instead of eradicate them. In the decades since, following the collapse of his former faction, he became a high-functioning FrontierDoctor, using his expertise to cure one disease plaguing TheWasteland at a time, largely just because he can.
* ''VideoGame/Fallout76'': Had this role taken by Keesha [=McDermot=] (a former science teacher who worked to purify the water from the fallout) and Miguel Caldera (who built robots they put to effect in trying to rebuild), of The Responders and Grant [=McNamara=] (an engineer who restored a hydroelectric dam, dismantled or installed various futuristic security systems and making devices to kill the Scorchbeasts) of The [[TheRemnant The Appalachian Brotherhood of Steel]].

* Othar in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' has been that but managed to go back in time ([[UnreliableNarrator according]] to his Twitter, anyway).

* ComicBook/VandalSavage ends up a sole surviving scientist in the episode "Hereafter" from ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague''. Not to mention the sole surviving human being. Turns out a few millennia alone with nothing but himself for company was all that was needed to show Savage the folly for his thirst for power. He actually built a spaceship to allow himself to escape Earth, but once he finished it he decided that he didn't deserve to have such a happy ending. [[spoiler: Fortunate, too, since this meant that he was still around to help a time-displaced Superman return to the present and prevent his past self from killing humanity]].

* Eugene Porter on ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'' claims to be this when he encounters Rick's group. He tells them he is a scientist who knows what caused the zombie outbreak and is working on a way to combat it. [[spoiler: However it is later revealed to be a lie, as Eugene only used this claim as a cover story to make himself seem important so stronger people with more practical skills for surviving the end of civilization would be willing to protect him]]

** Later in the series, the group encounters a character named Eugene Porter, who claims to be a scientist searching for a cure to the zombie outbreak.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits'': some are alluded to in the episode ''The Vaccine'' who created the titular vaccine for survivors of ThePlague (although interestingly it is lethal to anyone who is TheImmune). None of them appear in person, and their represented by a dying soldier delivering samples to various groups of survivors.

* Dr. Edwin Jenner from ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' is a depressed and ultimately suicidal scientist found alone in the CDC bunker by the other survivors. Later in the series, the group encounters a character named Eugene Porter, who claims to be a scientist searching for a cure to the zombie outbreak.

** SoleSurvivingScientist: Since surviving the Freeze onboard Big Alice, the Headwoods have perfected a method of instantly healing frostbite injuries and are implied to have experimented on the Ambiguously Human Icy Bob

--> '''Dr. Rachel Scott:''' I was able to isolate the mutation in Niels' lungs that make him so contagious. And I introduced it to my vaccine. I injected myself with it about an hour ago, and then I breathed on an infected mouse, the same way that Niels used to breath on people as a way to kill them. If this works, if the mouse survives, in effect I'll be able to breathe the cure onto people.
--> '''Commander Tom Chandler:''' And so will anyone else that I give this new shot to, which means that we won't need any more labs, any more infrastructure, or planes. All our problems will be solved. Except one. Did you do it?
--> '''Dr. Rachel Scott:''' Oh, God. Are you really asking me this?
--> '''Commander Tom Chandler:''' That's exactly what I'm asking you.
--> '''Dr. Rachel Scott:''' The man who killed 5 billion people, including your wife and most of your crew's family, is dead. And now his lungs are gonna be used to save the rest of the people on this planet.
-->-- ''Series/TheLastShip''

* ''Literature/SkyJumpers'': Decades before the book, [[OurFounder Frank Hudson]] was a combination of this and a ChildProdigy in the years after WorldWarIII. He was only twelve years old, but used his library of science books to help his group of 26 survivors survive, with things like ammonia refrigeration systems and a telegraph system powered by electrolyte batteries.

* ''Literature/SkyJumpers'': [[OurFounder Frank Hudson]] was a combination of this and a ChildProdigy in the years after WorldWarIII. He was only twelve years old, but used his library of science books to help his group of 26 survivors survive, with things like ammonia refrigeration systems and a telegraph system powered by electrolyte batteries.

** Season two casting calls also mention a husband and wife scientist team onboard the train who care more about their work then ethics.

* ''Literature/GalaxyofFear'':''The Doomsday Ship'' is set aboard a ship where most people fled in escape pods (as opposed to being killed like this trope usually implies), has this role filled by Malik, the computer technician who is the only one with the skills to potentially shut down the AiIsIsCrapshoot program he helped create.

[[caption-width-right:316:They often end up like this.]]'

* * ''Literature/GalaxyofFear'':''The Doomsday Ship'' is set aboard a ship where most people fled in escape pods (as opposed to being killed like this trope usually implies), has this role filled by Malik, the computer technician who is the only one with the skills to potentially shut down the AiIsIsCrapshoot program he helped create.

* ''Film/TheMidnightSky:'' Augustine Lofthouse survives a world-ending cataclysm at his arctic research station while trying to contact astronauts in space and give the coordinates he's programmed, which will allow them to reach another planet with the limited fuel aboard their ship.