The Best Postapocalyptic Movies of All Time, Ranked by Survivability (2024)

Furiosa severs her own arm to escape Dementus. Sure, it’s f*cking awesome. But would you do it? Would you eat human flesh to survive worldwide ecocide? Would you bury yourself underground to escape fire-breathing dragons? Would you start a revolution at the back of a gigantic, inescapable train? Would you flirt with an ape? (Don’t worry. We’ll get there.)

I watched (and rewatched) 51 postapocalyptic movies over two weeks to answer those questions myself. Why? I’m an idiot, firstly. But also because they’re all interesting, unique tests of the human psyche. The Mad Max movies are a sensation because they depict more than just a singular weather event or alien attack or zombie outbreak; they fast-forward to when people start to devolve into cannibalistic, gas-injected savages with unquenchable lust and hatred.

The rules change after every movie apocalypse, and only those who learn and abide by them survive. The effects of nuclear war create scarcity across the board: food, water, clothes, shelter, companionship. All of the different ape, alien, demon, and dragon takeovers present unique challenges (and that’s in addition to the needs at the floor levels of Maslow’s pyramid). Lines are drawn in the sand between good guys and bad guys, sure, but those lines are blurred. Do you open your door to every desperate survivor pleading for help? Do you mindlessly trust the random old guy in the postal worker outfit to lead a revolution? Do you travel back in time over and over again to find a cure for a disease that may or may not exist? Would you kill your colleagues to save your life’s work if it meant preserving the last known plants in the universe? (OK, probably not. But Silent Running is still a good movie. I stand by that.)

I don’t have all the answers, but in honor of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, I tried to find them. I ranked every movie on a scale of 1-10 in two ways:

• Just how horrible is the new dystopia? Did the nukes kill everything? What food is still left, and what kind of food can we still grow? And just how f*cked up are the things that rule the new world? We know oil shortages can fuel deathly motorcycle gangs. In A Quiet Place and Bird Box (and every zombie movie ever), monsters control every decision survivors make. Just how stacked is the deck against me?
• How much am I specifically built for the new world? I’m about as average as it gets (perhaps a perfect candidate to save the world in Idiocracy 2). I’m not wholly unable to pick up some new skills or improve in some areas, but I’m no Snake Plissken or Mad Max or Denton Van Zan.

And here are the rough results of that exercise:

It’s not a perfect system, nor is this a perfect list, but I tried to cover all of the bases. In every entry on this list, you’ll see a few things:

• What happened? Basically, telling the story of each fresh hell that these movies present. Spoilers abound, so if you’ve never seen the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog and worry about having that ruined for you, may we suggest you stay off the internet? (The internet, of course, being the true dystopia.)
• How did I get here? I’m trying to figure out how I—your humble apocalypse sherpa—landed among the disease, famine, and creepy inhabitants of these movies.
• What’s the game plan? I’ve somehow survived three decades of being a Raiders fan. I can figure out some way to survive The Postman, right?
• The official Austin Gayle Adjusted Survivability score. On a long enough timeline, the mortality rate is 100 percent. But for our purposes, I’m trying to figure out my odds of making it to an old age, when I can die in peace and not at the hands of dragons, demons, or whatever the hell John Travolta is in Battlefield Earth.

Plus, the occasional new rule. I’m good at learning lessons (apparently better than I am at staying out of postapocalyptic visions of the future).

One other thing about our list: Since we’re doing this to honor Furiosa, we’re mostly focused on postapocalyptic worlds, not ones where the apocalypse is actually happening. That means: I Am Legend, in; Shaun of the Dead, a Dire Straits record to the head. (To make it simple, let’s use the 28 Days Later test: That movie appears here because it starts when Cillian Murphy wakes up in a barren London. Its sequel, 28 Weeks Later, isn’t on the list because the bulk of the action takes place as a zombielike apocalypse is restarting. Sorry, but even if society no longer has any rules, we must have some.)

So let’s count down these movies from most survivable to least. We’ve got nuclear war, climate change, zombies, infected people who kind of act like zombies, nice cannibals, mean cannibals, cannibals that don’t know they’re cannibals, apes, corn surpluses, aliens, demons, authoritarian governments, medieval knights, and idiots (like me). Now, before another apocalypse I didn’t think of comes to mind and I add another movie to this list, let the games begin.

34. Idiocracy (2006)

What happened?

This blurb is brought to you by Carl’s Jr. (God, I love how stupid and ridiculous this movie is.)

Idiots conquer the planet with reckless sex. It’s a dumb premise, but the glove fits. For every well-educated person waiting for just the right moment to have children, a moron is welcoming twins with his high school sweetheart. The discrepancy in reproduction between the smartest and dumbest people on Earth continues to widen through the 21st century, and human intelligence drops through the floor.

What are the world’s brightest scientists doing to stop it? Nothing. They’re actually too busy aiding the problem, as they double down on helping men fight hair loss and erectile dysfunction. Jump 500 years into the future, and the leaders of the free world are watering their crops with a sports drink called Brawndo, which is actively causing dust storms and killing their food supply. Joe Bauers, an unremarkably average man from the 21st century who was kept alive in a box from a failed military project before people got too stupid, saves the planet and the human race by convincing them to just water their plants.

How did I get here?

I don’t know. And stop asking me questions. I’m trying to watch, Ow! My Balls!

What’s the game plan?

I’ll finally get my law degree at Costco! (The college experience in this universe has to be unreal.)

Official AGAS Percentage: 123 percent (Costco math classes are harder than you think.)

33. Wall-E (2008)

What happened?

Earth has become a giant garbage dump left to die by garbage people who threw the planet away 700 years ago. Humans have since devolved into chairbound, screen-obsessed dumbasses who can barely function without robots and technology. The very heavy-handed truth of it all makes it the scariest depiction of a human in any of these postapocalyptic movies.

Disney

WALL-E and EVE are the heroes humans don’t deserve. The two love bots rip these people down from their giant feeding tube in space and reignite human life on Earth. It’s an unearned second chance for humanity, one that they’ll definitely waste by picking up right where they left off: consuming space, food, and content like a black hole.

How did I get here?

I’d be a menace. With everyone fully committed to the sedentary lifestyle and no real pressure to go to the gym or eat healthy, I’d have to lean all the way into the culture. I’ll try to break records at the smoothie bar and run a sportsbook for hoverchair races and robot fights. I’d also put some hours in on whatever version of Call of Duty the cool kids are playing. I wonder if all the characters in the game also can’t walk around now? That would make sense!

What’s the game plan?

Don’t stop. Keep consuming. We know that WALL-E and EVE will force us to walk again soon, so let’s sloth it up as much as we can until they roll us off the ship. Diet starts on Monday. Or whenever we get to Earth. What day is it?

Rule no. 1: Don’t stop moving.

The freeloaders on Axiom are the best-case scenario for lazy bastards in any postapocalyptic universe. There isn’t another movie on this list where these people would survive (without their hoverchairs). They’d also be quite the menu item in Mad Max, The Road, Doomsday, etc. Stay fit; stay alive.

Official AGAS percentage: 100 percent

32. Damnation Alley (1977)

What happened?

Tired: It’s another postapocalyptic Earth cooked by nukes.

Wired: It’s another postapocalyptic Earth cooked by nukes with armor-plated co*ckroaches and giant radioactive scorpions!

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

How did I get here?

Let’s be honest. You haven’t seen this movie. It made $4 million on an $8 million budget in 1977, and a surge of better, more successful postapocalyptic nuke movies came out in the early ’80s. So if I’m going to write about this goddamn travesty, you better believe I’m riding with Tanner and Denton in an Air Force Landmaster—a giant armored vehicle capable of driving on land and water, equipped with rocket launchers, flamethrowers, cannons, and a bunch of other cool-ass sh*t (for the ’70s). The one from the badass movie poster that Tanner and Denton use to survive vagrant attacks and a mega-tsunami on their cross-country road trip to Albany. The same one that cost the production $350,000 to make, roughly $1.9 million when adjusted for inflation today. I’ll ride shotgun in that, really get our money’s worth.

What’s the game plan?

I’m not really ever leaving the Landmaster. If I have to get out to help fuel it up or whatever, those trips are going to be lightning quick. Keegan dies filling up the tank because armor-plated co*ckroaches crawl up his leg and eat him alive. I’m simply not doing that. I’m not spending more than two or three minutes at a time outside the Landmaster. That’s annoying, I know. But I don’t care. It’s not just a death machine; it’s a life machine. It’s the only reason Tanner, Denton, and everyone else get to Albany safely and live to see Earth return to normal.

Rule no. 2: Never stop upgrading your car.

The Landmaster might just be the best postapocalyptic vehicle in cinema history. I know this rule could have easily popped up in either of the Mad Max entries, but the Landmaster takes the cake. THEY SURVIVED A STORM/MEGA-TSUNAMI THAT TILTED THE ENTIRE EARTH BACK TO ITS ORIGINAL AXIS IN THE DAMN THING. f*ck a War Rig; give me an Air Force Landmaster.

Official AGAS percentage: 99 percent (with Landmaster) | 24 percent (without Landmaster)

31. Battlefield Earth (2000)

If you watch any movie on this list, watch this one. It’s a filmmaking disaster you can’t turn away from. Every inch of this movie is bad. The story, the camera work, the costumes, the effects, the script, all of it.

What happened?

The only apocalypse I need to survive here is the film itself. Aliens called Psychlos have taken over Earth and enslaved the human race, but they quickly lose their grip and ultimately all die themselves when Terl (John Travolta) fumbles the planet away in an all-time choke job.

Warner Bros.

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) is caught by the Psychlos early in the movie and manages to kill one of them after he’s been captured. Rather than simply killing Jonnie on the spot, Terl thinks he can use him to teach the humans to mine the planet for gold (which is apparently valuable to the Psychlos for whatever reason). Terl forces Jonnie into a “learning machine” that teaches him the alien language and technology and even teaches him how to fly one of their ships a bit later in the film. Oh, and Terl also tries to humiliate Jonnie with stories of human history in the Denver Library only for him to be inspired by the Declaration of Independence and lead a revolution.

