Line #45 Main/ApocalypseNot


1	->'''Piper:''' So. You've seen the Commonwealth. Diamond City. How does it compare to your old life?\
2	'''Sole Survivor:''' Honestly, seeing everyone surviving out here? Rebuilding the world? It gives me hope.
3	-->-- ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', "Story Of The Century"
4
5	This is the tendency for an initially hellish, ruined post-apocalyptic setting to become less and less so as the world is developed due to the addition of additional cultures with healthy and growing societies. Often also "helped along" when the [[LostTechnology knowledge that has been lost]] seems less and less significant with the development of new AppliedPhlebotinum, often of a type not available before The End.
6
7	A side effect of combining AfterTheEnd and ExpansionPackWorld.
8
9	Compare ThereIsAnother, when a character said to be the LastOfHisKind turns out not to be as more and more about his kind is revealed.
10
11	Contrast with NewEden, where the healing of the world is central to the plot rather than an unintentional side effect of its development.
12	-----
13	!!Examples:
14
15	[[foldercontrol]]
16
17	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
18	* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': The series' premise is that man-eating Titans have nearly driven humanity to extinction, save for those who managed to seek refuge inside a walled kingdom. [[spoiler: It's eventually revealed that humanity is in fact not extinct beyond the walls, and that the people inside the walls are members of [[FantasticRacism a race detested by the rest of the world for their potential to turn into Titans]]. Their confinement inside the walls is part of an AncientConspiracy to isolate them from the rest of the world and slowly kill them off.]]
19	* ''Anime/MyOtome''. 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.
20	* The final arc of ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' develops quickly into this, possibly because the post-apocalypse episodes (which take place two years after the end of the previous arc) were [[PostScriptSeason made in a hurry after the series was lengthened]]. The franchise explains this by stating that mass cloning was used following the war. Also, it's worth noting that, unlike in many other media, no critical technical knowledge was lost in the apocalypse, just industrial capacity, which was ''quickly'' made up for when the survivors began capturing Zentraedi Factory Satellites. However, there are some passing mentions of certain cultural information being lost due to the devastation of specific ethnic groups and the fact no one probably thought it overly critical to preserve copies of Lady Gaga songs, lolcats memes, etc. in hardened military databases.
21	** In fact, the ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' shows set after the original all take place either on reasonably well-off colony fleets, or on one of the thousands of hospitable planets up for grabs that were recorded in the Zentraedi databases.
22	** With regards to the state of Earth itself, the only part of it shown in the later series is the area in immediate vicinity of the original Macross itself, which does appear to be an arid desert even fifty years later. Scenes from the original series, however, show verdant jungles complete with wildlife only two years after the cataclysm, suggesting that the surface devastation was not as universal as it initially appeared.
23	* In ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', Earth has gone through nuclear WorldWarIII, a meteor shower that destroyed portions of the upper hemisphere, and a Non-Nuclear World War IV in 2020. By 2030, Japan is shown to be a thriving 1st world nation, and modern day technology has become an integrated part of society itself. You wouldn't think by looking that at one point there were nukes flying around the world. Tokyo was destroyed, but "Radiation Scrubber Nanotechnology" has made the area safe to live in pretty fast, though the people that live there are most notably low-class citizens. This trope is best shown with Berlin, Germany. It was flat-out destroyed during both world wars, yet you wouldn't be able to tell that anything happened to it at all if that bit of exposition hadn't been revealed.
24	** It is also worth pointing out that Japan was one of the biggest ''losers'' during both wars. Then again, given that country's history with startlingly quick turnarounds following [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII previous world wars]], this isn't unprecedented.
25	* 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. Possibly justified given the presence of [[TheEmpire the Chromedome Empire]], which supposedly rules most, if not all of the world. Of course, since the show is one big parody of ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'', this is a gimme.
26	** On the other hand, the presence of 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.
27	* The initial premise of ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'' is that 99% of the Earth population was wiped out by the mass {{colony drop}}s 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.
28	[[/folder]]
29
30	[[folder:Fan Works]]
31	* At the beginning of ''Fanfic/GhostsOfEvangelion'', Shinji and Asuka wander around ruins looking for food and potable water. As more and more people return from Instrumentality, civilization restores itself progressively. Five years after Third Impact the world seems relatively normal, although China and other countries are still struggling.
