Apocalypse How/Class 0: Difference between revisions

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* In the third arc of ''[[Bio Meat]]'', 90% of Japan's population has been eaten alive by the titular creature and there are only two populated cities left. {{spoiler|But by the end of the series, the only city left is Osaka.}}

* 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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** {{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.

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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 ~~Handmaids~~ Tale]] is a Class 0 or a Class 1, leading to a dystopia in the United States, but there are hints the rest of the world isn't as dramatically affected.

* The disaster preceding the events in Margaret Atwood's [[The Handmaid's Tale]] is a Class 0 or a Class 1, leading to a dystopia in the United States, but there are hints the rest of the world isn't as dramatically affected.

* 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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== 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 40000]]'' cruiser can, in the words of [[Ciaphas Cain]], '''[[The Hero|HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!]]''', "level continents." They frequently ''do.'' 40K doesn't even need weapons to accomplish this - the debris from a naval engagement can cause catastrophic damage all on its own. Think about it, the average cruiser in that setting is several kilometers long, several hundred meters wide and tall, and weighs in at millions upon millions of tons of armoured hull. If one of these ships breaks up in orbit, even the fragments will be million-ton steel meteors... If it goes down in one piece, the planet below gets nailed by a METEOR THE SIZE OF MOUNT EVEREST! And that's not even mentioning the even larger heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, grand cruisers and vastly larger battleships.

* Killing off darklords in the [[Ravenloft]] setting has been known to cause entire domains to disappear, their native populations included.

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** 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.