List of nuclear holocaust fiction

This list of nuclear holocaust fiction lists the many works of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction that attempt to describe a world during or after a massive nuclear war, nuclear holocaust, or crash of civilization due to a nuclear electromagnetic pulse.

Films

Television programs

• A Carol for Another Christmas (ABC, 1964), Rod Serling TV film
• A Day Called 'X' (CBS, 1957)
• Adventure Time (Cartoon Network, 2010–2018)
• ' (FX, 2018)
• Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi, 2003, 2004–2009)
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (NBC, 1979)
• By Dawn's Early Light (HBO, 1990)
• Countdown to Looking Glass (HBO, 1984)
• Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002)
• Der Dritte Weltkrieg (ZDF, 1998)
• Fail Safe (CBS, 2000)
• Fallout (Prime Video, 2024–)
• Genesis II (CBS, 1973)
• Jericho (CBS, 2006–2008)
• Level Seven (BBC, 1966), adapted by J. B. Priestley for Out of the Unknown
• On the Beach (Showtime, 2000)
• Planet Earth (ABC, 1974)
• Special Bulletin (NBC, 1983)
• ' (Fox, 2008–2009)
• Testament (PBS, 1983)
• The 100 (The CW, 2014–2020)
• The Day After (ABC, 1983)
• The Martian Chronicles miniseries (NBC, 1980)
• The War Game (BBC, 1965)
• Threads (BBC, 1984)
• Whoops Apocalypse (ITV, 1982)
• Woops! (Fox, 1992)
• World War III miniseries (NBC, 1982)

Television episodes

• The Motorola Television Hour: "Atomic Attack" (1954 ABC-TV series Season 1, Episode 15) – A family living 50 miles away try to flee from the fallout of a hydrogen bomb that fell on New York City. Based on the novel Shadow on the Hearth (1950) by Judith Merrill.
• The Twilight Zone: "Time Enough at Last" (1959)
• Playhouse 90: "Alas, Babylon" (1960)
• The Twilight Zone: "The Old Man in the Cave" (1963)
• Doctor Who: "The Daleks" (1963)
• ': "Space Seed" (1967). References a third world war taking place in the 1990s (also known as the Eugenics Wars). The later series ' would retcon this to taking place in the mid-21st century, concurrent with the nuclear war established by the film Star Trek: First Contact and other Star Trek series.
• ': "" (1968) – The crew goes back in time to find out how the human race was able to survive the Cold War.
• The Twilight Zone: "A Little Peace and Quiet" (1985)
• The Twilight Zone: "Quarantine" (1986)
• The Twilight Zone: "Shelter Skelter" (1987)
• The Outer Limits: "Bits of Love" (1997)
• The Outer Limits: "The Human Factor" (2002)
• The Twilight Zone: "Chosen" (2002)
• Masters of Science Fiction: "A Clean Escape" (2007)
• What If...?: What If... Ultron Won?" (2021)
• A few episodes of ' depict both humans and Vulcans as being close to extermination caused by nuclear war.

