Apocalypse How/Class 2: Difference between revisions

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'', in which the Gate Disaster takes out half the moon and makes Earth uninhabitable for all but the hardiest of humans. It should, however, be noted that the rest of the [[Terraform|terraformed]] planets and moons in the system are okay; Earth is still in contact with the greater solar community, but is regarded as a backwater. This makes this Class 2 ''in theory'', but it's really more a large-scale Class 0.

* Although the [[Canon]] information is so vague as to be useless, it can be inferred that this was the result of the fall of the Silver Millennium in the [[Backstory]] of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' -- humanity died out completely everywhere in the Solar System other than Earth, and on Earth the fall was so [[Egregious]] that the Silver Millennium and its interplanetary civilization were both completely forgotten. Exactly when this happened is uncertain, although the "thousand years ago" figure frequently bandied about is both historically improbable ''and'' the invention of the [[Cut and Paste Translation|North American dub]].

* ''[[Scrapped Princess]]'' has humanity defeated and imprisoned in a medieval tech level for 5000 years. The guardian AIs have a reset option of killing off 90% if the humans get troublesome.

== Literature ==

* In [[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]], The Great Tribulation. Exact numbers are unknown, but the description "Mortals will be rarer than the gold of Ophir," combined with Revelation detailing the fact that over half of the population will die from the war, famine, plagues and various other disasters, and most of the Christians will be beheaded, burned or starved to death, while none of the unbelievers survive Armageddon means that you could expect maybe one out of a thousand people who enter the Tribulation to come out alive, perhaps a bit more.

** Stirling's ''Peshawar Lancers'' accomplishes much the same thing with a series of cometary impacts that destroy industrial Europe and the eastern United States in the late 19th century, setting the stage for a [[Steampunk]] 21st century where the British Raj in India, an ascendant Japanese Empire, and the Empire of Brazil are the dominant world powers. France is a shadow of its former self and Russia {{spoiler|is controlled by a [[Eldritch Abomination]]-worshipping death cult}}.

* George R. Stewart's novel ''[[Earth Abides]]'' depicts the near extinction of humanity from a pandemic disease. Although there are survivors, the population is too low to maintain technological advancements of modern civilization and within two or three generations humans are living as hunter-gatherers. Actually it's not as pessimistic as it sounds. Acknowledged as one of the inspirations for King's ''[[The Stand]].''

** And of course, ''[[The Stand]]'' by the same author. King does regret not showing what the rest of the world faced, but it's clear that Captain Trips goes worldwide, especially since the US military released it into other countries so they wouldn't be able to attack us.

* The ''[[Shannara]]'' and ''Knight of the Word'' series by Terry Brooks. Humanity nearly wipes itself out in a nuclear war, some of the survivors evolve/mutate into divergent species, [[Here There Were Dragons|magic is rediscovered]], the [[Our Elves Are Better|Elves]] return, and the new races slowly build back up into a [[Medieval European Fantasy]] setting.

* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series, an event occurs three thousand or so years previously known as the Breaking of the World. Caused by all male channelers going berserk, Human society is set back from near utopia to feudalism.

** Additionally, later on in the series, it is stated that the Choeden Kal have the power to ''crack the world like an egg'', a potential class X disaster.

* In a [[Bad Future]] of ''[[Heroes (TV)|Heroes]]'', the immortal Adam Munroe unleashes the Shanti virus, wiping out most of the world's population so they can build anew.

* In the ''[[Babylon Five|Babylon 5]]'' episode "Deconstruction of Falling Stars", its shown that humanity all but wiped itself out in a massive civil war. It takes quite a while and the aid of the Rangers to fix that mess.

* With 40 missile tubes each capable of delivering eight 20-megaton kinetic kill missiles a second, the [[Andromeda|Andromeda Ascendant]] can destroy every population center of a Tarn Vedra (read: Earth like) class planet in under six minutes.

* In the ''[[Star Trek the Original Series]]'' episode "A Taste of Armageddon", Kirk threatens to use "General Order 24" which is this caused by [[Death From Above|Orbital]] [[Nuke'Em|Bombardment]].

* ''[[Babylon Five|Babylon 5]]'' has, as noted above, {{spoiler|the Vorlon planet killers}}. These planet killers are more likely to be around class 2-3--one episode has Ivanova requesting atmospheric shuttles to evacuate survivors from the surface of a world devastated by the planet killer. It doesn't destroy the planet, but once it strikes, it's curtains for most of the population, and the few who remain will probably slowly die of starvation, disease, radiation poisoning, or the like unless they are rescued.

* In ''[[Primeval]]'' the not too distant future appears to be populated entirely by giant mutant bat things that we unleashed upon ourselves. The series is non-specific if this has wiped out humanity entirely in a full Class 3a, or just mostly, but given the ferocity of the future predators and the abandoned state of cities it is at least a 2. The [[Big Bad]] does state we've wiped ourselves out, but [[Genre Savvy|we're not about to take a villain's word for it just yet]] and the series does fall on the idealistic side of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]] so there may yet be hope. Given the geologic time-scales with which this series usually plays around, the Future Predators may not have originally played any direct role in humanity's downfall. It's just as plausible that they evolved naturally, long after we'd gone extinct, and that they would never have met humans if the Anomalies hadn't brought some into the present.

** In "Gridlock", the mood drug Bliss mutated, wiping out all life on New Earth apart from the undercity of New New York which was safely quarantined by the Face of Boe.

** The Reapers in "Father's Day" erased almost all traces of human life to fix a paradox in time, if left unchecked reaching a Class 3b.

 

== Real Life ==

* Mass Extinction-level events would certainly count as high-level class 2's; events such as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) event, which among others killed off the dinosaurs. Or the great extinction event ever, which was the Permian-Triassic event, which killed off approximately 90-95% of ''all life on earth''. It's not for nothing that archaeologists, who aren't a profession usually given to mass hyperbole, refer to it as '''''The Great Dying'''''.