The New People

The New People is a 1969 American television series on ABC that focused on a group of young college students who were returning from a trip in Southeast Asia when their plane crashed on an island in the south Pacific Ocean. The crash killed several of the college students, and all but one of the adults, who was badly injured and later died. The surviving students were the only human life remaining on the island. The island was unusual in that it had been built up as a site for a potential above-ground nuclear test which never took place, leaving all of the buildings and (improbably) supplies untouched and ready for use by the survivors. The trip to Southeast Asia was a goodwill tour arranged by the State Department showcasing what American youth were like, but it went awry when one of the students disrupted it, feeling that what they were doing was fake and a way to gloss over what was going on in the country and with relations to the Vietnam war.