How did I get here?

I’ll be one of the enslaved humans who gives Pepper’s character a standing ovation in prison after a pump-up speech that narrowly beats Mark Wahlberg’s for worst of all time.

What’s the game plan?

Only two named human characters die in this movie. It’s a joke. The only chance I’ll die is from keeling over laughing.

Official AGAS Percentage: 93 percent

30. Logan’s Run (1976)

What happened?

Think Midsommar Coachella. It’s set in a future world in which the only survivors (festival attendees) are the people who have outlived the gross negative effects of overpopulation and pollution to party inside a sealed-off dome with colorful tents and outfits. It’s a completely ecologically balanced world where “mankind lives only for pleasure” because all of the painful necessities of life are provided by a combination of the government, brainwashed pseudo-policemen, and robots.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The catch? Your life must end as soon as you turn 30 years old. Big Brother demands that all of the party people must submit to the fiery ritual of Carousel to die. They also say those that do have a chance for “renewal,” but no one has ever seen it actually happen …

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The 30-year-olds dress up in all-white costumes and get dangled in the air by strings—which you can clearly see in this 1976 (!!) film—until they burst into flames as the young’uns still partying in the stands chant “renewal.” What is renewal? Hard to say. The dialogue hints at it being some form of reincarnation where you come back to life in a new body, but that pipe dream obviously causes doubt that not even unlimited alcohol, drugs, and sex can suppress. Doubters become Runners—a term for anyone who tries to flee the dome pre-Carousel—and the Sandmen (police, sort of) are empowered to “terminate” (not “kill” because of, well, propaganda)—all Runners without trial. Then, one Sandman, Logan 5 (Michael York), starts to doubt the whole song and dance after he meets a female Runner, Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter), via his order-in prostitute teleportation device—basically a much, much hornier version of Postmates. (No, that hasn’t aged well.)

How did I get here?

I turned 30 years old this month. The most salient advice I’ve gotten since then came from The Ringer’s own Sean Fennessey: “It gets worse.” So, yeah, there’s a significant chunk of me—the balding, wrinkling, and aching chunk—that would buy a one-way ticket to the Carousel today. However, there’s still enough “young and dumb” in me to channel a late-20s Runner coming off an all-time bender in this teenage fever dream.

What’s the game plan?

Rule no. 3: Watch the movies.

This rings true for every entry on this list, but it’s especially important with Logan’s Run. You’ll learn that Sandmen have horrible aim, and so many of them scream either your name or a random command before even firing their guns. Even the magnificently ’70s-looking ice robot yells, “It’s my job to freeze you!” before ever firing his gun. It’s embarrassing! It’s also the key to escaping because Runners can survive if they never stop when they hear the unnecessary exclamations and keep, uh, running. Feed me some new-age uppers, and I’ll be in a full sprint outside the dome before the first act even ends.

Logan and Jessica, after myriad unforced errors during their escape and running into a peaceful Old Man on the outside, choose to run back. They return to the dome and scream frantically in the open to those still partying that they can live beyond 30 if they go outside. It’s an awfully executed plan that goes as expected. Sandmen immediately catch Logan and hook him up to a truth-finding computer that actually can’t handle the truth. It explodes when it learns people can live outside, destroying the dome and freeing the people to touch the Old Man’s wrinkly face in awe. Whether or not I add this sidequest to my mission of escaping the dome alive is still up in the air; I would have been fine chilling with the Old Man and sneaking into the dome for resources until the computer blows it up.

Official AGAS percentage: 90 percent

29. Interstellar (2014)

What happened?

The Earth is dying, and humanity will die with it unless ex-NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) can successfully navigate a ship of scientists through a wormhole to find a new healthy planet in another galaxy. Cooper can’t get it done. Instead, he communicates quantum data to his daughter, Murph (Jessica Chastain), from a four-dimensional tesseract to help her solve an equation that saves the human race. The worst parts of the Interstellar universe are honestly the all-corn meals, dusty lungs, and sheer volume of tear-jerking moments. I cried four separate times rewatching this movie.

Paramount Pictures

What’s wild is how sad the movie can get and how serious the movie can get when it has lines like this in it, too:

Once we’ve gathered enough speed around Gargantua, we use Lander 1 and Ranger 2 as rocket boosters to push us out of the black hole’s gravity. The Lander’s linkages have been destroyed, so we’ll have to control manually. Once Lander 1 is present, TARS will detach … and get sucked right into that black hole.

Christopher Nolan is a madman.

How did I get here?

I’m not going to space. And as much as I love Michael Caine, I’m not spending my entire life learning all that math with him on a prayer that my pops can fire over some quantum data across dimensions. I’m taking the Timothée Chalamet/Casey Affleck route. I’m starting a family and working the farm until the dust takes me (or McConaughey saves me). I also love corn, so it’s all a win-win.

What’s the game plan?

Real-life FarmVille until Daddy comes home!

Official AGAS percentage: 83 percent

28. Soylent Green (1973)

What happened?

The Soylent Corporation has taken advantage of a world ravaged by climate change, overpopulation, pollution, etc. (you know, the usual stuff) by becoming the main food source for poor people. Eventually, it introduces Soylent Green, a tastier, more nutritious version of its Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow wafers said to be made from recycled plankton in the ocean. And though an unrelated investigation eventually reveals that Soylent Green is made with human bodies, we never find out whether the truth actually gets out. Anyone with a passing familiarity with cult classics knows the final scene: Detective Robert Thorn is carried by paramedics as he screams, “Soylent Green is people!”

By the way, how the hell does Charlton Heston keep finding himself in these hellscapes? Playing the lead man in Soylent Green, The Omega Man, and the first two Planet of the Apes movies must really do numbers on the soul.

How did I get here?

A devoted Soylent fanatic. I’ll be first in line whenever they’re launching any new products like those die-hard Apple junkies who camp out for iPhones. I’ll push the propaganda, too. Make T-shirts, put up posters, all of it.

What’s the game plan?

Make the jump from consumer product tester for Soylent Green and eventually work my way into the marketing department. I don’t give a sh*t if they’re using humans, as long as it’s flying off the shelves. There’s still room for upward mobility in a dystopia.

Official AGAS Percentage: 80 percent

27. 12 Monkeys (1995)

What happened?

In 1996, a deadly virus kills more than 5 billion people and forces survivors to live underground. Fast-forward to 2035, and humans are still underground. Scientists are eager to go back in time to acquire as much information as they can about the virus, learn its origin, and develop a cure. The catch is that they’re still working out the kinks with the whole time travel thing, so they ask prisoners to turn back the clocks in exchange for reduced sentences. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is an awful candidate; he’s a meatball of a man who’s blurring dreams with memories to the point that everyone else thinks he’s lost his mind, and sometimes he does, too. He also has a history of violence, defiance, disregard for authority, and a bunch of other sh*t. What a perfect specimen to task with saving the world!

Universal Pictures

Before the scientists fire up the time machine for Cole, they tell him that the Army of the 12 Monkeys is the biggest lead they have on identifying the origin of the virus. The wild-goose chase starts from there. The scientists send Cole to 1990, not 1996, and he’s thrown in a mental hospital. He comes back to 2035 after an all-time mindf*ck and is then sent back out—only this time, he’s accidentally dropped into the front lines of World War I and is shot in the leg before they force him into 1996. Now limping and even more deranged, Cole kidnaps a doctor he met briefly on his hellish 1990 visit, hoping that she can help him find any answers. Shocker: Cole doesn’t get much of anything. When he returns to 2035, he begs the scientists to send him back to 1996 to complete the mission. (He doesn’t say the third time’s the charm, but I could see him having that kind of logic.) So they send Cole back, and now he really thinks he’s gone mad. Cole and the same doctor he kidnapped argue over whether he’s sane for a bit before booking a runaway trip to the Florida Keys. In the airport, Cole finally connects all the dots of his weird dreams and realizes that the Army of the 12 Monkeys was a dead end, right as he watches the true culprit board the first of several planes that will spread virus worldwide. You hate to see it.

How did I get here?

I’ll travel back in time to whatever year I have to so that I can take Cole’s place on this mission. I mean, JESUS CHRIST. I know the scientists don’t do him any favors with the time mix-ups, but Cole still needs to find a way to figure it out. In the year 1990, you, a bald-headed brute with multiple face injuries, can’t just scream at people that a deadly virus will kill 5 billion people in 1996. And on your second swing of the time travel bat, when you make it to 1996, maybe go with a lighter touch than kidnapping a doctor. Cole is like a dumber Juggernaut, just running through time with his head down and killing everything in his path. So, no, I’m not surprised that he didn’t stop the virus. And, yes, I’ll take it from here.

What’s the game plan?

Let’s do this in three parts:

1. 1990: Avoid conflict. Cole puts two cops in the hospital in the first few hours he’s in 1990, which forces him down the jail and mental hospital path. Even if I come into the year naked and discombobulated, I’m not beating up any cops. I’m finding food, water, and a place to chill out for a bit and read the newspaper. There’s no need to rush! Then, I won’t do anything significant until they pull me out. There’s nowhere to look six years before the virus is released. You’ll only cause trouble by digging around for anything.
2. World War I and 1996: OK, getting shot in the leg is a bad beat. But that doesn’t mean you should kidnap a doctor. I’d go to the emergency room first and then anywhere else for clues second. I’m also doing it without companionship. Dr. Railly is a nice gal, but I’m not roping her into this mess. We’re keeping a low profile and reporting anything we find to the boneheaded scientists in 2035.
3. 1996, Part 2: If I don’t have any clues at this point, I’m going to the airport. We know which cities first reported outbreaks of the virus, so in the terminal we’ll keep an eye out for any suspicious-looking people who might have the goods. I know. That’ll be tough. There’s no way the super-spreader will stand out at all on his way to infect the entire world with a deadly virus. Oh, wait …

Universal Pictures

Could it be the guy in the bright yellow jacket and a long orange ponytail with a sticker-ridden briefcase?! Maybe! Let’s just keep an eye on him.

Universal Pictures

Goddamn it, Cole.