Novels

• After The Bomb by Gloria D. Miklowitz
• Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
• Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem (regarding Hatfork)
• Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley
• Arc Light by Eric Harry
• Armageddon's Children By Terry Brooks (2006) (Genesis of Shannara Trilogy book 1)
• The Ashes Series by William W. Johnstone
• The Beast of Heaven by Victor Kelleher
• Brother in the Land by Robert Swindells
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1960)
• Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence
• The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
• Commander-1 by Peter George
• Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
• Dark December by Alfred Coppel
• Dark Mirrors (original title) Schwarze Spiegel by Arno Schmidt
• Davy and other works by Edgar Pangborn
• The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles by Robert Moore Williams
• Deathlands series by a variety of authors writing under the pen name James Axler
• Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb by Philip K. Dick
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• Domain by James Herbert
• Doomday Wing by George H. Smith
• Doomsday Plus Twelve by James D. Forman
• Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham
• Earthwreck! by Thomas N. Scortia
• The Eclipse Trilogy by John Shirley
• The Egghead Republic by Arno Schmidt
• Einstein's Monsters by Martin Amis
• End of the World by Dean Owen (novelization of the film Panic in Year Zero!)
• ' by Anton-Andreas Guha
• Endworld series by David Robbins
• Eon by Greg Bear
• The Erthing Cycle by Wayland Drew
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Farnham's Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein
• Fire Brats by Scott Siegel and Barbara Siegel
• First Angel by Ed Mann, published by Soldier of Fortune magazine
• Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson
• Free Flight by Douglas Terman
• The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
• A Gift Upon the Shore by M. K. Wren
• God's Grace by Bernard Malamud
• The Guardians series by Richard Austin
• The Hot War series by Harry Turtledove
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
• Jenny, My Diary by Yorick Blumenfeld
• The Last Children of Schewenborn by Gudrun Pausewang
• The Last Ship by William Brinkley
• The Last War, a 1986 novel by Martyn Godfrey
• Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald
• The Long Loud Silence by Wilson Tucker
• The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
• Long Voyage Back by George Cockcroft, under the pen name Luke Rhinehart, 1983
• Malevil by Robert Merle
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
• Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
• The Metrozone Series by Simon Morden
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Not This August by C.M. Kornbluth
• Obernewtyn and subsequent novels in the series by Isobelle Carmody
• On the Beach by Nevil Shute
• One Second After by William R. Forstchen
• The Outward Urge, by John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes
• The Pelbar Cycle Book One (Beyond Armageddon) by Paul O. Williams
• Plan of Attack, a 2004 thriller by Dale Brown
• The Postman, a 1985 post-apocalyptic novel by David Brin
• Prayers for the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno
• Prime Directive, by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens; a Star Trek novel where an alien civilization is apparently destroyed by a sudden, unexpected nuclear war among its own people
• Pulling Through, by Dean Ing; first half of the book is a novel on a family surviving a nuclear blast, the second half is a non-fiction survival guide
• Red Alert, by Peter George
• Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois
• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
• The School for Atheists by Arno Schmidt
• Second Ending, by James White
• The Seventh Day by Hans Hellmut Kirst (original title Keiner Kommt Davon)
• Shadow on the Hearth by Judith Merril (1950) – a novel about a traditional housewife's ordeals in the aftermath of nuclear attack
• The Shannara Series, by Terry Brooks
• The Silo Series by Hugh Howey (2011) – A nuclear exchange is used to cover up a nano-bot attack.
• Single Combat by Dean Ing (second in the Ted Quantril trilogy)
• A Small Armageddon by Mordecai Roshwald
• Star Man's Son by Andre Norton (1952) – a post-apocalyptic novel that takes place about two centuries after the Great-Blowup. It is titled Daybreak – 2250 AD in reprint editions.
• The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun by Christopher Anvil
• The Survivalist by Jerry Ahern
• Swan Song by Robert McCammon
• Systemic Shock by Dean Ing (first in the Ted Quantril trilogy)
• Tengu (Novel) by Graham Masterton
• Test of Fire by Ben Bova
• There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson
• This Is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow
• This Time Tomorrow by Lauran Paine
• Time Capsule by Mitch Berman
• Tomorrow! by Philip Wylie
• Trinity's Child by William Prochnau (1983)
• Triumph by Philip Wylie
• The Valley-Westside War by Harry Turtledove
• Vaneglory by George Turner
• Viper Three by Walter Wager
• Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka
• When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
• Wild Country by Dean Ing (Third in the Ted Quantril Trilogy)
• The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Without Warning by John Birmingham
• The World Next Door by Brad Ferguson
• The World Set Free by H. G. Wells
• Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove – alternate history: World War II turns nuclear in 1943; another nuclear war in the 1960s
• Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien

Short stories

• "The Blast" by Stuart Cloete (1947), published in 6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction, ed. Groff Conklin, 1954
• "Thunder and Roses" (1947) by Theodore Sturgeon
• "Not with a Bang" (1949) by Damon Knight
• "The Last Word" (1956) by Damon Knight
• "A Clean Escape" (1985) by John Kessel
• "The 16th October 1985" (2009) by James Plumridge
• "The Edge of the Knife" (1957) by H. Beam Piper
• "Lot" (1953) and "Lot's Daughter" (1954) by Ward Moore (inspiration for the film Panic in Year Zero!)
• "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury (1950)
• "Preview of the War We Do Not Want", published in Collier's Magazine (1951)
• "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke – featuring a boy living in a colony on the moon, left isolated by the destruction of the Earth
• "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison (1969)
• "Fermi and Frost" by Frederik Pohl (1985)
• "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back" by Joe R. Lansdale (1986)
• "The Custodians" by Richard Cowper
• "Summer Thunder" by Stephen King
• "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet (1937)

Short story collections

• Countdown To Midnight, 1984, edited by H. Bruce Franklin
• Beyond Armageddon, 1985, edited by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin Harry Greenberg
• Nuclear War, 1988, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin Harry Greenberg
• The Folk of the Fringe, 1989, Orson Scott Card

Comics

• 2000AD/Judge Dredd, set in a post-war Earth where the majority of the United States is called the "Cursed Earth"
• Akira features Tokyo after a nuclear conflict.
• AXA, set in the aftermath of a nuclear- and biological war with heroine AXA fighting against evil
• Barefoot Gen, Japanese manga about life after the Hiroshima bombing
• Cobalt 60 by Vaughn Bodē, Mark Bodē and Larry Todd, set in a post-apocalyptic world
• Fist of the North Star, a Japanese comic franchise set in a post-nuclear Earth
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a Japanese graphic novel, later partly adapted in film, set in a far, post-apocalyptic future, rife with themes of bioethics, environmentalism, genetics and psionics
• ', a one-shot issue of Marvel Comic's Punisher by Garth Ennis and Richard Corben
• Strontium Dog, set in a post-nuclear war earth where many humans have been deformed by the radiation and are branded as "mutants"
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, is set in an England which has survived through a nuclear war which devastated the majority of the rest of the world.

Animation shorts

• The Big Snit (National Film Board of Canada, Richard Condie; 1985)
• The Hole, 1962, featuring the voice of Dizzy Gillespie
• A Short Vision, 1956
• Good Will to Men, 1955 (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
• Picadon (1978)

Games

See also

• Nuclear holocaust
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• World War III in popular culture
• List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
• Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
• List of books about nuclear issues
• List of films about nuclear issues
• List of apocalyptic films
• List of dystopian films
• List of songs about nuclear war

Further reading

References

External links

• Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, By Paul Brians, Professor of English, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington
• Annotated bibliography of nuclear literature from the Alsos Digital Library