In the early 1700s, Johann Robinson and his family are the survivors of a shipwreck on stormy seas. They wash ashore on an uncharted, tropical island and build a home for themselves in a tree and a farm with the animals they managed to save from the doomed ship. Left entirely to their own wits and devices, they struggle to survive on an island with carnivorous fauna, where weather can be extreme, and where such menaces as a meteorite-borne fungus, a mad pirate, a plague, even murderous ants, besiege them in their long stay.