The world after the apocalypse is pretty easy to visualise. Vast deserts, people wearing gasmarks and mutant cannibals. It’s become such a staple in fiction that we’ve got it down pat. Everything from Mad Max to Fallout 3 looks roughly the same. On occasion things go a different way, and the world we end up in is…weird.
#10 – We Become Both Hippies and Jerks
The Time Machine
When a Victorian England scientist creates a time machine and travels far, far, far into the future he finds the peaceful, gentle and frugal Eloi, living among the overgrown ruins of human society. For those not looking forward to a life of vegetarianism there’s the Morlocks, an underground race of savage, ape-like creatures who prey on the Eloi. Most post-apocalyptic worlds see something resembling the human race scraping out a living, but here we’ve turned against ourselves in an extreme way.
#9 – We Live in Apartments and Eat Each Other
Delicatessen
If you want something weird, go to the French. In this very unusual take on the post-apocalypse scenario the people of France are carrying on as normal in their apartment building. They lure new residents into the building so the butcher on the bottom floor can turn them into food. And there’s guerrilla vegetarians living in the sewers.
#8 – The Earth is Populated By Cleaning Robots
WALL-E
The human population has a problem with thinking ahead. In an era of mass consumption it’s not hard to imagine that the Earth would be so far entrenched in garbage the human race would take to skies to grow into giant blobby baby things in Professor X chairs. In the meantime the planet is populated by funky little cleaning robots trying to clean the mess up. It’s adorably bleak.
#7 – Everything Lives in Greenhouses Towed By American Airline Freighters
Silent Running
Humans are doing OK but all the animals and plants are screwed. In order to try preserving everything by gathering it all up into giant greenhouses. Humans in all their infinite wisdom get into a big conflict about whether they should be trying to keep everything alive or in the airplanes keeping them safe should be returned to commercial use.
#6 – Everyone is a Battery Playing ‘Second Life’
The Matrix
Wouldn’t it be weird if the entire world was actually a big computer simulation and we were living our lives in it completely unaware of the reality? If you don’t know what The Matrix is by now, that’s what it is. Our own artificial intelligence creations turned against us and are keeping us busy in the VR world while they turn our bodies into a source of energy.
#5 – We Share the Planet with Giant Sewer Dragons
Reign of Fire
We all know that the London Underground is a confusing thing to navigate, and there really could be anything under there, but it’s unlikely that all the dragons of legend are hibernating under the streets. When they wake up the turn the cities in to a smouldering ruin and send the survivors back to Medieval society re-enacting Star Wars on stage for entertainment.
#4 Fish People and Rafts
Waterworld
Global warming has melted all the ice caps and as a result the planet’s surface is deep under water (somehow). Everyone lives on floating cities, old cruise liners or make-shift rafts, diluting their urine for drinking water and trading sand. Some people have gone the extra mile in adapting to the new world by growing webbed toes and gills for underwater adventuring.
#3 – Everybody Lives on a Supertrain!
Snowpiercer
It’s that pesky global warming thing again, but this time the human race has a plan to cool things down. Unfortunately we all over-corrected and turned the planet into a big ice-cube. The small proportion of the population that survives are on board a train looping the globe on a non-stop journey. So far they’ve been at it for 18 years and things are as bleak as ever.
#2 – Mutant Kangaroos and Drought
Tank Girl
Eventually the water runs out and the world is, once again, turned into a big ol’ desert. People live in giant party towns, work for a giant, evil Malcolm McDowell run corporation or scavenge to survive in frat houses. We’re not alone though, as giant genetically engineered kangaroo people called Rippers are keeping things interesting.
#1 – Skinless, Telepathic People Worship an Atomic Bomb
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
In the future the world is topsy-turvy! Apes rule the world and humans are mindless savages! But that’s not all… unbeknownst to all there is a third faction lurking underground, an evolved group of surviving humans whose close proximity to an atomic bomb has caused them to mutate. Now skinless and able to read and attack people’s minds. Their love of the bomb turns out to be everyones downfall when it blows the planet up. The still milked three more sequels out of the series mind you.
