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* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' begins centuries after a Class 2, with humanity confined to isolated and impoverished underground villages. The nature of the cataclysm, and the surprising reasons for it, are revealed as the show goes on.
* The world created by [[Tsutomu Nihei]]. Let's list it out:
** In [[
** After that. In [[
** ''After that...'' The protagonist of [[Blame]]! is searching the the ginormous sphere for people with genes to turn off the chaos. He must deal with all the preceding crazy things mentioned (and more). Thankfully he succeeds in his mission (though the series ends right before it is directly shown).
** After that in "Net Sphere Engineer" the last remnants of humanity are unfortunately not as safe as they would have hoped. But they have another protagonist to deal with the problems this time.
* About 500 years prior to the beginning of ''[[
* In ''[[Heat Guy J]]'', after humans appropriated the technology of the [[Superior Species|Celestials]] in [[Humans Are Bastards|their conquest for power]], there were apparently large-scale wars. The result? Earth's human population is reduced to ''seven'' city-states (with some small towns and [[Space Amish]] villages surrounding them), who are mistrustful of one another and do not trade, communicate, etc. with one another.
* In ''[[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]]'' humanity is reduced to survival in underground cites that are rapidly becoming uninhabitable due to radiation thanks to the Gamilas' continual bombing of Earth.
* ''[[Turn a Gundam (Anime)|Turn a Gundam]]'': This was the end result of the Turn A using the Moonlight Butterfly across all of the Earth's surface. The ability works by spreading nanomachines around that attack technology, turning it into sand. 2,000 years later, Earthborn humanity is barely up to early 1900s technology levels. {{spoiler|The final battle of the series is trying to stop Ghingnham and the Turn X from doing this ''again''.}}
* ''[[Nausicaa of the Valley of
== Films -- Live-Action ==
* While the series started out with some aspects of civil order still around, the ''[[
** The implied nuclear war happened between the first and second movie. The first took place in a [[Dystopia]], but civilization was still intact.
* ''[[
* The burned and depopulated world of ''[[Reign of Fire]]'' probably fits here better than Class 1, as all post-medieval technology seems to be salvaged, not anything built by survivors.
* ''[[
* ''[[The Terminator]]'', another "machines kill humans" series. SkyNet nukes the Earth in 1997 (Kyle Reese's timeline) or 2004 (in Terminator 3), wiping out 3 billion humans and killing many others on sight.
* ''[[Yor, the Hunter
== Literature ==
* In [[
* ''Dies The Fire'' and the other [[Emberverse]] books by [[S.M. Stirling]], where a mysterious event causes all recent power sources to stop working at all (electricity, steam engines of any useful efficiency, gunpowder, etc.). About 95% of humanity dies off in the first year from starvation and lack of knowledge on how to survive in primitive conditions. Another large percentage of what's left dies off once cannibalism is no longer an option due to lack of other humans. By the end of the first book it's clear humanity is going to survive -- most remaining threat comes from would-be warlords and despots, who want to enslave rather than kill -- but the cultures that are springing up aren't precisely what you'd expect.
** Then there's the reborn Kingdom of Britain that shows up in later volumes. It seems the U.K. military evacuated the Royals, a solid selection of reference materials, a few thousand lucky/skilled souls, etc. to the Isle of Wright and is steadily recolonizing a Britain occupied by "Brushwood Men" (and dealing with [[Royally Screwed-Up|Mad King Charles and his Icelandic Queen]], but that is beside the point).
** 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]].''
* Kurt Vonnegut's ''[[
* ''[[The Zombie Survival Guide]]'' dubs this a "Class 4 Outbreak" of the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] -- when there are so many zombies that humanity is overwhelmed.
* ''[[Cell]]'', by [[Stephen King]]. We see only US residents, and the book doesn't really address other places, but there's really no reason to think any place with cell phones was spared.
** 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 [[Vernor Vinge]]'s ''[[
* 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.
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* ''[[Z for Zachariah]]'', in which [[World War III]] seems to have wiped out everything but an isolated valley in America. From the sound of it it might actually border on a Class 3, since civilization and most of the population seem to have been wiped out entirely.
* Russel Hoban's "[[Riddley Walker]]". It's two thousand years - we think - after a nuclear war blasted everyone back to Iron Age technology. In the two millennia since the war, mankind has been getting by in a sort of neo-tribal existance, by digging up old rusting metal out of the earth to salvage the scrap metal. All history is orally related via Punch-and-Judy puppet shows and half-remembered accounts of the war are woven together with scraps of the legend of St. Eustace. And the English language is mind-blowingly different.
