Where Is Apocalypse Filmed? Inside Channel 4’s Extraordinary Indiana Location
Where was Channel 4’s Apocalypse filmed? Explore the extraordinary former institution and military training centre behind Riverside.
Channel 4’s Apocalypse drops 14 contestants into the deserted community of Riverside, where they must survive for 28 days without running water, electricity or supplied food. Split between two rival camps, the British and Australian participants are initially unaware that another group is living nearby.
The ruined streets, damaged vehicles and empty buildings look like an enormous television set, but Riverside was created inside a remarkable real location. Filming took place at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in the rural countryside of Indiana, United States.
Is Riverside a real town?
Riverside is the fictional name used by the programme, but the buildings surrounding the contestants are real. Muscatatuck covers around 1,000 acres and is normally used by the US military, police and emergency responders for realistic training exercises.
The complex contains more than 2,000 rooms spread across approximately 860,000 square feet of indoor space. Its hospital, school, church, detention facility and residential buildings gave the production an entire community in which to stage the survival experiment.
There are also nine miles of roads, around 2,900 feet of connecting tunnels, woodland, abandoned fields, a reservoir and part of the Muscatatuck River. Original rooms and furniture remain inside some buildings, creating an atmosphere that would be difficult to reproduce on an ordinary television set.
What was Muscatatuck before Apocalypse?
The site’s history stretches back more than a century. It opened in 1919 under the historical name Indiana Farm Colony for Feeble Minded Youth, terminology that is now recognised as outdated and offensive.
It later became the Muscatatuck State Developmental Center and was home to more than 2,000 residents at its peak in the 1950s. The institution closed in 2001, with the final resident leaving in 2005.
Demolishing the sprawling complex was reportedly estimated to cost up to $60 million. Instead, the Indiana National Guard took control and transformed it into a specialist urban training facility.
That history makes the setting of Apocalypse even more extraordinary. The contestants were not surviving inside a purpose-built studio set, but across a real former institution that has since become one of America’s most unusual training environments.
Apocalypse is available to watch on Channel 4 and its streaming service in the UK.
