Apocalypse How/Class 2: Difference between revisions

Planetary-scale Societal Collapse. This takes an entire planet back to at least pre-industrial data, if not hunter-gatherer days. Recovery may or may not be possible.

 

 

== Multiple Media ==

* The plot of ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic (TV)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' -- [[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined (TV)|both series]] -- is based on a multiple Class 2, the Cylons all but wiping out humanity's twelve planetary colonies and pursuing the pathetically small number of survivors through space.

* 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.

* ''[[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.

* Mankind was kicked back to the stone age 3.000 years before the beginning of ''[[Arc the Lad (Video Game)|Arc the Lad]]'', {{spoiler|Arc 2 ends with ''merely'' a class 1 extinction}} [[Player Punch|you can hate the writters for this]]

* ''[[Phantom Dust]]'' is a class 2 in many ways. The memory erasing dust on the surface makes long term exposure to environments that aren't pressure sealed a dangerous or even suicidal venture. The remains of humanity exist in underground shelters seemingly stitched together from collapsed subways. You only ever encounter one such lair, though it's suggested that more exist. Their government is comprised of a silent dictator and his interpreter, and their civilians/field agents are nearly all of suspect sanity. Parts of the vault seem to have technology superior to modern day tech, but the inhabitants are mostly ignorant; they have no idea how to grow crops and have to raid the surface for food and supplies. Of course, later on in the game you discover {{spoiler|That humanity has actually already gone extinct, and the protagonist and all the humans he has encountered are constructed figments created from the dust by the last surviving human, who has long since past away, making it a class 5.}}

* ''[[I Am Alive (Video Game)|I Am Alive]]'' The entire world is massively FUBAR by some unknown cataclysm. The player must navigate the shattered, devastated ruins of what was once New York in order to find his daughter and girlfriend.

 

 

== Webcomics ==

* One of these appears in the backstory of ''[[Wapsi Square]]''. Thousands of years before the comic starts, an ancient civilization tried to create the ultimate weapon. [[Gone Horribly Right|Predictably]], they lost control and it destroyed most of the world. The three parts of the weapon are now main characters.