* Current conditions are like this in ''Cthulhu's Reign'', an anthology of [[
* ''[[The Wild Boy]]'' by Warren Rochelle-somewhere between this and the next, since it was unnatural means, but humanity wasn't totally extinct and was back in pre industrial mode living in the ruins (the ones not being bred by the Lindauzi anyway)
== Live-Action TV ==
* In a [[Bad Future]] of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', the immortal Adam Munroe unleashes the Shanti virus, wiping out most of the world's population so they can build anew.
* In the ''[[
* The plot of ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic|Battlestar Galactica]]'' -- [[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|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.
* In the ''[[Star Trek:
* ''[[
* 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.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' --
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** In ''The End of Time'', {{spoiler|the Master does this in a very creative and, admittedly, totally awesome manner: by turning (almost) the entirety of humanity into ''carbon copies of himself,'' giving rise to, aptly named, "The Master Race". We all get better shortly afterwards, though.}}
** In "Day of the Moon", {{spoiler|we learn that the Silence have occupied the Earth since the age of fire and the wheel. Canton Delaware and the Doctor trick the Silence into post-hypnotically ordering their own destruction through a message in the 1969 moon landing. As there are probably remote corners of the Earth where people haven't seen the moon landing videos, it's unlikely to be a Class 3a.}}
* New Zealand production ''[[
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* The Great Rain of Fire, a planetary cataclysm that devastated the D&D setting of ''[[Mystara]]'' 3000-odd years ago, knocked human and elven civilization from scifi-grade technology back to savagery. The exact nature of the weapons Evergrun's elves and Blackmoor's humans threw at each other is unknown, but nukes were probably the ''least'' of them, as their conflict was so violent that it ''changed Mystara's axial tilt''. Note that this same event rates as a Class 3a for some of the other races that were around back then, and that still others only subverted a Class 3a [[Apocalypse How]] because the Immortals preserved some of them in the Hollow World.
* The Bliss of [[Bliss Stage]] destroyed civilization by making the earth a [[Teenage Wasteland]].
* The "Crucible Of God" scenario in ''[[
** This is also what happens if the [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse
* Observed with regularity in ''[[
* The Yozis in ''[[Exalted]]'' are trying to do this to creation, but it only falls into this category because they're not going to kill all humans. If the Yozis were to succeed it would be worse than a Class Z.
* In ''[[Rifts]]'', a small nuclear exchange during a major surge in the planet's magical field wiped out all human civilization, and nearly wiped out humanity itself. In the three hundred years since, small pockets of civilization have emerged here and there, but 90% of humanity lives as subsistence farmers or hunter-gatherers.
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== Videogames ==
* ''[[
* The freeware game ''[[
* By the end of ''[[
** This isn't the first time either. Several thousand years before the start of the game, the Zeboim era was a technology rich society that was done in with a combination of low birth rates and nuclear war.
* ''[[
** {{spoiler|Valua gets hit with a Class 0 in the later stages of the game. If the Elders of the Silvite Civilization would have succeeded in collecting the Moon Crystals, another Class 2 would have taken place.}}
* ''[[Might and Magic]]''. {{spoiler|An ''entire arm of the galaxy'' was cut-off from the main civilization by alien invasion. Cue a utter collapse of infrastructure, and a fall into barbarism and witchcraft, hard enough that the world Heroes 1-3 and Might & Magic 6-8 takes place are overall at a late medieval/early renaissaince level ''more than a thousand years after the Silence''.}}.
* ''[[
* ''[[System Shock]]''. The delusional AI SHODAN of Citadel Station planned to destroy every major city on Earth from space to assert her (its?) godhood over the survivors. Failing that, she also tried to unleash a plague of mutagenic virus on the planet, which would turn pretty much everybody to mutant-zombies.
* Mankind was kicked back to the stone age 3.000 years before the beginning of ''[[
* ''[[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.}}
* The Great War in the [[Fallout]] series caused one of these. Sure, it was worse in some places than in others, but humanity's pretty much been busted back to the Stone Age. Social organization is tribal in most cases and only the New California Republic even approaches [[Guns, Germs, and Steel|Jared Diamond's]] definition of a "state".
* ''[[
== Webcomics ==
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' the [[Dinosaurs Are Dragons|dragons]] [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20100518.html did this to themselves] with an "iridium bomb," wiping out the [[Everything's Better
* 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.
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== Western Animation ==
* This was actually the ending to the last cartoon of the "future trilogy" [[
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