Apocalypse How/Class 0: Difference between revisions
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== Multiple Media ==
* Basically every [[Film of the Book]] (or radio version) as well as the book of ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]''. The global scale of both the 1953 and 2005 films might raise it to a Class 1.
* [[Angel]], indicated in the {{spoiler|final episode's last scene}} and mostly shown in the comics. Los Angeles becomes a chaotic demon war zone, although it's undone in the end of "After the Fall".
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The shockwaves created by the {{spoiler|titular character}} in ''[[Akira]]''. One takes out the center of Tokyo. {{spoiler|Then it happens again. In the entire series, it happens 2.5 times.}}
* In the third arc of ''[[Bio
* In ''[[Earth Maiden Arjuna]]'', Japan's entire water supply is polluted by chemicals held in plastic containers dissolved by evil bacteria.
* In the manga version of ''Violence Jack'', the Kanto area of Japan was destroyed by an earthquake {{spoiler|that was caused by the battle between Satan and Devilman}} and had been separated from the mainland.
* In most arcs of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'', {{spoiler|the Great Hinamizawa Disaster causes the entire village to be wiped off the map, with additional fallout as former residents go crazy across Japan.}}
* Cell in ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' absorbed the life force of entire towns' residents and while searching for Android 18, blew up dozens of islands. He, along with Nappa in the Vegeta saga also wipe out an entire military fleet. Nappa and Vegeta also blow up part of an Earth city shortly after arriving.
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==
* An issue of ''[[The Authority]]'' features a swarm of alien creatures that are launched at Earth. They can't fly, though, so their landing in Japan is "just blind luck".
* In Marvel Comics (mostly ''[[X-Men]]'' and other mutant-related titles) the island nation of Genosha was destroyed during a series of events following the ''Decimation'' storyline, and is, as of the 2020 ''Empyre'' limited series, dead as a nation, lying in ruins and populated only by squatters, mostly with villainous motives.
== Films -- Live-Action ==
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** {{spoiler|During the credits, the infected are shown escaping into Paris, suggesting that we may have moved into a Class 1. Or at least a much larger scale Class 0 (The whole of Europe).}}
* ''[[Armageddon]]''. While a direct hit of the asteroid would be Class 6 or X, the smaller chunks that reached Earth beforehand wiped out a couple of cities.
* ''[[Batman (film)|Batman (1989)]]'' comes within days, perhaps even just ''hours'' of a Class-0. [[The Joker]]'s [[Do Not Adjust Your Set|televised]] [[Brand X]] stunt had an entire major city too terrified to clean their bodies, or their clothes, or the ''buildings''... An entire city yanked back to [[The Dung Ages]]. Fleas, ticks, lice... Eventually people would start dying of things besides the poison, which would have led to total panic. One good riot under those conditions would kill everyone in the city as Joker contaminated ''damn near everything needed to treat wounds on that scale''. After a few days without maintenance, restoring water and power would be a multi-million dollar effort. A few weeks after ''that'', all the bodies will have been devoured by vermin, resulting in a population explosion that would sweep the Eastern Seaboard, possibly repeating the process. Batman broke the Joker's "poison code" just in time to prevent millions(perhaps even ''hundreds'' of millions) of deaths. The original script was more clear about this, but [[Executive Meddling|the execs nixed a montage of filthy people fleeing Gotham.]]
* ''[[Cloverfield]]''. May range up close to a 1, seeing as how {{spoiler|the monster is still alive at the end, and while it might not keep rampaging, it sure as heck doesn't seem like anyone can stop it}}. [[Word of God]], however, has stated that {{spoiler|the big nasty bit it}}.
* ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' sends America and Europe into a deep freeze including mile-high glaciers. By the time they understand the gravity of the situation, Canada and Alaska are already essentially DOOMED? Fortunately, everyone else in the US is able to move to Mexico. The British, on the other hand, are left to perish with dignity, while Australia suffers [[Did Not Do the Research|largest typhoons ever recorded]].
* ''[[Deep Impact]]'', which only saw the East Coast destroyed by a massive tidal wave; it also mentions Europe and Western Africa being destroyed, and a view from space shows the Caribbean islands having more than a little problem on their hands.
* Many of the ''[[Godzilla]]'' films.
* In the early-1970's Japanese movie ''Nippon Chimbotsu'' (''Japan Sinks''), which was remade in 2006, the entire Japanese archipelago is destroyed, Atlantis-style, by a series of massive earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions triggered by shifts in the tectonic plates on which the islands rest. The survivors are evacuated literally worldwide.
* ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' has an unknown number of people zombified, but few enough the UK manages to get back up on its feet and uses the zombies as cheap labor in retail chains as well as unwitting participants in game and talk shows. Think zombies in '[[Wipeout 1988|Wipe Out]]'.
* The 2008 remake of ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'' has Gort in the form of a grey goo take out roughly a third of the US. Klaatu stops it with a pulse, [[Inferred Holocaust|presumably wiping out at least tens of thousands more relying on electricity]]. If the pulse is permanent, then it may be a Class 2.
* The 1973 adventure film ''[[Sannikov Land]]'' is set on an island warmed by a volcano. When the volcano goes to sleep, the island becomes as frozen as the rest of the Arctic, and everyone on it will die.
* At the end of ''[[Cabin Fever (film)|Cabin Fever]]'', a Class 0 appears to have been narrowly averted, as the posse shows up to clean up after our intrepid heroes succumb to a flesh-eating virus. This lasts until we see the body of the first guy seen with the virus lying bleeding in a river, which is then harvested for bottled water, implying a true Class 0 or 1 somewhere down the line.
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[The Third World War]]'' might be a Level 0, as Birmingham and Minsk are destroyed by nuclear weapons.
* The cometary impact at the end of ''Newton's Cannon'' did this to a major chunk of Europe.
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* [[The Silmarillion]] has the destruction of Numenor by [[God|Eru]]. Morgoth's triumph just before the end of the First Age may also count, and the destruction of Beleriand in the War of Wrath definitely does.
* [[Alas, Babylon]] is somewhere between 0 and 1, in that the US and USSR engaged in large scale nuclear war that decimated their respective populations, but left the third world more or less intact. The majority of the US is knocked back to 19th century technology, and using wheat for something as trivial as making alcohol would get you lynched.
* The disaster preceding the events in Margaret Atwood's [[The
* Sergej Luk'yanenko's ''Линия Грёз'', as set in the [[Master of Orion]] universe, features several varieties of planet-scale destruction. As most races in the conflict span over multiple systems, those attacks are class 0. This might of course instantly move up to class 5 or 6 if the species in question has been reduced to inhabiting only one planet (usually their native one) or the attacks are directed against all planets inhabited by the fraction simultaneously. Luk'yanenko avoids the topic of pre-space age species; in the games it's possible to find native sentient life on generally life-friendly planets. Wiping those aborigines out is discouraged, though, as they turn into an agricultural boon for the race to settle on the planet. Examples of destruction:
** Massive biological weapon bombardments employed by the human Empire during the last great interspecies war on Bul-Rathi planets.
** Human ''free hunters'' carry a small antimatter payload, which they are supposed to drop if they happen to get close enough to any hostile inhabited planet.
** The human Empire goes for planet-wide meson bombardment on planets that are about to be conquered by an alien race and indefensible at the current tactical situation. Several decades later a refugee remarks that there is hope for her homeworld - the oceans are about to stop boiling.
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== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* In an alternate timeline in ''[[Doctor Who]]'''s "Turn Left" where the Doctor dies in the early 21st century, a nuclear storm drive ship called ''Titanic'' hits London, wiping out the entire city and locking out any immigration to and from the UK. The ship itself easily had the potential to be on the scale of Class 5 or 6, so it's assumed that the disaster was actually mostly averted. Later, over 50 million Americans are forcibly turned into creatures made of fat called Adipose, killing the humans they were made from.
* In two unrelated [[Bad Future|bad futures]] of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', a man with nuclear-based superpowers destroys an entire city (New York City and Costa Verde, California, respectively). Another future shows Tokyo being destroyed in a flash of light.
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== [[Music]] ==
* The song Aenima by [[Tool]] (as well as the Bill Hicks routine the song is based on) describes the entirety of California sinking into the Pacific Ocean, creating the Arizona Bay.
* The [[Billy Joel]] song "Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)" is about [[Noodle Incident|an unspecified disaster]] that wipes out New York City and the surrounding areas, but "life went on beyond the Palisades" and most people have moved to Florida, and [[The Mafia]] is thriving in Mexico.
* The [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] song "The Last Domino".
* The Chris De Burgh song "Transmission Ends".
{{quote|
''Transmission ends.'' }}
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Damien Richter's activities and a brief orbital bombardment with hypervelocity mass drivers destroyed much of the capital planet of Avalon in ''[[Tech Infantry]]''. And the first [[Bug War|Bug Invasion]] wipes out Rio de Janeiro and the surrounding area of Brazil two centuries before that.