32	[[/folder]]
33
34	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
35	* In ''Film/GodzillaVsKong'', none of the consequences of [[Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019 the previous movie]]'s more apocalyptic events have stuck. The dozens of {{Kaiju}} that King Ghidorah awakened have gone back to sleep, society seems to have fully bounced back, and people like [[EvilInc Apex]] are still trying to kill Godzilla despite the previous film's message being one of humility and respect for the Kaiju which are beyond our control. It's as if the previous film never even happened except for King Ghidorah's decapitated skull.
36	* The film ''Film/{{Warrior of the Lost World}}'' was mocked on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' for how clean and nice the post-apocalyptic world looked.
37	[[/folder]]
38
39	[[folder:Literature]]
40	* The ''Literature/MortalEngines'' novels are set at a time when civilisation has been more-or-less rebuilt after the cataclysmic [[ApocalypseHow Sixty Minute War]], though "civilisation" is divided between the Traction Cities that roam the devastated landscape of the Great Hunting Ground and the static settlements of the Anti-Traction League in Asia and Africa. Certain technologies have fallen by the wayside but others are greatly advanced compared to the modern day (the series' airships are far more sophisticated than real ones ever were, though the secret to building heavier-than-air aircraft is rediscovered over the course of the series).
41	* Both played straight and subverted in the ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' series: Paul Muad'Dib establishes an environmental program to turn the originally hellish-desert planet Arrakis into a more verdant and fertile place to live... only to have his son disrupt the process, showing how a verdant Arrakis would create its own hellish political climate... only to, during his own reign over the universe, turn it into a verdant world with only a thin strip left of the original desert... ''only to turn it back into its original desert harshness'' as part of his plan for the continued preservation of the universe. Honestly, Arrakis goes back and forth from temperate to desert climate so often that it's impossible to tell whether a given situation is upholding this trope or setting it on fire and tossing it out the window.
42	** It's actually even more complicated; Arrakis was ''originally'' a pleasant planet before the water-hating "sandtrout" arrived.
43	* The ''Literature/DeathLands'' action/adventure novels (by Jack Adrian et al), [[spoiler:though they got around it somewhat by having the protagonists travel in time as well as space.]]
44	* A large part of the plot and theme of ''Literature/TheStand'' by Creator/StephenKing is whether or not this will happen to what remains of civilization after the superflu.
45	* ''Literature/TheAscendantKingdomsSaga'': The world's original state is notably MedievalEuropeanFantasy so there isn't as far to fall. Likely millions of people die from the FantasticNuke that starts the whole thing and from famine and plague, but it takes less than a year for warlords to begin asserting control of the chaos and people to start rebuilding.
46	* ''Literature/WhenAngelsWept'': The story deals with the build-up and aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis going hot. However, civilization survives and reconstruction takes place not long afterward, and many nations escape nuclear destruction entirely. The United States, which lost several cities and tens of millions of people, is back on its feet within 15 years. Even cities like Chicago, which took several direct hits, are rebuilt and repopulated.
47	[[/folder]]
48
49	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
50	* ''Series/Jericho2006'''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]].
51	* ''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.]]
52	[[/folder]]
53
54	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
55	* In ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'', Earth has been ruined by the apocalyptic return of magic; yet the world seems stuffed to the rafters with powerful, advanced cultures wielding incredible technologies or magics. This has to do with the RuleOfCool, the FantasyKitchenSink and the fact that AllMythsAreTrue. That said, this is an artifact of most of the focus being on high-technology and high-magic societies where civilization ''is'' rebuilt, such as the Coalition States and Lazlo. Outside of these enclaves, civilization is nonexistent and most places are run by some WastelandWarlord with a knock-off energy rifle.
56	* In ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'', the [[ForeverWar Succession Wars]] destroyed much of the manufacturing base and personnel required to build higher technology. The most critical loss was the [[FasterThanLightTravel Kearny-Fuchida drive]] - all orbital shipyards capable of constructing them were destroyed. However, as the series goes on, much of the lost technology is rediscovered and put back into production through the discovery of memories cores, research, and finding lost factories, or [[RetCon retconned]] into being rare, rather than irreplaceable. [[HumongousMecha BattleMechs]], for example, went from being almost irreplaceable to being relatively common, albeit expensive.
