Every apocalypse movie can be boiled down to this:
“Almost everyone has been killed by ______, so now some survivors must fight the _______ and maybe the other survivors who turned out to be assholes.”
And that’s the same whether the blank is filled in by zombies, robots, or inclement weather. The number one cause of death in The Walking Dead universe is getting eaten by a zombie, and the number two cause of death is getting murdered by a psychopath. Those who survive are the ones who best learn to adapt to those threats.
But actually, some apocalypse stories involve diseases wiping everyone out (like Contagion or Stephen King’s The Stand), but in reality, that would be every apocalypse.
Think of it this way: In the Civil War, only 1 out of every 3 deaths was caused by getting shot or blown apart by a cannon. The rest were caused by disease. Today, 85 percent of American military medical evacuations from the Middle East are the result of non-battle injuries and disease. In other words, the moment you remove someone from everyday health care and hygiene, you find out that sickness and infections are the real apocalypse. So, for millions upon millions of people, the crisis would be “I can’t treat my chronic, debilitating illness anymore,” not “My zombie neighbor Chad is trying to eat me again.”
5 Things Every Movie Gets Wrong About the Apocalypse