Official AGAS percentage: 73 percent

26. Blade Runner (1982)

What happened?

What if the robots that threaten the human race are also kind of hot? I know Blade Runner really isn’t a movie about humanity surviving as much as it is about Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) fight with replicants and his urges to have sex with one of them, but it’s just too good of a sci-fi movie to leave off the list. Plus, if Deckard doesn’t retire them all, Roy is going to viciously crush our skulls.

How did I get here?

I wouldn’t mind being a behind-the-scenes player in this universe. You know, someone who isn’t an actual Blade Runner whose job it is to kill the robots, but someone that can check “yes” to the robot preference on Hinge if there’s an option to do so.

What’s the game plan?

I’m thinking maybe drinks, a movie, and a Voight-Kampff test just to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

Official AGAS Percentage: 72 percent

25. Planet of the Apes (2001)

I still can’t believe this movie tripled its budget at the box office. I know it received middling reviews, including 2.5 stars from Roger Ebert, but let’s not be as cautious and tame as the film itself. This is an extremely tough watch, one that no one will ever come back to with the original series and now the reboot series.

What happened?

Leo, an astronaut played by Mark Wahlberg, enters a time-warping storm that forces him to crash-land on a planet called Ashlar in 5021, nearly 3,000 years into the future from when he left Earth. Ashlar is an ape-dominated planet where humans are enslaved, but there are apes, like Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who actively protest for better treatment for humans. Of course, counter to Ari, there are apes like General Thade (Tim Roth) who want to continue to run humans into the ground. Leo wants to go home; Ari wants him, period; and Thade wants him enslaved or dead. Other apes pick sides, and Leo rallies some humans to push back against the apes, but that’s the gist of the conflict. Between Leo’s crash-landing and return to Earth to (spoiler) find that it, too, is now ape dominated (WITH AN APE LINCOLN STATUE, BY THE WAY), a lot happens.

20th Century Fox

The highlights are Paul Giamatti one-liners in an ape suit, literally every scene where Wahlberg tries desperately to be serious, any time an ape jumps, and the love triangle between Leo, the ape Ari, and a human girl, Daena, whose role is mostly gazing at Wahlberg silently and awkwardly. (Leo breaks out of his initial caging in the film by convincing Ari to buy him as a slave with a very strategic, sensual backrub, and he kisses both Ari and Daena in back-to-back scenes before he leaves to go back to Earth. It’s f*cking weird.)

How did I get here?

Hopefully in a much more forgivable way than Wahlberg, who reportedly turned down a role in Ocean’s Eleven for this. But let’s pretend Wahlberg had a copilot. He and I both end up in cages early on, and we both fight our way out, one flirty touch with Ari at a time.

20th Century Fox

What’s the game plan?

Wahlberg was smart to get lovey-dovey with Ari. I’ll say that. She is the biggest reason he comes back to Earth alive, so I’m doubling down.

Rule no. 4: Lust is a weapon.

It’s all Robert Neville (The Omega Man) and Vic (A Boy and His Dog) could think about. Context clues suggest it’s exactly what kept the pain slave (Doomsday) and that random lad on Wez’s bike in Mad Max alive for so long. If it’s the difference between dying on Ashlar or returning to Earth, I’ll round the bases with Ari to get home. Honestly, I’d much rather snuggle up with her than hear myself rally the enslaved humans with what has to be one of the cringiest pre-war pump-up speeches of all time:

Look, our history is filled with men who have done amazing things. That history belongs to you now. Listen, sometimes even a few can make a difference, OK? Now, come on, this is the day you’ve waited for. This is the day you get to stand up to the apes. Let’s go.

I’m wasting zero time caring about these Ashlar humans. Leading an impromptu slave-led revolution is so much more effort and risk than impromptu relations with a humanoid ape. It’s Operation: Whatever Bases Necessary with Ari until I’m in my ship heading home or starting a family on Ashlar. Wait, what?

Official AGAS percentage: 69 percent

24. The Omega Man (1971)

What happened?

Imagine you’re a brilliant, attractive, single scientist with great style and a cool car living in Los Angeles. Then, imagine that a plague sparked by biological warfare has killed off nearly all of L.A. and the rest of the world. Sure, you’re stoked that you developed a vaccine to make yourself immune to humanity-threatening disease, but does any of that matter if you’re not picking up any ladies?

Warner Bros.

Robert Neville drives around now-desolate L.A. watching old movies and ogling near-naked women in pinup calendars because the only other people he knows of in the city are part of a cult that wants to burn him at the stake and all of human history with him. Meanwhile, all he really wants is some hot, nasty companionship.

How did I get here?

There’s a group of people Robert eventually finds who aren’t immune to the plague, but because they’re all younger, they’re resistant to its effects. I’ll join that crew and hope my guy Rob wants to hang out. I feel like I could learn so much from him. Oh, and he is the only person we know who has developed a cure. That’s probably more important than the hang.

What’s the game plan?

This is pretty simple. Fend off the Family with Robert until he develops a cure. The white-eyed weirdos are persistent bastards, but they’re still by far the least intimidating of any postapocalyptic cults and gangs I’ve come across during this marathon. (Their go-to weapon is a spear?!) Also, don’t fall head over heels in love with the first woman you see and have her knock you off your game. Rob has sex one (1) time, and he completely derails. Surviving the Family (and any sexual urges) shouldn’t be that hard.

Warner Bros.

Official AGAS percentage: 63 percent

23. The Postman (1997)

What happened?

Kevin Costner survives a postapocalyptic version of Earth by wearing a postman’s outfit and inspiring people to join him as postal workers to rebuild a government and restore hope in the world. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds, and it was a box office bomb. (Before Costner finds the postman gear, he recites Shakespearean plays in exchange for food, which comes up big later when he recites a Henry V speech to fire up the people before a big-time battle. It’s so, so bad.)

Warner Bros.

Also, why a postman? Maybe I have to read the book, but I just don’t get it. Why not at least a cop or even a judge? Hell, why not an astronaut or even a Jesus costume? If having a raggedy postman outfit and old mail in a bag was enough to convince people he was important, surely any Halloween costume would have sufficed.

How did I get here?

I’ll be one of the idiots whose jaw drops when Costner first approaches the city in the dumbass outfit and follow him without question like everyone else.

What’s the game plan?

Just let Costner cook. (Or deliver.) He literally restarts humanity with a dingy postman uniform. (This movie cost $80 million to make, by the way.)

Official AGAS Percentage: 60 percent

22. Judge Dredd (1995) and Dredd (2012)

What happened?

On one level, Judge Dredd (1995) is a buddy-cop movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider. But on another, it’s a dystopian nightmare set in a distant future where—because a near-uninhabitable Earth forces humans to all cram into overpopulated, crime-ridden megacities—the authoritarian Judges play every role of the justice system: judge, jury, and executioner. Dredd (2012) is essentially a remake, but Stallone is swapped for Karl Urban, and Schneider—thank GOD—is nowhere near the movie at all. The writing in both movies is about as hard to survive as the worlds themselves. (Whoever wrote Stallone’s catchphrase, “I knew you’d say that,” in Judge Dredd should be dealt with by Dredd himself.) As cool as the entire concept is, neither movie finds a way to make the Judges actually cool and not just super cringe.

Buena Vista Pictures

How did I get here?

I’ll replace Schneider as the babbling idiot following Stallone around in the first film, and I’ll just be one of the residents of the 200-story slums that Urban patrols in Dredd.

What’s the game plan?

The best way to survive the world is to become a Judge. I’d give the academy a shot, but if they force me to say a bunch of corny sh*t to graduate, I’ll join Ma-Ma’s (Lena Headey) gang of misfits in Dredd just to get a taste of the Slo-Mo drug she’s peddling that makes it feel like time moves at 1 percent of the speed it normally does. That sounds fun!

Official AGAS Percentage: 56 percent

21. Original Planet of the Apes Series (1968 to 1973)

What happened?

A lot. Like, almost too much. The original The Planet of the Apes film from 1968 covers an astronaut crew waking up 2,000 years in the future on a dystopian version of Earth dominated by apes. One of the astronauts, Taylor, and a female human captive, Nova, convince the apes to let them live and explore parts of the planet previously forbidden by Ape Law. The second movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), introduces mutant humans with telepathic powers who survived nuclear war on Earth, and Taylor blows up the entire planet. Then, in Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971), two of the apes that left that version of Earth before it blew up travel back in time on Taylor’s ship to a version of Earth in 1973, where they’re forced into the Los Angeles Zoo. Then, Caesar finally gets involved in the ’90s and begins his takeover of Earth in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). Finally, in the last installment of the original series, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Caesar and a rival ape, Aldo, essentially wage war over how the apes should treat the humans now that they’ve taken over. Caesar wins, and he decides humans and apes can coexist peacefully … though we know that won’t happen because of the first two movies (and the not-so-subtle foreshadowing, with a single tear falling from a statue of Caesar’s eye in the final shot of Battle).

But none of that matters. The first movie quintupled its budget in the box office; it was like striking oil in the ’20s. Fox ordered a new sequel every year for four years straight. Who cares if the timeline is a jumbled mess and the costumes are a bit awkward and distracting. We have these photos forever now!

20th Century Fox

How did I get here?

The series spans over 2,000 years, with touchpoints in the 1970s, 1990s, 2000s, and 3000s. The best parts of the original and reboot series include Caesar, so I’ll throw myself in Armando’s circus in the Conquest timeline.

What’s the game plan?

There really are only two options: Learn astrophysics, or just wait out the timeline until the new reboot series comes out in 2011. The first two movies in the original series feature time travel and human telepathy; I at least have to try to make a play for those skills. But if I can’t make that happen, I’ll bide my time with goofy Caesar until the much cooler CGI version is canon. I can’t take this guy seriously.

20th Century Fox

Official AGAS percentage: 51 percent

UNRANKED HELLSCAPE: Children of Men (2006)

This is just such a good movie. The rubric doesn’t account for that, but it just has to be mentioned. It was easily the best movie I watched in this process.

Universal Pictures

What happened?