57	* ''Tabletopgame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' varies its [[DarkerAndEdgier GRIMDARKness]] by edition, which also changes how much technology has been lost, is irreplaceable, etc. Grimdark silliness reached its height in the third edition where almost everything was LostTechnology, but later editions [[RetCon went back and essentially stated]] that no, it's not lost, it's just difficult/expensive to produce and therefore rare. The Adeptus Mechanicus has also lessened the severity of their [[SpaceAgeStasis ban against new technology]] due to the [[GodzillaThreshold severity of the threats against Man]], allowing new or rediscovered technology to creep into production, such as the Centurion MetaMecha armor.
58	[[/folder]]
59
60	[[folder:Video Games]]
61	* ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}'':
62	** Arguably happens in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}''; at the beginning, humanity seems to have reverted to Stone Age tribalism, and it's not until the second town that you even find an actual gun available for sale. By the end, all the {{Mooks}} have PoweredArmor and energy weapons out the ass. That said, the fact that civilization has mostly rebuilt itself is explicitly stated more than once, and is actually a significant element of the entire setting. The quality of life in San Francisco and the New California Republic (NCR) is shown to have nearly reached prewar standards, and even poor frontier towns like Modoc generally have some sort of government.
63	** Invoked even more explicitly in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''. In sharp contrast with the crumbling urban wasteland of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', the Mojave desert has clean water, vegetation, and plentiful (if unusually dangerous) wildlife. The primary reason the region still suffers is the conflict between its factions: the swiftly advancing Legion invests much (if not most) of its resources in warfare, and the New California Republic's outposts have overextended and unreliable supply lines to (the entirely rebuilt) California. For their part, the Followers are actually using their supplies to help other people, such as the poor around New Vegas, most of whom lost their money to organized crime, drugs, and gambling.
64	*** New Vegas itself, which is already considered to be relatively civilized, could have avoided destruction entirely if it wasn't for a stroke of bad luck: [[spoiler: Mr. House saw the apocalypse coming, and actively prepared to defend the city from missile attack, but missed the deadline by one day. His defenses weren't running at full capacity. Regardless, he shot down every missile heading for Vegas except 11 (out of hundreds), and none of those hit densely populated areas. If his upgrades had finished, he would've had them all]].
65	** The Commonwealth presented in ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' 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.
66	*** Despite the intact infrastructure, however, the Commonwealth is still a relatively Downplayed example as much of Boston are still empty ruins populated by raiders, super mutants and other ne'er-do-wells. Despite environmentally being ApocalypseNot, order and society in Boston gradually collapsed in the weeks following the nuclear exchange, and most survivors of the riots and civil strife migrated to the surrounding countryside. It should also be noted that [[BigBad the Institute]] constantly monitors the Commonwealth and actively prevents attempts at forming any regional government by force. [[spoiler: If the Minutemen succeed in defeating the Institute and the [[TheFundamentalist Brotherhood]], it is implied that they will eventually form a new government on par with the NCR, bringing it closer to this trope.]]
67	** ''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 of sheltering people from nuclear war and open after twenty-five years to resettle the region. That said, it also gives players the ability to ''fire'' nukes, permanently damaging an area of the map for that server.
68	* At the end of ''VideoGame/DeusEx'', JC Denton shuts down global communications, triggering the Great Collapse and throwing humanity into a Dark Age. [[VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar Twenty years later]], a number of cities have not only been rebuilt, but are once more engaged in cutting-edge research into emergent technologies. However, most of the world is either a) devastated or b) the same Illuminati-controlled dystopia the first game started with.
