Best Survival Adventure Movies & TV Shows

Twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed, Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the United States and depend on each other for survival.

Maggie and Negan travel to post-apocalyptic Manhattan - long ago cut off from the mainland. The crumbling city is filled with the dead and denizens who have made it a world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror.

Some teenagers are stranded on a desert island in Micronesia. Their plane crashed and led them into a one-in-a-lifetime eco-adventure. They will have to learn to navigate the challenges that come before them in the tropical paradise in Hawaii using intelligence, wit, and instincts. They also have to learn to live with each other.

On a post-apocalyptic Earth, a robot, built to protect the life of his dying creator's beloved dog, learns about life, love, friendship, and what it means to be human.

On a perilous adventure across a post-apocalyptic world, a lovable boy who's half-human and half-deer searches for a new beginning with a gruff protector.

A group of teen girls from different backgrounds must fight for survival after a plane crash strands them on a deserted island. The castaways both clash and bond as they learn more about each other, the secrets they keep, and the traumas they've all endured. But there’s just one twist… these girls did not end up on this island by accident.

In this harrowing reality series, “Survivorman” Les Stroud travels to far-flung locales with little more than the clothes on his back and 50 pounds of camera equipment to battle - and try to survive - insanely harsh conditions.

This equal parts survival epic, psychological horror story and coming-of-age drama tells the saga of a team of wildly talented high school girls soccer players who become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later.

On planet Perdide, an attack of giant hornets leaves Piel – a young boy – alone in a wrecked car with his dying father. A mayday message reaches their friend Jaffar, an adventurer travelling through space. On board Jaffar’s shuttle are the renegade Prince Matton, his fiancée, and Silbad who knows the planet Perdide well. Thus begins an incredible race across space to save Piel.

Viewers go deep into an Alaskan winter to meet six tough and resilient residents as they try to stay one step ahead of storms and man-eating beasts to make it through to spring. The closest neighbor to Sue Aikens is more than 300 miles away. Eric Salitan subsists solely on what he hunts and forages. Chip and Agnes Hailstone catch fish for currency in bartering for supplies, and Andy and Kate Bassich use their pack of sled dogs for transportation.

An epic adventure begins when a massive sinkhole opens in the middle of Los Angeles, pulling hundreds of people and buildings into its depths. Those who fell in find themselves in a mysterious and dangerous primeval land, where they have no choice but to band together to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of the world desperately seeks to understand what happened. In the search for answers, one family torn apart by this disaster will have to unlock the secrets of this inexplicable event to find a way back to each other.

Henry Drax is a harpooner and brutish killer whose amorality has been shaped to fit the harshness of his world, who will set sail on a whaling expedition to the Arctic with Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as the ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath. In search of redemption, his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland.

The story of an Indian boy named Pi, a zookeeper's son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean.

During World War II, a small group of survivors is stranded in a lifeboat together after the ship they were traveling on is destroyed by a German U-boat.

In the Old Stone Age, a disparate gang of early humans band together in search of a new land. Following their leader’s promise of a better life, the tribe take their chances and embark on a perilous quest across unknown and treacherous terrains. But when they suspect a malevolent, potentially mystical, being is hunting them down, the terrified clan are forced to confront a danger they never envisaged. Shot in an isolation bubble in the Scottish Highlands during the pandemic, Andrew Cumming’s visionary survival horror is a masterclass in expansive world-building that belies its humble origins. With committed performances from its cast, who speak in a fictional prehistoric language (don’t worry, there are subtitles), this is genre filmmaking at its most breathtakingly ambitious. And it’s bloody scary too.

An aristocratic Englishwoman, Lady Cornelia Locke, arrives into the new and wild landscape of the American West to wreak revenge on the man she sees as responsible for the death of her son.

A cargo aircraft crashes in a sandstorm in the Sahara with less than a dozen men on board. One of the passengers is an airplane designer who comes up with the idea of ripping off the undamaged wing and using it as the basis for a replacement aircraft they will build to escape before their food and water run out.

Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.

Von Ryan's Express stars Frank Sinatra as a POW colonel who leads a daring escape from WWII Italy by taking over a freight train, but he has to win over the British soldiers he finds himself commanding.

Two people with drastically different backgrounds and survival strategies take on some of the planet's most unforgiving terrain to demonstrate how the right skills and creative thinking can keep you alive in the most dangerous situations.

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. The sky is dark. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.

In the Antarctic, after an expedition with Dr. Davis McClaren, the sled dog trainer Jerry Shepherd has to leave the polar base with his colleagues due to the proximity of a heavy snow storm. He ties his dogs to be rescued after, but the mission is called-off and the dogs are left alone at their own fortune. For six months, Jerry tries to find a sponsor for a rescue mission.

At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.

Traverse a post-apocalyptic world in which a cataclysmic event decimates every mammal with a Y chromosome but for one cisgender man and his pet monkey. Follow the survivors in this new world as they struggle with their efforts to restore what was lost and the opportunity to build something better.

The true story about legendary explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his epic crossing of the Pacific on a balsa wood raft in 1947, in an effort to prove it was possible for South Americans to settle in Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.

Remake of the popular Disney classic, this time featuring some well known voices as two dogs and a cat trek across America encountering all sorts of adventures in the quest to be reunited with their owners.