Everyone is sad as f*ck and dying. Humans have abused the earth so badly that they’re now infertile. By the start of the film, no kid has been born for 18 years, and there’s so much unrest that people are even killing the youngest representatives of our species who are still left alive. Think you’re sad now? Imagine constant broadcasts about war; skyrocketing rates of global depression, which has reached the point where there are ads for suicide drugs on buses; protests about immigration policy of every lethal and peaceful flavor as the U.K. becomes the only functioning government left in the world; and, oh yeah, the pending extinction of all humanity.

Then, very suddenly, Theo (Clive Owen) finds himself shepherding a pregnant woman across the country on a pipe dream that she might just save the world. People want him dead. People want her dead. People want the baby. No one knows what’s real and what isn’t. There’s no guarantee that anyone will even help her when they get to where they’re going, and they’ll have to dodge bullets the entire way. But they go anyway! Even Frodo knew Mordor f*cking existed; Clive was praying for a fairy tale. But, to quote Theo’s happy-go-lucky pal and weed dealer, Jasper (Michael Caine), “Everything is a mythical, cosmic battle between faith and chance.”

How did I get here?

Sorry, but I’m forcing my way into this story as a middle-aged pot smoker who buys weed off Jasper. I’ve met Theo a few times, but we’re not “I’ll follow you to the edge of the world” close.

What’s the game plan?

OK, here’s the deal. I know I can survive this universe. But that’s not the metric we’re working with here. With the aggressive policing and protest bombings, I’d put my chances around 80 percent if I was asked to keep me and only me alive. But that doesn’t reflect the pressures of this world. (If this f*cking movie doesn’t move you to selflessness, I don’t know what will.)

Rule no. 5: There is always a greater good.

Survival is no. 1 until it isn’t. Sacrifices for the larger group, in this case the entire living world and future generations, always have to be considered.

Thus, I ride with Jasper. I stay behind to defend him and his wife against the Fishes as long as I can, even if that means just one more puff of Strawberry Cough and another “pull my finger” joke.

Official AGAS percentage: N/A

20. Six-String Samurai (1998)

What happened?

The Soviets (very classically) nuked the United States in 1957, sending the American government into a fatal tailspin and leaving a majority of the U.S. uninhabitable. (That’s the only semi-normal sentence we’ll probably get out of this write-up.) The only city still standing in the desert wasteland is Lost Vegas, where Elvis Presley is king for a full 40 years before he croaks. His death sparks a radio broadcast calling for all musicians to claim the Lost Vegas throne. And who better to join that rock ’n’ roll rat race than Buddy, a quirky nomad who roams the desert wielding both a guitar and a samurai sword.

Palm Pictures

Early on, Buddy saves a young boy he calls Kid from some rowdy bandits, and the two traverse the desert together. Every step of the way, they battle a ridiculous cast of characters, including a knife-fighting bowling team, underground mutants, and Russia’s Red Army. Buddy kills nearly all of them, but he ultimately can’t escape Death, a heavy metal guitarist who chases him and Kid across the desert with his band of archers. Buddy never reaches Lost Vegas, but Kid doesn’t let the dream die with him. Kid defeats Death and enters Lost Vegas fully decked out in Buddy’s gear.

Palm Pictures

How did I get here?

The entire movie is a choose-your-own-adventure book in terms of characters, outfits, and abilities. I might as well have fun with it; I’ll join the misfits on the road to Lost Vegas as a ninja flutist wearing shoulder pads and a clown wig.

What’s the game plan?

Thanks to Kid, we know that Death melts when he touches water, so he and his bandmates are a nonissue. Literally every other misfit toy that Buddy and Kid battle along the way is a horrible fighter. Of course, I’m also a horrible fighter, but there’s something about the sheer stupidity of this scenario that makes me confident I can kick some ass. (Famous last words.)

Official AGAS percentage: 52 percent

19. Zombieland (2009) + Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

What happened?

A strain of mad cow disease turned people into zombies! They’re the perfect zombies for this exercise, too. They’re not the painfully slow zombies from Night of the Living Dead (1968), and they’re also not the lunatic World War Z zombies, who have superhuman speed and ant colony–esque collaboration. The Zombieland series also runs after the initial outbreak, which gives us the postapocalyptic, not mid-apocalyptic, vibe we’re chasing.

Sony Pictures

How did I get here?

Call me Cincinnati, and let’s pretend Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and I were college roommates.

What’s the game plan?

Follow the rules verbatim, and keep the group to a tight five. I know I’m crashing the party a bit here, but I think we can make five work. Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and I can watch Little Miss Sunshine whenever necessary, and I’m sure he’ll be stoked he’s no longer third wheelin’.

As for weapons, I like a shotgun a lot as a primary, but I’ll also want some kind of handgun and a machete. I also think that armor is underused in Zombieland and most other zombie movies. I’d always have my wrists, forearms, ankles, and calves triple wrapped in duct tape in any zombie universe. Those are your most at-risk bite areas, and duct tape won’t limit mobility too much in those spots.

Bonus items? A bowie knife. A lightweight bike, preferably a fixie. I have a 21-pounder that I could jog with pretty easily. Having a bike directly outside any building where you can’t pull a car up right away could come in clutch. Plus, it’s a lot quieter than a car if stealth is ever a factor. It’s more of a nice-to-have than a need-to-have, but why not splurge a little? I’ve been writing about nuclear wastelands for 10 days. Give me a break.

Official AGAS percentage: 45 percent

18. Waterworld (1995)

What happened?

Rising sea levels have drowned every continent. Dryland has become a conspiracy theory. Jet Ski pirates fueled by gasoline and cigarettes pillage the ocean. And 40-year-old Kevin Costner stars as the Mariner, a mutant of the new world with gills, webbed feet, a thinning hairline, and a badass boat.

Universal Pictures

There aren’t, however, any giant cruise liners or aircraft carriers or yachts; the Mariner’s souped-up trimaran is the biggest vessel we see in the movie. I don’t get how the Smokers don’t at least have one monster ship left behind by the Navy or something. Hell, why aren’t there just bigger boats than the trimaran? Like a more traditional pirate ship? For Costner to get both the coolest-looking and the biggest boat had to have been in his contract. Or maybe he’s compensating.

I also don’t understand why we don’t see more wild-ass sea creatures. The only one we do see has about two seconds of screen time before the Mariner is throwing it on the grill.

Universal Pictures

The Jet Skis, planes, and water skis are all awesome. The concept of the Smokers in general is fantastic. Marauding pirates who ride Jet Skis and other motorized boats for a warlord who pays them in cigarettes will always be cool. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t expect to see bigger boats and bigger fish.

How did I get here?

I’d never make it as a drifter or a Smoker, so my path to survival has to at least start on one of the atolls. I think I’d try to make myself invaluable as a builder. I’ll become a pseudo-mechanic for all of the different boats and help repair the atoll after all of the Smoker attacks. I’d also look for a woman with whatever mutant gene the Mariner has to try to set my future children up for success. I think there should be more mutant humans in these kinds of movies across the board, to be honest. Even minor mutations would be fine! Damnation Alley has giant scorpions and super-co*ckroaches! You can’t give me a human with some extra eyes or something? And how the hell does Jumanji have a monkey boy and not any of the Planet of the Apes movies that span thousands of years? I know Ari tried to make it happen with Mark Wahlberg in the 2001 remake, but someone needs to follow through on that at some point.

What’s the game plan?

Let’s ignore the pee purifying for all our sakes. My plan is to never leave the atoll unless I absolutely have to and befriend mutants. I think I’d also try to form positive foreign relations with the Smokers. There has to be some kind of trade that makes sense for both parties at a larger scale, but I’m also never against a double cross. I’ll become an informant on my own atoll if the money (cigarettes) keeps coming.

Official AGAS Percentage: 43 percent

17. The Road (2009)

What happened?

An apocalyptic event, described in the opening narration as a “long shear of bright light and a series of low concussions,” coated the U.S. in ash and killed close to all plant and animal life. Fast-forward 10 years, and a father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are scavenging what remains of the country for anything that will help them survive. Food and drink, including bugs and Coca-Cola, are a high priority, as are shelter, clothes, shoes, and protection from your favorite and most consistent postapocalyptic enemy: cannibals!

The first three groups of people the depressed duo meet in the movie are as follows:

1. A gang of cannibals with guns and a car. The father has to kill one of them before the rest spot him and his son hiding on the side of the road.
2. Some slowly rotting but somehow still living humans imprisoned by another group of cannibals so that they can pick them apart piece by piece like grapes in the fridge. (Click this link if you’re brave enough.)
3. That other group of cannibals who are keeping the grapes. I mean, humans.

If that doesn’t set the tone, what if I told you that the mom just walked out the door a couple of years back and never came back because she was over it? She wanted to die by suicide but didn’t want to waste one of the two bullets they had left. And right before she left, some of her last words to Viggo were that she wished she’d done it sooner, that people were going to “catch up” to them, rape them, and kill them, and that she would kill the son and herself together if it weren’t for her husband. (The mom absolutely SUCKS for that, by the way. What a horrible, twisted, selfish character.)

It had become easy, if not flat-out preferable, to give up. The father had gone as far as to teach his son how to put the gun in his mouth and shoot just in case they were caught by cannibals. But they both still carry “the fire” to keep going.

How did I get here?

I could float in as a drifter whom Viggo either pushes away or kills. Or we can pretend I’m his other son. Let’s go with the latter, just so I get more screen time.

What’s the game plan?

In narration at the start of the movie, Viggo says, “Cannibalism is the great fear.” Can we reframe that, my guy? Being raped and eaten is the great fear, not becoming a cannibal.

Rule no. 6: You’re not better than cannibalism.

That’s not the line to draw. Eating people to survive doesn’t turn good guys into bad guys. (Watch Society of the Snow.) I’m not saying you should hunt and kill people to eat them. That’s obviously bad. It also puts you in more at-risk situations, in terms of both the obvious dangers of the hunt (ask the guy Viggo shot in the first act how that went) and the crowd you’ll ultimately have at the dinner table. Joining a gang of cannibals ends only one way. All that said, eating people who are already dead has to be an option, especially in the Road universe. On the food front, it’s easily the worst-case scenario I’ve seen in postapocalyptic cinema, which is just a tasty cherry on top of the reasons to at least try to make more friends and build a community. (Did Caesar teach us nothing?!)

