The Southern Hemisphere

Lore & Background

The nuclear war that ended the old world did not strike evenly. The Northern Hemisphere, where the great cities and military installations had concentrated, was glassed and poisoned beyond recovery. The Southern Hemisphere, spared the worst of the fallout, slowly healed over the decades the Ark spent in orbit. By the time the 100 are beamed down, the south is a continent of dense jungle, rolling highlands, and river valleys teeming with life—birds, mammals, and vast forests that the surface dwellers have learned to revere almost as sacred ground.

The Grounder civilizations that flourished there were shaped by that scarcity-and-grace duality. The 12 Tribes organized their society around the Temple, a massive pre-war structure perched on a mountain peak, believing it to be a holy site. The Skaikru, the tribe closest to the Ark's landing zone, carried the memory of the sky-ships and the war, guarding a truth about the Ark's fate that they were forbidden to share. These societies, for all their differences, shared a deep reverence for the land that kept them alive in a world that had tried to kill everyone.

When the 100 begin their long trek south, the Southern Hemisphere becomes a crucible. The 12 Tribes' theocracy, the Skaikru's secrets, the Mountain's hidden technology, and the ever-present threat of radiation zones and hostile factions all collide. The region's beauty is real—waterfalls cascading through emerald canopies, sunsets painting the peaks gold—but so is its danger. Every valley hides a tribe's territory, every forest floor a minefield of old-world weapons or new-world alliances. The Southern Hemisphere is where the 100 stop being passengers and start being survivors.

In Their Own Story

The rain came sideways through the treeline, turning the dirt path into a slick ribbon of mud. Clarke knelt in the undergrowth, pressing a bandage over a cut on her forearm, and watched the mist curl between the trunks like something breathing. Somewhere ahead, the Mountain was a grey smudge against the overcast sky, the Temple's silhouette barely visible through the haze.

She could hear the others behind her—Octavia's steady breathing, Raven muttering calculations under her breath, Bellamy's boots crunching on the packed earth. They had been walking for three days. The Northern Hemisphere was a memory now, a story they told the younger ones like a fairy tale about a world that burned. Here, the air tasted of moss and iron. The trees were so thick their canopy wove a cathedral roof overhead, and the light that broke through fell in green-gold shafts that made everything look like a painting someone had left out in the rain.

She stood, wiped her hands on her pants, and looked south. The valley opened up ahead, and beyond it, another ridge, and another. The world stretched on, alive and indifferent and impossibly, stubbornly green. She started walking again.

Reader's Guide

You arrive from the north on foot, and the first thing that hits you is the smell—loam, wet bark, the mineral tang of a river you can hear but not yet see. The treeline thickens within an hour, and the irradiated grey of the North gives way to a green so dense it feels architectural. This is the Southern Hemisphere, and it does not forgive the idea that the world is dead.

The 12 Tribes' territories spread across the highlands and river valleys. Each tribe marks its borders with carved totems and painted stones. The Skaikru hold the area nearest the original landing zone; their village is a cluster of timber-and-thatch structures tucked into a forest clearing, and their elders speak of the Ark in hushed, almost fearful tones. The Mountain rises above it all, a sheer granite spire crowned by the Temple—a vast, angular structure of pre-war concrete and glass that the tribes treat as sacred, though its true purpose is a secret kept by the Skaikru and, later, by the 100 themselves.

As the seasons pass, the landscape changes with the story. New settlements sprout along the rivers. The 100's presence fractures old alliances and forges new ones. Radiation pockets still linger in the northern reaches, a reminder of what happened. But the heart of the south—its forests, its peaks, its endless waterways—remains what it has always been: the last place on Earth where you can look up and see a sky that is not a warning.

Did You Know?

• The Southern Hemisphere's habitability is a direct narrative contrast to the Northern Hemisphere's total devastation, and the show uses this split to explore how geography shapes culture and belief among the surface-dwel
• The Temple atop the Mountain is a pre-war structure that the 12 Tribes revere as a holy site, but its true function as a piece of advanced technology is gradually revealed to the 100 over the course of the series.
• The Skaikru, the tribe closest to the Ark's landing zone, carry generational knowledge about the Ark and the nuclear war, making them a crucial bridge between the surface and the orbital past.
• The 100's southward journey in Season 3 transforms the show from a survival story in a single valley into a sprawling exploration of an entire living continent, fundamentally expanding the series' scope.