On that show, Americans who survived contagion on a naval destroyer find that even when there are no governments left, Russian officers on a nuclear-powered battle cruiser sneer at international cooperation.

When the American captain warns his Russian counterpart, a vice admiral, that the Russian ship won’t have enough food, the vice admiral asks one of his officers to hand him his pistol. As the Americans stare, transfixed, the vice admiral shoots the officer in the head. “One less mouth to feed,” he explains. (He also fires a nuclear missile at France.)

And in a flashback to the Red-scare days — when scientists like Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall tried to prevent the United States from having a monopoly on nuclear weapons by sneaking atomic secrets to the Soviet Union — on “The Last Ship,” scientists battling the virus go behind the backs of their governments to secretly exchange information.

What’s paradoxical about the newly demonized Russia is that in real life the country is no longer an outright enemy or even the rival superpower (even if in the 2012 campaign, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, called Russia this country’s biggest geopolitical foe). Tensions between Washington and Moscow are high, but terrorism, the Middle East and rogue nations like North Korea are a more immediate menace to national security. That makes it easier — and more fun — to paint the Kremlin red.

The image of Russian iniquity is so deeply embedded in the collective unconscious that it even pops up in a series on BBC America about the court of Louis XIII. “The Musketeers,” a reimagining of the Dumas stories, invents a plotline where bomb-carrying revolutionaries plot to assassinate the French king. In real life, a Catholic fanatic, François Ravaillac, succeeded in killing Henri IV, the father of Louis XIII. The creators of “The Musketeers” chose a Russian name, Vadim, for their French villain, probably because “Vadim” says anarchist conspirator in a way that Pierre or Jean does not.