Here are the last five people or groups of people the father and/or son meet in the movie:

1. The son sees another boy peeking around a house, but his dad convinces him he’s not there and never even investigates the situation. The son eventually meets the boy in the final scenes and joins their family after Viggo dies.
2. An old man with a super chill vibe who’s traveling solo. The dad sends him off after one night of hanging out, and the son calls him out for it. The son says, “You always say, ‘Watch out for bad guys.’ That old man wasn’t a bad guy. You can’t even tell anymore.”
3. Another solo traveler steals all of their sh*t while the boy is asleep and Dad is swimming in the ocean. Viggo chases him down, forces him at gunpoint to strip naked, and takes all of their sh*t back as well as his sh*t … all while his son is begging Viggo to chill out. The boy convinces him to go back and return the traveler’s stuff, but he’s already gone.
4. A couple who shoots two arrows at the father and son; the second one hits Dad in the leg. Viggo fires a flare gun back at them and kills the man who shot him with the bow. He then scrambles up the fire escape to, um, confirm they’re dead and ask the woman why they’re following them (??). But he doesn’t kill her, take her stuff, or anything. He just gets back on the road.
5. Then, like, immediately after Viggo dies on the beach, the boy is approached by a man with enough shotgun shells to defend a War Rig in Mad Max—who agrees to let the son join his family. Once the boy meets the mom and their two children, he learns that they were following them—let’s not poke holes in that at all—and that they’re “so glad” to see him. The mom also says, “I was so worried about you, and now we don’t have to worry about a thing.” Oh, and they have a f*cking dog.

There are a lot of ways I can take this. I know it’s not a movie you’re supposed to nitpick—it’s a Cormac McCarthy story, after all—and that I should just focus on the themes, but I can’t help myself. My gripes:

• In the same world where cannibal gangs are storing live humans like fruit, three of the last five people or groups of people they meet are all completely chill. None of them eat people. Throw out the bullsh*t symbolism with Viggo pushing them away and the son telling him not to over and over. Give me a twist?! Make it realistic! I pray to God that the family has the son cooking over a fire on a spit while they all pick their teeth with his dad’s bones.
• Viggo is a quitter. He’s also a loser. Sorry, but he is! Sure, he never killed himself, but he also never lived. He abandoned the food bunker way too fast. He never gave any of the outside drifters a shot. He didn’t try to chase down the boy his son clearly saw around the corner of that house. Hell, he didn’t even grab the goddamn bow those people shot him with, or any of their other stuff. He spent the entire movie teaching his son a bunch of bullsh*t just for a different dad to drop the best advice of the film. When the boy asks the man at the end how he can be sure he’s a good guy, the man responds, “You don’t. You just have to take a shot.” Get f*cking owned, Viggo. Get absolutely cooked.
• OK, and just a few nitpicks: How does Viggo only ever have two bullets when Better Dad at the end is strapped up for war? Why did they move so far away from the bunker? If you have an answer that isn’t “Viggo is scared to compete,” I’m listening. Why was the family following them but never saying hello if they’re that f*cking nice? Especially since the Better Dad literally walks up to the boy as soon as Viggo dies. That makes zero sense. And, last, in a world where everyone is starving and close to all plant and animal life is dead, why does that family of four ALSO FEED A f*ckING CUTE-ASS DOG?

Dimension Films

Sorry, that was quite the tangent. The game plan is not to listen to a goddamn word Viggo says and make efforts to join that other family as soon as possible, starting with maybe being a touch more aware so that you can potentially see or hear A FAMILY OF FOUR AND A DOG FOLLOWING YOU IN A DESOLATE WASTELAND. There’s obviously still a chance that the cannibals, starvation, or whatever will get me along the way, but at least it won’t be because of a constant flow of unforced errors.

Official AGAS percentage: 40 percent

16. The Hunger Games (2012)

What happened?

Panem is a dystopian nation ruled by the Capitol, a tyrannical dictatorship with authoritarian control over all 12 districts in the country. Every year, each of the 12 districts have to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the Hunger Games, a closed tournament where the 24 adolescents have to fight to the death until only one victor emerges. It’s peak content. The Capitol throws the kitchen sink at shoulder programming, interviews, and an around-the-clock livestream of the games with color commentators. It’s a spectacle until it’s not.

Lionsgate

The games begin, and children start killing one another. Usually kids with more money (or sponsors) kill kids with less money, but two (!!) tributes from District 12, the poorest district in Panem, manage to make Hunger Games history when they’re announced as co-victors of the 74th Annual Hunger Games, thanks to some uncanny bow skills, iconic camouflage, and perfectly manufactured relationship drama that would make Love Island jealous.

How did I get here?

I volunteer as tribute! I’ll represent District 10, which is known for raising livestock and having a lot of off-screen deaths throughout the Hunger Games series.

What’s the game plan?

Step 0: Don’t waste prep time on weapons. I’m not a fighter. I’m not coordinated. I’m not particularly big or strong or fast or quick. I’ve never even picked up a big knife, let alone a sword or an axe. There’s no point in trying to learn how to fight with a sword, bow, axe, or anything. Even if I train for multiple hours a day all three days leading up to the games, my weapons skills won’t improve enough to even matter against some hunk from District 1.

Step 1: Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. If I’m anything, I’m a salesman. I’ll start with a fun nickname: Cowabunga. We’ll snowball that into a Batman-level haunted past, an archrival from another district (preferably one of the weaker lads), and a unique purpose that really pulls at the heartstrings of the richer Capitol citizens. We’ll run A/B tests with focus groups until we’re polling well with the highest percentage of interested sponsors, and we’ll create custom packages for those interested in specific name-drops both before and during the games. If they start to label me as a sellout, I’ll lean into that even more. I’ll get brand tattoos on my face and chest. Before the games start, I’ll sell every inch of screen time I get. Think Terrell Owens: They’ll either love me or love to hate me. Either way, they’re watching. It’s all kayfabe, baby. The more eyeballs I get, the more I can juice the sponsors for care packages. Every bit counts when we get to Step 2.

Step 2: Run. Every hour in the days leading up to the games, I’m sleeping, running, or icing up. Every whiteboard session will happen on a treadmill. During live interviews, I’m running in place. And as soon as the horn blares at the start of the games, I’m running in the opposite direction, away from the Cornucopia and any other tributes. I’ll keep running until I get to the edge of the dome or find a hiding space with a high vantage point. (Not a tree! You can’t run in a tree.) If I can create enough distance to freely tap into all the sponsor packages I earned selling my soul on the outside, I might have an outside shot at winning. It’ll go one of two ways. I’ll last to the very end and get lucky enough with sponsor packages to land a creative kill to win it all, or someone like Katniss will shoot me in the back right as the games begin. Either way, it’ll make for great TV.

Official AGAS percentage: 36 percent

15. 28 Days Later (2002) + 28 Weeks Later (2007)

What happened?

A “rage virus” outbreak crushes Britain overnight. The infected attack anyone who isn’t, spreading the virus like wildfire and forcing survivors into zombie apocalypse mode. (Though it’s important to note that the infected don’t eat people. They just beat people to death and puke blood on them.) After 28 days, small groups of survivors scavenge what’s left of the country for resources while doing everything they can to avoid any of the infected. Nothing is safe—nothing except the sweet, refreshing taste of Pepsi.

Pepsi ads aside, 28 Days is pretty fantastic. It accomplishes what a lot of zombie movies can’t in terms of positioning the uninfected as the actual reasons for conflict. If you can’t make the time to watch it, at least watch a young Cillian Murphy go on a bloody rampage to save his girlfriend and proceed to make out with her covered in other people’s blood. It’s quite the crescendo.

Also, 28 Weeks Later doesn’t fit into this list given that it’s mid-apocalyptic and not postapocalyptic, but can we talk about how it creates a mini-society just to have it collapse so they can have an outbreak movie? We avoided the movies on that list for a reason. All of the fight-or-flight response stuff is boring. I even contemplated leaving Bird Box off this list because so much of it covers the initial outbreak, but the boat journey with the kids makes it all worth it. Survivors of the initial apocalyptic event are oftentimes more lucky than they are smart or gritty or strategic. It takes actual skill to adjust to a brand-new world and survive its new rules.

How did I get here?

I’d love to be a third wheel with Jim (Murphy) and Selena (Naomie Harris) if possible. They’re quite the couple.

What’s the game plan?

The name of the game is staying silent, finding food and water, and actually making an effort to shield my skin and mouth from the infected. I don’t understand why so many survivors, some even using baseball bats, just run amok without masks, long-sleeved shirts, gloves, anything. If even a drop of blood enters your body, you enter a red-eyed rage in seconds.

Fox Searchlight

Even a male BDSM outfit—with or without holes for the nipples—could play pretty nicely if you can find a sleeved one with longer pants. Finding one during the end days of civilization would be a challenge, sure, but maybe it could be a future addition for doomsday packs and bunkers. (I don’t think it was smart that I Googled “male BDSM outfit” on my work computer, but I had to confirm I was thinking of the right thing.)

Official AGAS Percentage: 35 percent

14. Silent Running (1972)

This Bruce Dern performance is special. I don’t think I’ve seen anything else like it. He manufactures emotion effortlessly when he’s isolated in so many scenes. (The soundtrack also rips.)

What happened?

I love how much Freeman Lowell (Dern) loves his plants. His initial mission was to build plant-rich geodomes just outside Saturn’s orbit because the Earth can no longer support forests, but then American Airlines, which owns the freighters carrying the plants, orders Lowell and the three other crewmen to “abandon and nuclear destruct” all of the forests to return the ships to “commercial services.” Look at my guy Lowell’s face as he’s receiving this on the intercom; he is f*cking pissed.

