Going bunkers on screen: See how tech-driven dystopias have played out

The ultimate meltdown

In the Netflix film Leave the World Behind (2023), a family’s impromptu weekend getaway to a beachside rental home turns into an ordeal when a mysterious cyberattack causes digital systems to shut down across the US. The wi-fi goes first, then the TV networks. As satellites fail and communication systems blink out, airplanes crash, oil tankers run aground; smart cars go rogue and block highways.

The film was based on Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel of the same name, which delves deeper into how the blackout serves as a catalyst for societal breakdown amid a shadowy shift in global power dynamics.
A post-screen view
There is little technology visible in Silo (2023-), the dramatic, dystopian Apple TV series. Some rusted old machines help run a vertical, underground town in which about 10,000 people live. Connection with anything that came before the Silo is discouraged. Residents are told the world outside is toxic; they’re the last humans left on Earth. (Spoilers ahead for S1.)
It turns out, however, that the windows looking out onto this wasteland are really screens, easily manipulated. It also turns out the Silo is one of many, many others. All being manipulated, by whoever controls the screens.
S2 is due out next month. Or, one can dive into the Silo trilogy (2011-13) by Hugh Howey.
Booting up again
Interstellar (2014) imagines a 2067 in which a series of catastrophes has shut down the world’s complex industrial and post-industrial systems, forcing humans back to an agrarian existence. All scientific and technological endeavour has been abandoned; even talk of it is discouraged. NASA goes so far as to deny it ever left the planet. But, it turns out, we can no longer survive on our blighted Earth, and must get moving again. So NASA boots itself up again, dusts off its surviving tech, and a tiny crew begins a journey through space and time, in search of another home.
A soldier at risk
The Net (1995; starring Sandra Bullock) explored, with dramatic effect, what identity theft and having a digital doppelganger could do to one’s life. The twist: Bullock’s character Angela Bennett was targeted because she uncovered a bug designed to bypass a digital fortress.
Who goes there?
Live Free or Die Hard (2007; part four in a franchise now up to five) tells a dramatic tale of cyberterrorism. A former US intelligence operative who designed digital backup systems for that country goes rogue. How differently would the plot have unfolded, one wonders, if it wasn’t an individual and his renegade army, but another nation, pulling the strings?