The End of the World as We Know It is based on the 2012 Alloy book of the same name by Iva-Marie Palmer. In the show, when a prison spaceship carrying the universe's most deadly aliens crashes in Southern California, two millennial women with bigger dreams than working at a kids' pizza place in The Valley are recruited by a space cop to hunt down the escaped criminals, who have camouflaged themselves as eccentric Angelenos.