* The main weapon batteries of any ''[[Warhammer
* Killing off darklords in the [[Ravenloft]] setting has been known to cause entire domains to disappear, their native populations included.
** In the 5th Edition version, both Darkon and Falkovnia are undergoing this, the former because its Darklord, Azalin, is missing, the latter due to a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] created by the darklord's foolish obsession. The guide book does suggest ways they might be saved.
* In the ''[[Greyhawk]]'' setting, this probably describes the Rain of Colorless Fire, a disaster that destroyed the Suel Empire millennia ago. Not many Oeridians currently alive know what happened, but most assume the Suel did it to themselves when attempting to do something ''very'' evil.
* In ''[[Eberron]]'', a similar magical disaster called the Day of Mourning destroyed the the nation of Cyre. Like much in the setting, the reason is left purposely unknown to suit whatever campaign the [[Game Master]] is running.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In the [[Improbable Island]], [[The Verse|world]], the EMP war was an interesting cross-level. with the exeption of people with pacemakers, nobody died, yet technology was pretty much knocked back 50 years since nobody actually knew how to make silicon computers anymore.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', with the {{spoiler|destruction of Midgar at the end of the game}}. The [[Gainax Ending|ambiguous ending]] left some gamers thinking that a Level 3a scenario occurred, but ''Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children'' [[Jossed|corrected this]].
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==
* In ''[[Freak Angels]]'' at first it's assumed that the flooding was global but is later revealed that {{spoiler|only Britain was affected}}
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In the series ''[[Generator Rex]]'', millions die worldwide after The Nanite Event. And thanks to the nature of the nanites, it could escalate all the way up to a Class 4 - maybe even Class 6 - at any moment.
* One happened offscreen and in the past in the original ''[[My Little Pony]]''. The kingdom of Grundleland was wiped out the last time the Smooze was unleashed, leaving only a tiny handful of survivors.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.
** Wasn't exactly regional though, as it spread around the world including ''the arctic.'' In addition to the death rate, the infection rate crippled communities.
*** But it didn't cripple the entire world, nor was human civilization knocked a century back.
* Several cholera outbreaks over the course of history, including the one currently spreading through Zimbabwe, and more recently, Haiti as well. Cholera, smallpox, and other European diseases that wiped out nearly the entire Native American population.
* HIV/AIDS.
* Arguably, the 2004 tsunami.
* This occurred in the (formerly Belgian) Congo during the 60's. The country's infrastructure was destroyed in a series of wars and its mineral wealth was stripped by a succession of dictators. There are still manned railway stations in one town that hasn't seen a train in decades. Land travel is virtually impossible along the Congo river due to fact that parts of the route are either inhabited by [[Ax Crazy]] marauders or completely overgrown.
* The Chernobyl Disaster, which displaced a good chunk of the Ukraine population overnight.
* [[Laser-Guided Karma|The two atomic bombs that were dropped in WorldWarII, though this actually comes in second to the other bombing campaigns over Japan during WWII; the firebombing of Tokyo alone killed about as many as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima did. Firebombing operations happened far, far more often than atomic bombings, obviously. Then add in mass occasions of conventional bombing operations, and US aircraft shooting down poorly trained Japanese pilots in droves by that time period, and...well, Japan lost a massive amount of people.]]
** [[WW 2]] was this for China, Korea, and many other Asian/Pacific nations. [[Asshole Victim|Because of Imperial Japan.]] For starters, look up The Rape of Nanking on Wikipedia.
* The level of destruction in Europe (especially Germany) and Japan even without the Atomic Bombs is probably a class 0 in and of itself.
* Sadly, it seems like the recent earthquake that leveled Haiti could be this, as the recent cholera outbreak has compounded the problem and Hurricane Tomas could make it even worse.
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** Russian and Chinese civil wars. Period.
* The population of Easter Island was nearly wiped after they [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|destroyed the local flora to build]] [[Eenie Meenie Miny Moai|those statues]].
* It's predicted that thanks to global warming, the islands composing [[
** That is the best case scenario. Worst case scenario: entire coastal cities like New York City, London, Shanghai, and Miami, as with entire agricultural regions like Bangladesh and the Nile Delta. Ironically enough, because of their wealth the ones polluting the most will suffer the least.
* On the end of the temperature spectrum, any future ice age (the next is due as early as 10,000 years or so) may cause glaciers to cover the entire Northern Hemisphere, rendering it uninhabitable because of the ice.
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