Movies like Nuclear Winter (2024)
The best movies like Nuclear Winter (2024) are Panic in Year Zero! (1962), Awake (2021) and Right at Your Door (2006). If Nuclear Winter hooked you with its drama and science fiction, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSwan Song (2021)7.1/10 from 633 votes
- NewestRage of Stars (2026)Released 2026
Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
While on a fishing trip, Harry Baldwin and his family hear an explosion and realize that Los Angeles has been leveled by a nuclear attack. Looters and killers are everywhere. Escaping to the hills with his family, he sets about the business of surviving in a world where, he knows, the old ideals of humanity will be the first casualties.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAwake (2021)
After a sudden global event wipes out all electronics and takes away humankind’s ability to sleep, chaos quickly begins to consume the world. Only Jill, an ex-soldier with a troubled past, may hold the key to a cure in the form of her own daughter. The question is, can Jill safely deliver her daughter and save the world before she herself loses her mind.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
SnoozefestMovies like thisRight at Your Door (2006)
A dirty bomb goes off in Los Angeles, jamming freeways and spreading a toxic cloud.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Quiet Earth (1985)
After a top-secret experiment misfires, a scientist may be the only man left alive in the world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Survivalist (2015)
In a time of starvation, a survivalist lives off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest. When two women seeking food and shelter discover his farm, he finds his existence threatened.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThese Final Hours (2014)
With the end of the world only hours away, self-absorbed James heads to the ultimate party-to-end-all-parties. On his way there, he saves the life of a young girl named Rose who is searching desperately for her missing father. This simple act sets James on a path to redemption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSwan Song (2021)
In the near future, Cameron Turner is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Presented with an experimental solution to shield his wife and son from grief, he grapples with altering their fate in this thought-provoking exploration of love, loss, and sacrifice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Assessment (2025)
In a climate change-ravaged world, a utopian society optimizes life, including parenthood assessments. A successful couple faces scrutiny by an evaluator over seven days to determine their fitness for childbearing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWarning Sign (1985)
An accident occurs in an ultra-secret government biological weapons laboratory spreading a sinister bacteria.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFoe (2023)
Henrietta and Junior farm a secluded piece of land that has been in Junior's family for generations, but their quiet life is thrown into turmoil when an uninvited stranger shows up at their door with a startling proposal. Will they risk their relationship & personal identity for a chance to survive in a new world?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAfter the Dark (2013)
At an international school in Jakarta, a philosophy teacher challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInto the Forest (2016)
In the not too distant future, two young women who live in a remote ancient forest discover the world around them is on the brink of an apocalypse. Informed only by rumor, they fight intruders, disease, loneliness & starvation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Handmaid's Tale (1990)
In a dystopian, polluted right-wing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFortress (1992)
In the future, the inmates of a private underground prison are computer-controlled with cameras, dream readers, and devices that can cause pain or death. John and his illegally pregnant wife Karen are locked inside "The Fortress" but are determined to escape before the birth of their baby.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMan Down (2016)
When a U.S. Marine returns home from Afghanistan, he finds that the place he once called home is no better than the battlefields he fought on overseas. Accompanied by his best friend, he searches desperately for the whereabouts of his estranged son and wife. In their search, the two intercept a man carrying vital information about his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWifelike (2022)
A grieving detective in the near-future hunts down criminals who trade artificial humans on the black market. In the fight to end AI exploitation, an underground resistance attempts to infiltrate him by sabotaging the programming of the artificial human assigned as his companion to behave like his late wife. She begins to question her reality as memories of a past life begin to surface in a world where nothing is as it seems.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Survivors (2014)
In the near future, society collapses and water becomes scarce. When a greedy water baron starts violently clearing out survivors, Kendal, a 17-year-old teenager, fights the baron's henchman to keep a well open.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGreenland (2020)
