There are adults still alive, but severely isolated
Think about it, no matter how amazingly fast and good at spreading this virus was, there still are some very isolated places in the world, some of the most remote would be the Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Siberia, Sahara... So unless the virus was exceptionally suited to extreme cold or heat, able to traverse large bodies of water or desert, it simply would have not been able to kill off all of the adults.- Since we never see anything but the one small corner of the world the show is set in, this is entirely plausible. The only hint we have that there's no-one out there is the fact Jack can't pick up any transmissions from his shortwave radio, but all that means is that no-one's capable of transmitting (or Jack simply has a run of bad luck and misses any possible transmissions).
- In the book, The Tribe: A New Dawn, there is portrayed a "United Nations Survival Fleet", a fleet of various ships that formed a floating city of a sort, connected through various bridges where at least somewhat recently adults used to live and try to find a cure for the Virus. Of course, they are all engimatically gone by the time of the book takes place. This still takes place relatively near where the Tribe left at the end of the series, so similar survival communities might be around the world.
- The same book also finally gives the virus a name, it is referred to as "R18SYT" in an Apocalyptic Log.
The Tribe is set in the future of the same universe as Outrageous Fortune.
- Trudy is Jane's daughter, as the Identical Granddaughter is in effect, skipping a generation each time. Her personality is similar to Rita and Loretta as well.
The Tribe is set in a weird Alternate History...
This is to explain the Canada Does Not Exist.Basically it's one with a surviving British Empire which later became a republic and in which America never became independent. So they had a President, British money, American-twinged accents due to migration within the former Empire, and somehow set up the new capital in New Zealand as its far enough away not to be easily invaded in time of war. It's colloquially called "The City" simply because it's so important no-one needs to refer to it by its actual name.
Somehow the Alien Space Bats made sure this alternate world at least superficially resembled our own.
The Technos' advanced technology was salvaged from a secret military research facility.
Ram might be a demented Teen Genius but there is no way he and the other Technos could have come up with advanced virtual reality and the zappers all by themselves with what limited resources were available to them; there is no way they could run that on civilian 1990s computers either. It is way too advanced for that.- It's been a while since I saw this series, but as far as I remember you are correct. It was at some point elaborated on that their sonic guns for example were from a military lab - and my memory might be failing me on this one, but also I think irreplaceable; Repairable to a point but they can't manufacture more. Ram was the son of a scientist working in said lab.
- Ram broke his legs while jumping off a wall wearing a VR headset that was so lifelike he forgot it wasn't real. That was before the virus. So in the vague futurish world they live in, the technology was more advanced than the 90s. Though it was still commented on that the technos looked like they were more advanced than what was commonly around before the virus. But if we accept that excellent VR existed before, then the only thing really strange are the zappers.
Zoot is a demonic entity that possessed Bray's brother Martin.
Martin opened himself to Zoot's influence, taking on its persona, after the inability to cope with the death of his father, giving him a way of coping with the breakdown of the old world. After Martin's death, the entity Zoot's influence continues to haunt the City forever after, from the Chosen to Ebony's artificially-induced visions to Ram's AI in Zoot's likeness. Season 5 is a Shout-Out to post-9/11 conspiracy theories.
As it was made in 2003, it's late enough for this to work.You have a militant group of religious extremists (the Zootists) and Mega and the Technos seeiking to exert more and more control measures (via technology) with the excuse of counteracting the threat they pose. Does This Remind You of Anything?
The fact that Mega even goes so far as to force everyone to wear barcodes on their wrists is reminiscent of earlier theories which claim that barcodes were a precursor to the "Mark of the Beast". (Christian end-times prognostications often tend to overlap with conspiracy theories online...)
Everyone Dies in the end
The last episode has an explosion releasing a new, more deadly strain of the virus. The characters seem to think they'd be okay just getting out of the city, but this is a virus that spread so effectively that it wiped out all adult human life on Earth. There's no way anyone is safe moving just a few kilometers away. Everybody's Dead (and the books are noncanon). The pre-tribe world (or at least the unnamed country where the show takes place) had some serious gun control laws.
The Locos had a police car, but no police firearms. When Lex is mad enough to assassinate the Guardian, his weapon of choice is a crossbow, and the characters treat it like a gamebreaking item. Even when they are invaded by people with wrist-mounted stun guns, no one dusts off their parent's old revolver. "No guns" was studio-enforced, but in the world of the show it seems likely that the city, at the very least, had very strict gun control.