Universal Pictures

COMMERCIAL SERVICES?! YOU’RE KILLING LOWELL’S ONE LOVE FOR COMMERCIAL SERVICES? Nope, that’s not happening. But Lowell’s comrades are ecstatic because the orders mean they’re all going home. One of them says, “I want a front row seat when these babies go.” They’re complete dicks about it. They rush to blow up the domes after an all-time monologue from Lowell, too:

There’s no more beauty. And there’s no imagination. And there’s no frontiers left to conquer. And you know why? Only one reason why! One reason why, the same attitude that you three guys are giving me right here in this room today. And that is, nobody cares.

Lowell cares. He cares so much that he kills the three crew members and eventually himself to protect the plant and animal life in his favorite dome.

How did I get here?

f*ck it. I’ll hang with Lowell and his robots in the space forest until we die together. I’d rather do that than try to kill his dream.

Universal Pictures

What’s the game plan?

Play poker. Race the buggy cars around the ship. Chill in the biodome. Talk shop with Lowell, Huey, and Dewey. What a dream!

Official AGAS percentage: 34 percent

13. Reboot Planet of the Apes Series (2011-24)

I enjoy the originality of the original Apes movies, obviously, but it has to be said: Caesar, both in how he looks (thank you, CGI) and how his story is told overall, is objectively better in the reboot series.

What happened?

The rise and fall of Caesar, a highly intelligent ape essentially created by James Franco’s character, Will Rodman, while working on a drug to cure Alzheimer’s, takes place over the first three movies in the reboot Planet of the Apes series. Caesar uses Will’s work to enhance the intelligence of other apes and unites them to gain control of the planet. Then the series jumps more than 200 years into the future in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, where humans scavenge the earth like animals and an ape clan led by Proximus enslaves other apes to have them help break open a vault filled with what Proximus believes is human technology that will help him unlock his full potential. (You find out later that it has a bunch of military-grade weapons and tanks and a bunch of other sh*t. But the human that gets in floods it all before anyone can actually use any of it. Weird!) The plot holes are so deep that you almost forget how shallow and unimaginative the new world is in Kingdom.

How did I get here?

I’d honestly prefer to be a human in the Kingdom timeline than take my chances trying desperately to befriend Caesar in any of the first three films. Only one human dies in Kingdom, and the rest are either largely left alone to scavenge the earth in packs or hidden away, quietly working on reclaiming the planet.

What’s the game plan?

Rewatch the first three movies again to remind myself why I actually really enjoyed the reboot series in the first place. (And that’s not just because Caesar is in them! They’re just way better stories.) Oh, and I’d help progress the remnants of the human race just far enough to take the planet back from apes whose only weapons are electric sticks and birds.

Official AGAS Percentage: 33 percent

12. Snowpiercer (2013)

What has happened?

Global warming has gotten so bad that an artificial cooling substance, CW-7, is released into the atmosphere to bring temperatures down to normal levels. But it backfires and freezes the Earth. The only known survivors are aboard the Snowpiercer, a nonstop train running on tracks that go around the world. Seventeen years later, the train is a hot mess. The poorest people are crammed into the back of the train and forced to ration pitch-black jelly blocks made of bugs that they call protein bars. It’s the only food they get.

CJ Entertainment

In some of those bars, Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) has started to receive messages from an informant somewhere ahead of him on the train. Everett is second-in-command to Gilliam, a much older, train-worn chap. A combination of Gilliam’s urgings and the notes gives Everett and Co. enough gusto to spark a rebellion: They’ll make a push for the front of the train.

It turns out to be quite the disaster. So many of the poor back-of-train people die along the way, and the big payoff at the end is fully realized by only two survivors. The police state that enforces the classist laws has the upper hand all the way down to the final twist, when we get to Wilford, the train’s conductor and creator. There’s a scene when the back-of-trainers have to fight axe-wielding police in total darkness as the train goes through a tunnel, and the police are the only ones with night-vision goggles. It’s a bloodbath.

CJ Entertainment

Even when the rebels manage to capture Minister Mason, Wilford’s second-in-command, Wilford’s cronies turn the tide back in their favor using guns hidden under hard-boiled eggs.

CJ Entertainment

When Everett eventually gets to the front of the train and confronts Wilford, he finds out that Gilliam and Wilford worked together to create the rebellion to help with overpopulation. Soon after that, the train explodes because of a makeshift bomb composed of Kronole, a black-market drug fiends sniff incessantly, and the only two survivors from the crash step outside to find out that the world actually isn’t uninhabitable anymore.

How did I get here?

I’ll start in the slums, with Everett and the gang. I have no problem with a little protein bar action as long as I get some say in the plans for the revolution.

What’s the game plan?

We need to tell Gilliam to chill out and ignore some of the protein bar messages for a bit. That kind of propaganda following could get the entire train killed, Curtis. Let’s commit some time and resources to understanding the different cars ahead of us and the environment outside the train. Maybe make some negotiations for a map or even some sort of passenger list. Also, if we ever do start a revolution, we should slow down a bit. There’s a world where taking one car at a time, convincing the classes of people ahead of us to join the movement, and moving with much more tact and patience would save a lot of lives. The goal shouldn’t even be to get to the front of the train; it should be to build an army one car at a time.

Official AGAS percentage: 32 percent

11. A Boy and His Dog (1975)

What happened?

It’s 2024! But a version where the United States is recovering from all of the tropey effects of nuclear war. Among the survivors is a sex-obsessed 18-year-old boy named Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood. Sounds kind of cute, right? It’s not. Vic is a rapist, and Blood helps him find women in exchange for food. There are also other armed scavengers, mutants, and androids, as well as a city of people wearing whiteface underground who extract sem*n from studs aboveground to repopulate the Earth.

LQ/Jaf Productions

It’s a sick, twisted world that only gets sicker. Vic’s only consensual sexual partner in the film, Quilla June, asks him to leave the wounded Blood behind in the closing minutes after Vic saved her from the whiteface savages. Vic doesn’t take that well, kills Quilla June off-screen, and feeds her to Blood to keep him alive and continue their journey. What a wild movie, start to finish.

How did I get here?

I’m joining this f*cked-up world as a rival scavenger to Vic, the mutants, the androids, and the whiteface people. You really can’t trust anyone.

What’s the game plan?

I’m avoiding Vic at all costs. That kid is trouble. I’m doing whatever research I can to get a telepathic dog like Blood because that is quite the cheat code. I also think I’m avoiding any and all attractive women, knowing there’s a good chance they’re from Downunder. Vic trusted Quila June, and he woke up naked in a bath, with a dude scrubbing his body and a crowd of whiteface people watching him.

LQ/Jaf Productions

Official AGAS percentage: 30 percent

10. Escape From New York (1981)

What happened?

The United States government was down bad. In 1988, while warring with a China–Soviet Union alliance, the U.S. crime rate rose 400 percent. The government response was to condemn all criminals to life imprisonment and turn Manhattan Island into a lawless asylum with 50-foot walls and an around-the-clock police force that has permission to kill anyone who tries to escape. As the narrator tells us during the opening moments of the film: “There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: Once you go in, you don’t come out.”

Fast-forward to 1997. Manhattan has become a death den run by a self-proclaimed Duke and his second-in-command, Romero, who looks like an infected, awkwardly small Street Fighter character whose special move is sticking his fingers in light sockets.

AVCO Embassy Pictures

The Duke and Romero get screen time in this dystopian U.S. nightmare only because an American terrorist group hijacks Air Force One to crash it into the prison in protest of the fascist police state, but before they can make contact, the president ejects from the airplane in a comically red, egg-shaped escape pod. Duke and Romero hold the president hostage inside Manhattan, forcing United States Police Force (USPF) commissioner Bob Hauk to get a bit unconventional with his extraction methods. Hauk enlists Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a former war hero with two Purple Hearts and a life sentence for robbing the Federal Reserve, to rescue the president from the clutches of his own imperialist prison. Plissken only has 22 hours to get it done, because the president is carrying a tape with important information regarding “the survival of the human race,” as Hauk puts it. To keep Snake on a schedule, Hauk injects bombs in his neck that will explode if he tries to escape or misses the deadline. Piece of cake.

How did I get here?

Ideally, I don’t commit any crimes and never go to Manhattan. The rest of the U.S. can’t be particularly thriving amid a Cold War turned hot, terrorist attacks, and an authoritarian police force, but it also can’t be worse than the government-born anarchist prison island. But let’s ignore that as an option. I’ll drop into Manhattan off a speeding ticket, but my story on the inside if I get pressed will be that I killed a bunch of people.

What’s the game plan?

Stay off the streets, never go underground, and avoid the ground floor of abandoned buildings. We know from Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) that the Crazies control the subways, and we saw vagrants explode through the floorboards when a random woman was just about to make out with Snake for no obvious reason other than he’s cool and hot. But can you blame her? The hair, the eye patch, the body, the giant snake tattoo slithering out of his pants—it’s all deadly.

AVCO Embassy Pictures

I’ll push for Snake to autograph my chest if we cross paths, but he’s pressed for time and clearly a “cool kids table” guy. I’m not that. Instead, I’ll become best friends with Cabbie. He has a car. He knows the streets and the prisoners inside and out. He’s also just such a great hang. It’s a no-brainer. I’ll find the same theater Snake first walks into after landing and buzz with the boys. Best case, Cabbie is there and appreciates the vibe I’m putting out so much that he doesn’t join Snake’s suicide mission. That way he doesn’t ever blow up in the minefield. Worst case, I come off a bit too forward, Cabbie ices me, and I end up fighting some fat-ass brute to the death with a wooden baseball bat.

Official AGAS percentage: 29 percent

9. The Book of Eli (2010)

What happened?

The Book of Eli is set 30 years after the nukes fell, and Eli is kind of like if Mad Max funneled all of his driving ability into hand-to-hand combat and weapon skills. He kills, like, 20 guys with a machete in a bar before meeting Carnegie (Gary Oldman, playing a gang leader with a bunch of dumb henchmen), who has a mother-daughter slave combo and a unique obsession with getting his hands on a Bible (one of which is in Eli’s possession). (“It’s not a f*cking book. It’s a weapon … a weapon aimed at the hearts and minds of the weak and the desperate. It will give us control of them. It’s happened before. And it’ll happen again.”)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Carnegie eventually throws enough manpower at Eli to secure his Bible before shooting him in the stomach and leaving him to die. But Eli manages to survive the wound. He travels with Carnegie’s slave Solara (Mila Kunis) to an island with a library, where he recites the entire Bible to a scribe to have it copied before he dies. Meanwhile, Carnegie finds out that the Bible he sacrificed so many lives for is in braille; he can’t even read it, and now he knows that the guy who almost completely wiped out his crew was blind.

