Post Apocalyptic settings

[Icosahedron]

* All but guarnteed to fail. Only one situation was to present itself for a possible escape... I think I'll keep it a secret though, just in case

I'd be wary of this 'only one way out' scenario if you ever do run the game. Players are often quite inventive (and over-optimistic) about their own escape plans, but will frequently stumble right past your carefully plotted 'one true path' to freedom, no matter how many clues and flashing neon 'this way out' signs you drop under their noses.
Been there, done that, screaming IT'S THERE!!! UNDER YOUR NOSE!!! at the screen, and eventually having to railroad them out. It gets as demoralising for the GM as it is for the players.

Better to wait until they come up with a half-decent idea and let them have it.

 

[Vile]

I'm also in the "survival to set the scene" camp. Living in the UK in the 80s there were plenty of aftermath games going around, but most of them only concentrated on survival for a few sessions to get everyone in the right frame of mind. Eventually there was always something bigger to shoot for. Not necessarily (or even often) hopeful - this was the 4-minute warning era and not many of us thought it would end well, so our post-apocalypse themes were usually pretty grim.

I believe my favourite aftermath campaign was a Bladerunner game - the apocalypse in this case being extreme depopulation and the collapse of much of civilisation outside a few urban centres. The players started out as bladerunners, trod on the wrong toes and became outcasts. After a few sessions scrabbling around the suburban wastelands of England just trying to stave off starvation, the campaign developed into a quest revealing the true nature of Nexus-6 replicants.

 

[hdan]

"Fate of the Sky Raiders" has an interesting take on lost civilizations.

 

[Dragoner]

I could see an Imperial scientific mission to check out a gamma world full of mutants.