: As he dies, a despairing Taylor curses humanity and the apes for their mutual destructiveness. With his final strength, he reaches out and detonates the "Alpha-Omega" doomsday bomb.
The film ends with a stark narration stating that the planet Earth is now dead.
In the 1970 sequel , the story picks up immediately after the original film's shocking discovery that the "alien" world is actually a post-apocalyptic Earth. The narrative follows two converging paths: subtitle Beneath the Planet of the Apes
: Deep underground, they find a society of telepathic human mutants who survived the nuclear holocaust generations earlier. These mutants are horribly scarred and hide their disfigured faces under lifelike masks. They worship a massive, cobalt-cased nuclear weapon they call the "Divine Bomb". The Climax
: The gorilla army invades the underground cathedral. In the chaos, Nova is killed, and both Taylor and Brent are mortally wounded by the apes. : As he dies, a despairing Taylor curses
: The mutants use their mind control to force Brent and Taylor—who they have imprisoned—to fight to the death. The duel is only broken when Nova screams "Taylor!", her first-ever spoken word, which distracts the mutants long enough for the men to kill their captor.
: In Ape City, the gorilla General Ursus calls for a holy war to invade the Forbidden Zone and seize it as a food source, despite the warnings of the orangutan Dr. Zaius. In the 1970 sequel , the story picks
: Astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) and his mute companion Nova are traveling through the Forbidden Zone when Taylor mysteriously vanishes into a solid rock wall after witnessing bizarre illusions.