69	* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' Pandora is a complicated example. In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' the planet is arguably more of an environmental disaster area, featuring even more dangerous bandits, a mutated human subspecies, and 2-3 times the amount of deadly creatures. However, in the first game, most of the CrapsackWorld-iness came from the fact that the planet was a backwater's backwater's backwater, with only few (if any) attention from outside the planet. By the beginning of Borderlands 2, however, it's made clear that five interplanetary and even intergalactic megacorporations have (or had) holdings and major settlements on it, one of which even has an ongoing business selling wood, and the world actually has some semblance of normal life there besides survival. And the rest of the human population in the Borderlands world ''knows'' about Pandora by now. Although, it's debatable whether or not the increased attention from the various {{Mega Corp}}s has actually ''improved'' life on Pandora at all or just [[CrapsackWorld made it worse.]]
70	* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWarsDaysOfRuin'' goes like this halfway through. The beginning of the game implies worldwide destruction, with few survivors and no hope. However, we later see functioning cities, functional industry and many soldiers on our way, implying there isn't such a shortage of people after all. It's mostly GameplayAndStorySegregation though, since the cutscenes still give the apocalyptic feel.
71	* ''VideoGame/TheSims2'': The SelfImposedChallenge "The Apocalypse Challenge" actually 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.
72	* ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'': This happens a few times in the series:
73	** 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 goes 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.
74	** After ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'', the Lordaeron subcontinent was presumed to have been completely destroyed by the ZombieApocalypse and ThePlague. In ''World of Warcraft'', about half of the regions there are completely safe from the Scourge.
75	** ''[=WoW=]'''s third expansion pack, ''Cataclysm'', had the world being changed forever by cataclysmic events. In reality, apart from a volcano, some tectonic rifts and the odd sunk zone, most regions stayed almost the same. A few even got ''better'' than before the Cataclysm.
76	** The above mentioned Draenor is now also available in a completely intact version in the ''Warlords of Draenor'' expansion, courtesy of a TimeyWimeyBall. Note that it does not replace Outland but exists in parallel with it, in a different timeline.
77	* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' introduces players to a Hyrule ravaged by the Calamity a century ago. In the game's present, there are already a few settlements that are either untouched by the Calamity (e.g. Kakariko Village, Hateno Village), or have recovered. You can even help put together a new town. Things improve even further in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom'', with the people of Hyrule working to rebuild in areas that had been overrun by monsters in the previous game.
78	* An important element of the backstory in ''VideoGame/{{Rimworld}}''. There's ample evidence that the planet your settlers or castaways landed on was once inhabited by an advanced civilisation that destroyed itself in some fashion, and some of its inhabitants have reverted to pre-industrial levels of technology and subsitence farming, but others have salvaged or reinvented the technology to bring back modern medicine, advanced industrial production methods and even amenities like television. Some {{game mod}}s take this even further.
79	* 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.]]
80	* In ''VideoGame/AfterTheEndAPostApocalypticAmerica'', 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.
81	* The "Post-Apocalyptic" origin in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''. Your civilization starts out on a nuked-out Tomb World, but they've also just discovered [[FasterThanLightTravel FTL]] and are taking the first steps towards building an interstellar polity. You even get [[HadToBeSharp bonuses from your world's past]], specifically a trait that allows your starting species to colonize and comfortably inhabit ''other'' radioactive tomb worlds in relative comfort.
82	* 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 and focus on finding ways to rebuild lost ecosystems. The underground facilities are so forgotten and unmapped that a major mutant infestation was able to set in completely unnoticed.
83	[[/folder]]
84
85	[[folder:Webcomics]]
86	* Arguably part of the background for ''{{Webcomic/Terinu}}'', as five hundred years previous to the story's start the Varn Dominion destroyed human civilization and scattered them to re-education camps among the stars. Things Got Better and humanity eventually took the Earth back, after the Varn were nice enough re-terraform it and remove all the nasty pollution.
87	* Unfortunately works in the CelestialBureaucracy's favor in ''WebComic/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.
88	[[/folder]]
89
90	[[folder:Real Life]]
91	* 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 with lifespans in the single digits anyway.
92	* 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 long-term stays in the Chernobyl exclusion zone helps a lot.
93	* The DMZ that divides North and South Korea. Due to mines and the armistice boundary, wildlife and plantlife thrives in the area, including some species that are highly endangered or extinct in the rest of the Korean Peninsula. 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 [[BaaBomb sets one off.]]
94	[[/folder]]

Context Main / ApocalypseNot