“Pilot” is episode one of season one of The 100.
97 years prior to the start of this series, a global nuclear war wiped out all humans on Earth. 12 nations had space stations, which amalgamated to create one giant station, the Ark. On this station, all crime is punishable by death – unless you are under 18. There are 100 people under 18 guilty of crimes, and they are sent to Earth as an experiment, a century before the Earth is supposed to be inhabitable, because the Ark is losing the ability to cope with the population size.
Things go wrong, and they don’t land where they are supposed to, miles away from their food. It starts to get a bit Lord of the Flies. Whether it continues in that vein is another question. The world is also quite strange.
As I suspected, The 100 of the title becomes inaccurate very quickly.
I’m not sure if there were enough people on the original space stations to actually make a sustainable population, let alone one that has grown to the size it has. And why didn’t they go to the Moon? The hardest part is getting up from Earth.