How did I get here?

I wouldn’t mind being a postapocalyptic store owner who just trades random sh*t all day. Eli trades a Zippo lighter and a handful of KFC wet napkins—for road showers!—to a guy in Carnegie’s town to get some juice on the Fathom 900 that charges his iPod. I think I’ll start by volunteering at that guy’s store.

What’s the game plan?

Learn what I can from the store owner and set off on my own before Carnegie’s henchmen kill me just for fun or cannibals pillage the town and eat me. Keep a low profile the whole way, too. You can’t have a loud persona if you don’t have the teeth to back it up.

Official AGAS percentage: 27 percent

8. Bird Box (2018)

What happened?

Close your eyes. A swarm of flying demon creatures whom you never see in the movie is forcing anyone who looks outside to kill themselves. The first on-screen death is a woman staring out a window at a hospital who starts viciously slamming her forehead into the glass.

Netflix

Another woman, this time Malorie’s (Sandra Bullock) sister, willingly steps in front of a speeding garbage truck.

Netflix

Then Douglas (John Malkovich) watches his wife casually enter a vehicle that’s engulfed in flames before it explodes with her inside it.

Netflix

I’m sorry for the rapid-fire screenshots, but I had to keep pace. All three of these deaths happen in the first 15 minutes of the movie. A lot more people kill themselves over the first two acts, and the demons start to enlist survivors like Gary (Tom Hollander) and others to force people to look outside. It’s absolute carnage, and it’s borderline unavoidable. Only Malorie, Tom (Trevante Rhodes), and two infant children make it out of an initial safe house alive before the film makes a five-year time jump.

Malorie and Tom play it safe. They call the kids Boy and Girl because they’re too afraid to name them in case they die. (You rarely see that kind of caution in these postapocalyptic states. I love that detail.) They keep to themselves and learn to move with blindfolds when they make short, low-risk trips outside. But that’s just not enough for them; Tom wants to live, not just survive. When they receive transmissions from a man promising sanctuary in the forest, they make a play for it. Tom sacrifices himself to help his family escape, and Malorie somehow finds a way to boat down a river completely blindfolded, with two blindfolded children, to find the sanctuary, a former school for the blind. They rejoice. Malorie even gives the kids real names. It’s a fairy-tale ending, sure, but it’s made possible only because Malorie is a playmaker.

Rule no. 7: Learn the world.

There are always unique challenges when the world ends. Denton Van Zan learns that the dragons are weakest during Magic Hour. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, Barry Pepper’s character in Battlefield Earth, literally spends the entire movie sucking information out of alien machines. Matthew McConaughey figures out how to f*cking alter space and time inside a black hole in Interstellar. Don’t waste time wondering why mass suicides are happening across the world. Figure it out.

How did I get here?

I honestly don’t think I’d survive the initial outbreak, let alone another five years after the event. So much has to go right, and that starts with somehow finding a way not to surround yourself with idiots. Douglas, who, if you remember, watched his wife light herself on fire and explode at the start of all this, has one of the best lines in the movie when Olympia lets a stranger named Gary into the house. Douglas says, “Are you a simpleton?” Of course, Gary ends up killing Douglas, Olympia, and everyone else in the house except for Malorie, Tom, and the newly born children.

Rule no. 8: Idiots are always the enemy.

Think about every zombie apocalypse survivor who hides their bite until it’s too late. Or the kid who drops the toy in A Quiet Place. Or Viggo Mortensen in The Road. They’re not just dumb; they’re murderers. The fact that Malorie names the girl Olympia when they find the sanctuary is flat-out disgusting. Yeah, I know it’s Olympia’s daughter. I don’t care. That’s just a blatant insult to all the people who died because she—for no reason whatsoever—let Gary into the house. If I do make it to the five-year mark, it’ll be because I’ve somehow avoided Olympia and all of her simpleminded friends.

Let’s say I’m Douglas’s brother who was visiting when Douglas’s wife, Lydia, took to the flames, just because it’d be sick to shoot the sh*t with Malkovich.

What’s the game plan?

Kick everyone out, and blow a bullet through the chest of anyone who refuses to leave. It’s Douglas’s house?! Why the hell did he get stuck with hosting all of the dumbasses? We’ll give everyone blindfolds or whatever, but we’re not running an orphanage. Other than Malorie and Tom, every person in that house is a ticking time bomb. With everyone out, Douglas and I can drink Glendaruel Scotch whisky and trade toasts until we pass out. And we’ll do that every day until the demons or the demon-enlisted humans pry the bottles from our dead bodies.

Official AGAS percentage: 17 percent

7. Original Mad Max Series (1979-85)

What happened?

People forget Max Rockatansky, initially played by a piping-hot 22-year-old Mel Gibson, was once just an overworked cop and a family man. On the front lines against psychotic motorcycle gangs fueled by widespread oil shortages and other resource constraints brought on by environmental catastrophe, Rockatansky stopped bad guys and saved damsels in distress, but he still managed to make time for his beautiful wife and son. (In a stunning all-leather uniform, too.)

Roadshow Film Distributors

Then a deranged motorcycle troupe brutally murders his family on holiday. Enter Rockatansky’s Mad Max Era. In revenge-sparked rage reminiscent of the Punisher’s origin story, Max runs Toecutter and his heathen followers off the road and never gives it back. Fast-forward three years later, and Max is your prototypical postapocalyptic nomad badass: He drives a murdered-out V8 Interceptor Pursuit Special, carries a sawed-off shotgun, and trusts no one but his dog. (Yes, he’s in the same all-leather fit.)

Roadshow Film Distributors

The opening narration in Mad Max 2: Road Warrior—a constant trope in postapocalyptic movies eager to quickly sum up their uniquely disastrous universes—sets the scene perfectly:

Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage, would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed …

Rival gangs wage war over resources and terrorize helpless drifters. The only people left alive are man-eating monsters, Max, and the few lucky ones Max helps along the way.

How did I get here?

The original Mad Max trilogy spans nearly 20 years. Let’s say I come into the picture at the front end and avoid ever vacationing with Max’s family. That would give me at least a few years to learn as much as I can about cars (and leather) before sh*t really hits the fan. But even in that scenario, I’m not surviving the road without Max. I just don’t have the tenacity or bravado or any of the skills necessary to make it in a resource-depleted world brimming with rapists and cannibals on motorcycles. Best-case scenario, I enter my Mad Austin Era as the feral kid’s brother. In true Bane fashion, I need to be born in and molded by the world’s new evils to even stand a chance. If broski teaches me how to throw the boomerang and maybe some acrobatics, I like my odds that much more. But that doesn’t feel fair to the exercise. The realistic entry point for me is being a newly minted nomad after coming back to my hole in the ground to see my family and friends slaughtered.

What’s the game plan?

Cry, to start. You can’t bottle up that trauma and expect to make it far in this league (unless you’re Mad Max). From there, I’m just going to stay off the main roads and hope I run into anything helpful in terms of resources, comrades, etc. I’ll join any community that takes me in, too. I’m not drawing any hard lines in the sand over semantics in savagery. My bet is I’ll die of starvation and disease as a solo traveler, get eaten alive by some hungry gangb*ngers, or—perhaps my best path to survival—do whatever it takes to earn a chain around my neck and a seat on the back of a psychopath’s motorcycle. Companionship, protection against other savages, and my own leather outfit! What could possibly go wrong?!

Roadshow Film Distributors

Official AGAS percentage: 24 percent

6. Reign of Fire (2002)

What happened?

Dragons take over Earth in the early 2000s. Not even nukes keep them from becoming the dominant species and forcing the few humans left in the world to live underground in constant fear of what flies overhead. Fast-forward a few years: Quinn Abercromby (Christian Bale) and his buddy Creedy (Gerard Butler) lead a small community in Northern England committed to outlasting the dragons, hoping they starve or someone ballsy enough to fight them head-on kills them off. Enter Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), a proud red-blooded American who manages to travel all the way to England in search of men to join him in his fight with the dragons. (I always knew I needed a Bale-McConaughey crossover, but I never knew I needed it like this.)

Buena Vista Pictures

A bunch of Van Zan’s and Abercromby’s people die as the two butt heads over tactics, but they eventually align on a plan to travel to London to kill the one male dragon left populating the species on Earth. Soon after Van Zan dies in the dumbest, but still sort of most epic way possible, Abercromby slays the dragon to return control of the planet back to the human race. (A Children of Men remake from the perspective of all the depressed female dragons who can no longer keep their race alive would really be something.)

How did I get here?

I would follow Van Zan to hell. I’ll even join his team as an Archangel, a position Van Zan creates that has an average tenure of 17 seconds because their job is to jump out of helicopters with nets to catch the dragons mid-flight. LFG.

What’s the game plan?

Van Zan leads, I follow. That may not necessarily mean I live, but the story will be epic.

Official AGAS Percentage: 23 percent

5. I Am Legend (2007)

What happened?

A pursuit to cure cancer goes haywire, infecting 99 percent of all human beings with a virus that either kills them or turns them into vampire mutants who prey on the survivors. They’re called the Darkseekers because, well …

Warner Bros. Pictures

It doesn’t get much darker than that.

Neville (Will Smith) is a part of the 1 percent of people who are naturally immune to the virus and is—very conveniently—a virologist. He spends his solitude working on a cure and hitting golf balls with his dog, Sam, in abandoned Manhattan. All hell breaks loose when Neville is forced to choke out Sam after she becomes infected (DO NOT WATCH THAT SCENE). Neville nearly dies after going into a rage and killing Darkseekers to avenge Sam, but he is rescued by a mother and son, Anna and Ethan, who are also naturally immune.

How did I get here?