Lord Loam has modern ideas about his household, he believes in treating his servants as his equals - at least sometimes. His butler, Crichton, still believes that members of the serving class should know their place and be happy there. But when the Loam family are shipwrecked on a desert island with the self-reliant Crichton and lady's maid Tweeny, the class system is put to the test.

In the Canadian mountains, a trapper goes on the run accused of a crime and is pursued by a rugged and determined lawman of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.

The prehistoric Croods family live in a particularly dangerous moment in time. Patriarch Grug, his mate Ugga, teenage daughter Eep, son Thunk, and feisty Gran gather food by day and huddle together in a cave at night. When a more evolved caveman named Guy arrives on the scene, Grug is distrustful, but it soon becomes apparent that Guy is correct about the impending destruction of their world.

During World War II, a shot-down American pilot and a marooned Japanese navy captain find themselves stranded on the same small uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean.

Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp couldn't anticipate that they would be sailing directly into one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in recorded history. In the aftermath of the storm, Tami awakens to find Richard badly injured and their boat in ruins. With no hope of rescue, Tami must now find the strength and determination to save herself and the only man she has ever loved.

The plane carrying wealthy Charles Morse crashes down in the Alaskan wilderness. Together with the two other passengers, photographer Robert and assistant Stephen, Charles devises a plan to help them reach civilization. However, his biggest obstacle might not be the elements, or even the Kodiak bear stalking them -- it could be Robert, whom Charles suspects is having an affair with his wife and would not mind seeing him dead.

Bear strands himself in popular wilderness destinations where tourists often find themselves lost or in danger.

In 1950s Canada, during a commercial flight, the pilots and some passengers suffer food poisoning, thus forcing an ex-WW2 fighter pilot to try to land the airliner in heavy fog.

A recently widowed man and his two teenage daughters travel to a game reserve in South Africa. However, their journey of healing soon turns into a fight for survival when a bloodthirsty lion starts to stalk them.

After the death of his father, a boy growing up on a lunar mining colony takes a trip to explore a legendary crater, along with his four best friends, prior to being permanently relocated to another planet.

Amidst a nuclear war, a plane carrying a group of schoolboys crash lands on a deserted island. With no adult survivors, the boys are forced to fend for themselves. At first they cooperate, but when they split into two separate camps -- one led by the pragmatic Ralph and the other by militaristic Jack -- their society falls into disarray, leading to a disturbing examination of human nature and a chilling conclusion.

During a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, a veteran mariner awakes to find his vessel taking on water after a collision with a stray shipping container. With his radio and navigation equipment disabled, he sails unknowingly into a violent storm and barely escapes with his life. With any luck, the ocean currents may carry him into a shipping lane -- but, with supplies dwindling and the sharks circling, the sailor is forced to face his own mortality.

An international team of climbers ascends Mt. Everest in the spring of 1996. The film depicts their lengthy preparations for the climb, their trek to the summit, and their successful return to Base Camp. It also shows many of the challenges the group faced, including avalanches, lack of oxygen, treacherous ice walls, and a deadly blizzard.

In 1981, an enthusiastic young adventurer follows his dreams into the Bolivian Amazon jungle with two friends and a guide with a mysterious past. Their journey quickly turns into a terrifying ordeal as the darkest elements of human nature and the deadliest threats of the wilderness lead to an all-out fight for survival.

Following a grueling five-week shift at an Alaskan oil refinery, workers led by sharpshooter John Ottway, are flying home for a much-needed vacation. But a brutal storm causes their plane to crash in the frozen wilderness, and only eight men, including Ottway, survive. As they trek southward toward civilization and safety, Ottway and his companions must battle mortal injuries, the icy elements, and a pack of hungry wolves.

A young Norwegian boy in 1850s England goes to work as a cabin boy and discovers some of his shipmates are actually pirates.

Recently diagnosed with a terminal illness, a man returns home to Australia to die in the wildness. His plans become complicated when he meets a young boy and decides to take him under his wing.

Adventurer Allan Quartermain leads an expedition into uncharted African territory in an attempt to locate an explorer who went missing during his search for the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon.

Two high school students become stranded on a tropical island and must rely on each other for survival. They learn more about themselves and each other while falling in love.

Based on the true story of the collapse of a mine in San Jose, Chile—that left 33 miners isolated underground for 69 days.

Allie Fox, an American inventor exhausted by the perceived danger and degradation of modern society, decides to escape with his wife and children to Belize. In the jungle, he tries with mad determination to create a utopian community with disastrous results.

When their plane crashes, 25 schoolboys find themselves trapped on a tropical island, miles from civilization.

This classic family drama stars Shirley Temple as young orphan Susannah Sheldon, the sole survivor of a brutal Indian attack who's befriended by Canadian Mountie Angus Montague (Randolph Scott) and his girlfriend, Vicky (Margaret Lockwood). The couple takes Susannah under their wing and soon learn that having a precocious child around can come in handy; when the Indians return, the girl uses her charm to broker peace.Shirley is the orphaned survivor of an Indian attack in the Canadian West. A Mountie and his girlfriend take her in...

An ornithologist battles a family of bird poachers in the Florida Everglades.