8 Best Survival Drama Series Of All Time

Many of the best survival dramas feature small groups of people suddenly forced to work together after disaster strikes, causing beliefs and personalities to clash. Others involve so many characters it’s hard to keep track of them all, with numerous conflicting factions springing up. Some begin immediately after the event that changes everything, while others start their stories years down the road. Whichever way a survival show structures its characters' challenges, there's something for everyone in TV's best survival dramas.

Jeremiah (2002–2004)

Very loosely based on a Belgian comic book series, Jeremiah aired on Showtime and starred Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Set in 2021, the series follows two people living in a world where, 15 years earlier, a virus known as “The Big Death” wiped out almost everyone over the age of 13. The leads meet by chance when they’re imprisoned by a warlord and recruited by a guy to help a mysterious organization. Their journey leads them to discover Thunder Mountain and the Valhalla Sector, both organizations trying to rebuild the world in very different ways.

While some survival dramas focus on people's fight to stay alive, Jeremiah took a different approach. People had already learned to survive because it was set 15 years after a pandemic. This series was more concerned with what came next — the rebuilding of society and the new systems and institutions that underpin it. It also explored what kinds of communities would spring up in a new world originally led by children. It was somewhat hopeful for such a depressing premise, though; Jeremiah wasn’t so much about what was lost, but about what humanity could do better the second time around.

The Terror Season 1 (2018)

AMC’s The Terror is an anthology series that explores real-life historical events through a fictional (and supernatural-tinged) lens. The Terror season 1 follows the doomed crews of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus as the ships become stuck in the ice while trying to make their way through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic Ocean. Based on a book inspired by the 1845 expedition led by Captain Sir John Franklin and Captain Francis Crozier, season 1 is a bleak, haunting look at men trying to survive in impossible conditions (while eventually being hunted by a monster).

Watching these sailors try to stay alive in a land of nothing more than snow and ice is harrowing, and not surprisingly, some of the men turn to cannibalism. However, while the harsh conditions might be most likely to kill them, they aren’t the only threat to survival; violence between the factions that occurs in the crew also springs up and leads to some pretty gruesome moments. The Terror season 1 isn’t for those who enjoy people actually surviving in survival dramas, as there’s little hope.

The Society (2019)

When Netflix released The Society, critics praised it for its social commentary and storytelling. However, the show only lasted one season; the second season was canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, that means there’s no resolution, but The Society is still one of the better survival dramas around. When a group of teens returns home from a school trip to find that every adult in their town has disappeared — and they’re now mysteriously cut off from the rest of the world — they have to learn to survive on their own.

Thankfully, these kids aren’t starting totally from scratch. They have resources, and they end up creating a society based on communal living. However, teenagers will be teenagers, and it isn’t long before power struggles, hormones, and total anarchy threaten the tenuous situation. The mystery of what put them in this scenario in the first place adds an extra layer of depth to the story. Lord of the Flies was a major influence, but it was also compared to The Leftovers and Lost.

The 100 (2014–2020)

Imagine growing up on a space station because the planet your people originated from suffered a nuclear apocalypse a hundred years ago, only to be thrown back down to that planet with 99 other juvenile prisoners to see if it's habitable once again. That was the premise of The 100, a survival drama that saw a group of teens forced to learn how to survive in a place they never could have imagined.

As if finding food and resources wasn’t hard enough, the group eventually learns that people survived the dangerous radiation levels all those years ago, so the planet is actually inhabited. Though The 100 had its moments of controversy and flaws, it also featured all the hardship and drama expected in a survival show. Each season turned into a different kind of fight to keep living; it became a story about how far people will go to survive.

The Walking Dead (2010–2022)

The Walking Dead began as a comic book series, became a hit television show, and then branched into numerous spin-offs, creating a monster franchise. While it’s a horror show about zombies, its main premise is the survival of those who weren’t immediately killed or turned in the initial outbreak. During its long run, the show evolved from following the original group of survivors as they learned to exist in this new world to different human factions rising and clashing.

It’s one of the ultimate survival shows, and while it went off the rails at times, it showed how great the human spirit can be in the face of adversity (even if that adversity is the walking dead). The series also proved that when the world as we know it ends, humanity is the scariest monster around.

The Wilds (2020–2022)

Before Yellowjackets, there was The Wilds, a survival drama about a group of teen girls on their way to an empowerment retreat whose plane crashes, leaving them stranded on an island. The girls must learn to work together to survive and find a way off the island — only, as it turns out, they’re actually unwitting participants in a social experiment, so getting off the island will be harder than expected.

The second season adds a group of teen boys to the mix, as their plane also crashed on the island as part of the experiment. This brings even more tension and terrifying drama. Featuring flashbacks and flash-forwards, The Wilds explores how surviving an ordeal like this can change a person and who they become when it's all said and done.

Lost (2004–2010)

When it comes to survival dramas, there are few better than Lost. A plane crashing into a mysterious island and a group of survivors working together to get off that island is the epitome of survival setups. The introduction of the polar bears, the Smoke Monster, the Others, and so much more allowed the show to develop a rich mythology and added an edge to the group's survival story, turning it into one of the most popular TV shows ever made.

While survival shows existed before Lost, this series set the blueprint for many shows that followed. With glimpses into the past and future, Lost turned this survival story into a deeply emotional, highly philosophical saga that still resonates with viewers.

Yellowjackets (2021–2026)

Yellowjackets is one of the most recent offerings in the survival drama genre, and to say it's made a splash would be an understatement. Like Lost, the show starts as a fairly straightforward story about a girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in the wilds of Canada. However, as the series goes on, things take a dark turn, and something supernatural constantly lurks in the background.

The showrunners wanted to explore how trauma can shape lives and interpersonal dynamics within social hierarchies, and they managed to do that with Yellowjackets. Those eventually rescued from their plight were drastically changed by what they experienced. The cannibalism and ritualistic elements give the show a horror edge as well. The final season premieres on November 20, 2026. It's time to find out how Yellowjackets ends.