I guess I could join as just someone who meets Neville on the golf range?! I don’t think he’d really want me around at all, but maybe his attitude would shift after Sam dies. We could even just be neighbors—that way he doesn’t have to have a forever roommate.

What’s the game plan?

It’s not as simple as only going out during the day. The Darkseekers are smart. As soon as I saw them fool Neville with the mannequin, I knew it was over. I’ll need a Neville-esque self-sacrifice to even have a chance at surviving this one.

Official AGAS Percentage: 22 percent

4. Doomsday (2008)

I’m doing this with two entries on this list and two only: This movie is a must-watch. It’s a Twister board of copied dog sh*t and more uniquely awful dog sh*t. It doesn’t just have too much dip on the chip; it’s a fully caked chip in spinach-artichoke, tapioca pudding, and human flesh. The director’s fist is in the bowl.

What happened?

Combine the worst versions of Escape From New York, Mad Max, and 28 Days Later, triple the amount of fake blood and gore, and throw in cannibal strippers. You’ll have Doomsday.

After a Reaper Virus (28 Days Later) wreaks havoc on all of Scotland, the British government erects 30-foot walls—they’re 50 feet in Escape From New York—to contain the virus and all of the Scots with it. Britain’s prime minister eventually sends a team, led by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), into the cesspool to search for a cure for the virus after several infected cases pop up in London, but a gang of discount Mad Max villains slows them down quite a bit.

Universal Pictures

Suppressing the hate for just a second, there are some fun twists and f*cked-up scenes in Doomsday. The cannibal strippers are actually hilarious, and they dance right before one of the better human feast scenes I’ve seen on-screen. (It’s easily a top-three movie on this list in terms of gore.) There are also two (!) double crosses, multiple “wait, they’re related” realizations, and a second gang that’s introduced with a (surprisingly) unique aesthetic: They’re medieval knights!

Universal Pictures

There’s a castle and everything! Full suits of armor, gladiator-esque tournament battles, bows, arrows, chain mail, all of it. The script pivots to something out of a high-fantasy book for a lot of the characters. There’s even a copycat Boromir death scene with slowed-down arrows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film make such a hard vibe pivot, and then immediately after Sinclair and two others escape the medieval section of this hellscape, director Neil Marshall does it again.

Universal Pictures

Sinclair drives away from the knights on horseback in a brand-new 2007 Bentley Continental GT to kick off a very discounted version of a Mad Max car chase scene. There’s a good 10 seconds in the chase when they’re all swerving through minor obstacles at what looks like 40 miles per hour. Sinclair at one point says, “Hold on, we’re going for a ride,” before reversing the Bentley at top speed directly at a multiple-car brigade of savages; her car isn’t touched. It’s honestly so horrible that it’s kind of beautiful, and that goes for the entire movie, too. It rivals Battlefield Earth for the top spot on the “It’s so bad, it’s good” list.

How did I get here?

I didn’t see any male cannibal strippers onstage, but there was a pain slave. I think I could make that outfit work or pour some mead as a barkeep with the medieval lads. What’s great is that there are options! It’s like a Halloween store of bad, poorly executed ideas.

Universal Pictures

What’s the game plan?

OK, let’s be serious for a second. The game plan is to hide out somewhere far, far, far away from cannibals. That’s a no-brainer. If I try anything, it’d be assimilating with the medieval people because they somehow seemed less crazy. The commitment to the bit is also just too good. Purposefully turning back the clocks that aggressively as a unit is so impressive, I’d have to see it for myself. Of course, I still am pretty confident that I’d be burned alive and eaten or sentenced to a battle to the death with a gladiator, but I’m just playing the odds.

(The less serious game plan is to just watch this movie again because, my god, is it special.)

Official AGAS percentage: 21 percent

3. Oblivion (2013)

What happened?

A scavenger alien army destroyed the moon, sparking catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis, and then proceeded to invade Earth. Humans nuked the aliens to win the war, but they lost the planet. Earth was largely uninhabitable, forcing most of humanity to escape to a space station orbiting Earth called Tet and then move permanently to Titan, Saturn’s biggest moon. This is what Jack (Tom Cruise) tells us in the opening narration of the movie, but he doesn’t know sh*t. Tet is an alien ship extracting resources from Earth. Jack is a clone, and it was thousands of Jack clones sent by Tet that ravaged the planet after the moon was destroyed. The humans’ victory over the aliens and escape to Titan is all a lie manufactured by Tet, and the “scavenger aliens” still on the Earth are actually just disguised humans. Here’s a screenshot that should sum everything up.

Universal Pictures

Jack—not sure which one exactly—eventually grasps the full truth and suicide-bombs Tet, and Earth starts over with a different Jack and a bunch of other people that could be clones or aliens or drones. It’s hard to say.

How did I get here?

It only makes sense for me to be one of the Jack clones, right? I’ll be the one that passes out between the other Jack clone’s legs above.

What’s the game plan?

The biggest key to survival in Oblivion is to not f*ck with any of the machines. Do NOT shoot at the drones. Trust me. But if you never attack the machines, they’ll eventually wipe your memory, clone you, kill you, or all of the above. It’s all just too much to wrap my head around, honestly. I’m just going to blindly follow Morgan Freeman’s character, Malcolm Beech, and trust the process.

Official AGAS percentage: 20 percent

UNRANKED HELLSCAPE: The Day After (1983), Testament (1983), and Threads (1984)

What happened?

Two American films, The Day After and Testament, and the British and Australian production Threads were all released within 12 months of each other in the early ’80s. All three show deeply horrific postnuclear worlds. Every named character in The Day After is dead or dying at the end of the film, yet a disclaimer is still added just before the end credits that reads: “The catastrophic events you have just witnessed are, in all likelihood, less severe than the destruction that would actually occur in the event of a full nuclear strike against the United States.”

It gets worse. Testament follows Carol, a suburban mother of three who loses her husband to the initial nuclear blast and buries two of her children after they die of radiation poisoning. She adopts another child, Hiroshi, after his father dies, only to attempt suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning with him and her biological son. Carol can’t go through with it ultimately, so the three slowly die of radiation poisoning instead.

ABC Circle Films

But Threads is just on a different level. The pace of the film is suffocating and relentless, slowly spanning more than 10 years after a nuclear attack. People haggle over dead rats and eat raw sheep in the street. People are killed and raped over bread. The final shot is a freeze-frame of a mother looking down in disgust at her newborn baby because of its deformities. It’s the only movie on this list that isn’t about survival; it’s about dying.

How did I get here?

Does it matter?

What’s the game plan?

There isn’t a game plan. It’s suicide, radiation poisoning, or something worse.

Official AGAS percentage: These movies have become death, destroyer of scoring systems. Again: Does it matter?

2. A Quiet Place (2018) and A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

What happened?

The aliens in the Quiet Place series are easily the most lethal beasts born in any of these postapocalyptic universes. The drones in Oblivion might have the edge in a one-on-one fight, but machines don’t count. Even though they can’t see at all, the armor-plated aliens hear well enough to take over planet Earth and kill most of the human population. The only people left are the ones who have managed to stay quiet enough to avoid any serious encounters.

Paramount Pictures

How did I get here?

A coma is the only way I’d actually survive the attack and make it even a few days in this universe. I’m obnoxiously loud and clumsy. I don’t really even know how to whisper. I’m just not built for this world.

What’s the game plan?

Even if I find a way to cut my vocal cords, I’ll eventually knock over a glass or drop something like the kid at the start of the original A Quiet Place. (Everyone who pokes holes in that scene clearly has never met anyone with ADHD.) I’m self-aware enough to know being quiet is not one of my strengths. Just recently, I was walking in a Target parking lot and started belting “Take Me Home Tonight” randomly. My girlfriend hated it, but what can you do? They say the mind wanders, but with ADHD, it’s your mind and mouth simultaneously a lot of the time. It’s not even word vomit most of the time; it’s like noise vomit, arguably the worst kind. So in the Quiet Place universe, I’d obviously isolate myself to avoid getting any of my friends or family killed, and then I’d play the silent game as long as I could. I think my record is a few minutes.

Official AGAS Percentage: 15 percent

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

What happened?

Mad Max survived a world of barbaric warlords by mostly avoiding them and picking his spots to team up with other communities to kill the oppressors. Furiosa didn’t have that luxury. She was kidnapped at an early age and forced to watch her mother’s and lover’s brutal deaths at the hands of a co*cky warlord called Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), and had to cut off her own arm on her way to escaping. Both Max and Furiosa are fueled by revenge, but Max didn’t have to wait a lifetime to get it. In Furiosa, we see all of the messed up stuff that makes her who she is and why she ultimately teams up with Max in Fury Road to kill Immortan Joe and lay claim to the Citadel.

I just don’t have that kind of dog in me. Dementus tells Furiosa in the end of the film that only hate can drive someone as far as she did to survive, and I don’t have a hateful bone in my body, really. I’ve only ever yelled in anger like once in my life; I’m conflict-avoidant as all hell. So, no, I don’t think I could plan and execute a decades-long scheme just to kill someone even if they brutally murdered my friends and family. I’d probably shoot them an email like, “All good! No worries, man!”

The other kicker here—and I’m sorry I didn’t mention this earlier—but I’m a horrible driver. Like truly horrible. My dad never taught me how to drive, so I had to kind of just learn on my own. I drive like an 80-year-old who’s never actually learned to drive a car. I’m overly cautious to the point where I practically invite people to hit me. The only time I’ve ever really pressed the pedal to the metal and raced someone in a car, my engine blew up. And now I haven’t owned a car in seven years. That’s to protect you guys out there. That may have its advantages in a place like the Wasteland, but something tells me I’d be better off if I could control a rig like Furiosa.

Rule no. 9: Learn to Drive.

How did I get here?

I’ve always wanted to be a War Boy! It would also take the pressure off a bit since dying is kind of like their whole thing.

What’s the game plan?

I’d like to believe I could take it a step further than Nux did and manage to survive the escape from the Citadel, but dying with chrome-painted teeth definitely feels more like my speed. WITNESS ME!

Official AGAS Percentage: 13 percent