John Garrity, his estranged wife and their young son embark on a perilous journey to find sanctuary as a planet-killing comet hurtles toward Earth. Amid terrifying accounts of cities getting levelled, the Garritys experience the best and worst in humanity. As the countdown to the global apocalypse approaches zero, their incredible trek culminates in a desperate and last-minute flight to a possible safe haven.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRage of Stars (2026)
A story about a woman from the International Special Forces Unit, who has a premonition about the impending end of humanity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Road (2009)
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones and, when the snow falls, it is gray. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNoah's Last Day (2021)
Summer break is months away, but it's still Noah's last day of elementary school. Navigating a complicated relationship with an obsessive, doomsday-prepping father, Noah must decide: go with Dad into an underground bunker, or face the apocalypse?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction & drama
That Which Once Was (2011)
In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver who helps him confront his past.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & science fiction
White Wall (2010)
In the near future, everything has changed. Basic human rights have become the rarest of luxuries. No one knows when this started but everyone knows how. The VXII, the deadliest virus ever created, spread like wildfire and decimated the majority of the world's population. The non-infected survivors now cling to life in four quarantined cities behind a wall. Shawn Kors and his brother, Jude, survived the VXII only to grow up in a squalid internment camp for orphaned children. Under the care of the militia, they were pitted against other children in backwoods death matches. Shawn, Jude, and the few who escaped became notorious for their incredible fighting skills. They have since parted ways. Shawn now makes a comfortable living as a janitor at the local medic station. He spends his days dreaming of curing the VXII. When Shawn discovers the discarded body of a fellow internment camp friend, he is forced out of hiding and pulled into a rabbit hole of conspiracy and violence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & science fiction
Osa (1986)
In a future society where water is a precious resource, a savage gang murders a young girl's family. She is taken in by a man named Trooper, who teaches her how to fight, kill and survive. When she gets old enough to fend for herself, she sets out in search of the gang that killed her family.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Terminator Salvation (2009)
All grown up in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor must lead the resistance of humans against the increasingly dominating militaristic robots. But when Marcus Wright appears, his existence confuses the mission as Connor tries to determine whether Wright has come from the future or the past -- and whether he's friend or foe.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOnce Upon a Time in the Apocalypse (2021)
A Few Years From Now - A civil war has ravaged the United States leaving countless Americans dead, and most of the rest living in lawlessness. It's become the Wild West. In this world a father struggles to keep his daughter alive, but she doesn't just want to survive.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Formula for Water (TBA)
A post-apocalyptic story about a girl named Dana who sets on a journey to save her kidnapped father, a scientist who created a machine that could restore the drinking water reserves on the planet.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Logan's Run (1976)
In the 23rd century, inhabitants of a domed city freely experience all of life's pleasures — but no one is allowed to live past 30. Citizens can try for a chance at being "renewed" in a civic ceremony on their 30th birthday. Escape is the only other option.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPhoenix the Warrior (1988)
In a post-apocalyptic world, women warriors battle each other from junkyards to gravel pits as they determine the fate of the entire world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Remains: Road to Reno (2011)
A freak accident turns most of the world's population into ferocious and ravenous predatory zombies. A small group of uninfected human survivors do their best to survive this harrowing ordeal by seeking refuge in a garage. Meanwhile, mechanic Derek struggles to retain his humanity after he gets bitten by one of the zombies.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Nuclear Winter?
The closest matches to Nuclear Winter are Panic in Year Zero! (1962), Awake (2021) and Right at Your Door (2006). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Nuclear Winter?
Start with Panic in Year Zero! (1962), the closest match to Nuclear Winter.
What is the highest-rated movie like Nuclear Winter?
Swan Song (2021), rated 7.1/10 by 633 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Nuclear Winter?
Rage of Stars (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Nuclear Winter?
Yes: Panic in Year Zero! (1962), Awake (2021) and Right at Your Door (2006).
How are movies similar to Nuclear Winter chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Nuclear Winter, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.