TWELVE MONKEYS
When Does it Take Place: 2035
What Happened: A virus scorched the surface of the planet, forcing humanity to take refuge underground, where they’ve managed to perfect time travel ... in the hopes of recovering a pristine version of the virus from which to craft an antidote.

WALL-E
When Does it Take Place: Unknown.
What Happened: Our garbage had overtaken us and what remained of humanity—roly-poly humanity—exists on the great starship Axiom. Earth belongs to one lonely robot, a cockroach and the trash.

WATERWORLD
When Does it Take Place: Unknown.
What Happened: The polar ice caps melted, covering the planet in one big ocean (or is it a sea?). Those who survived did so in boats, on oil tankers, or on floating cities. Plus, they drank their own urine.

THE ROAD WARRIOR
When Does it Take Place: Unknown.
What Happened: “For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing .... The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. 
Their leaders talked ... and talked ... and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled, the cities exploded .... A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear .... Men began to feed on men.” Basically, the best time ever.

TERMINATOR SALVATION
When Does it Take Place: Unknown.
What Happened: Skynet happened and, once the network entrusted to control America’s military became sentient, it viewed mankind as its greatest threat, launched all the nukes and then built a whole mess of robots to finish the job.

THE MATRIX
When Does it Take Place: 2199
What Happened: Damned machines. Once again, they became sentient and, once again, went to war with mankind. The machines won, but before they did, humans “scorched the sky” in an attempt to cut off the source of the machines’ solar power. Hence the whole “human battery” thing.

I AM LEGEND
When Does it Take Place: 2012
What Happened: A tweaked version of the measles virus killed 90 percent of humanity, turning most cities into vacant necropolises—except for the vampiric survivors.

DOOMSDAY
When Does it Take Place: 2030s
What Happened: A virus called Reaper descends on Scotland, turning the populace into homicidal cannibals. Which sucks if you’re Scottish. If not, just don’t go there.

THE WALKING DEAD
When Does it Take Place: Now-ish.
What Happened: Unknown. One day, there was just zombies. At least, that’s as much as the characters on the TV show know.

PLANET OF THE APES
When Does it Take Place: Unknown.
What Happened: If you believe Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a virus intended to cure Alzheimer’s—and, coincidentally, which makes apes super-smart—backfires and (eventually) wipes out a decent chunk of the world’s human populace. Then we blow it all to hell to try and kill the damned dirty apes.

TANK GIRL
When Does it Take Place: 2033
What Happened: A rogue comet smacks into the Earth’s surface, which mucks with the climate. As a result, the Big Blue Marble isn’t that blue anymore and rain hardly ever falls on the surface. But there are still women, mechanized artillery and mutated kangaroos, so all’s well, yeah?

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
When Does it Take Place: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
What Happened: Even though it feels like the far-flung future—what with all the spaceships and humanoid robots and faster-than-light travel—the destruction of almost all human life in the Twelve Colonies does take place in our distant past.

THE STAND
When Does it Take Place: 1990 (in the uncut edition).
What Happened: Some bonehead unleashes “Captain Trips,” a lethal virus that affected 99 percent of the world’s population. (Okay, he wasn’t a bonehead, he was a security guard who escaped, fearing for his life.) The planet that remains is the perfect blank canvas for Stephen King’s good vs. evil showdown.

FALLING SKIES
When Does it Take Place: Near future.
What Happened: This time, it’s alien invaders who wiped out 90 percent of humanity—leaving the survivors to mount a fledgling resistance.

SOYLENT GREEN
When Does it Take Place: 2022
What Happened: Overpopulation has made resources scarce and that scarcity has made people desperate. How desperate? They’re willing to eat something called Soylent Green without knowing where it comes from.

THE ROAD
When Does it Take Place: Unknown.
What Happened: Unclear. Something killed a decent chunk of life on Earth and wiped out most of human civilization, but we never learn what—just that a father and son have to cross this inhospitable wasteland.

REIGN OF FIRE
When Does it Take Place: 2020
What Happened: Dragons happened, man. And they eat ash ... a fact which turned our paltry attempts at nuclear retaliation into a giant buffet.