Genres
Post-apocalyptic fiction
Speculative fiction in which Earth's or another place's civilization is collapsing or has collapsed.
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction are subgenres of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another place's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The cause can be climatic, astronomical, nuclear, pandemic, religious, zombie, AI or alien; the story can try to prevent the event, survive its immediate aftermath, or live long after, where pre-catastrophe civilization is often forgotten or mythologized. Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) is recognized as the first major post-apocalyptic novel.
For serial writers the genre's engine is scarcity plus a cast list: who and what survived is canon forever after chapter one. Web fiction's system apocalypse branch bolts explicit progression mechanics onto this same skeleton.