Depopulation Bomb/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Something wipes out large chunks of the human race.

  • Played Staight: In the past, a virus wiped out 90% of the human race, leaving only the protagonists and a select few others.
  • Exaggerated: After the virus hits, people start randomly disappearing and buildings suddenly become abandoned.
  • Downplayed: ???
  • Justified: That was the point of the virus. The heroes were just resilient.
  • Inverted: The virus causes a sudden boost in population.
  • Subverted: The government creates a near-lethal virus, then says that it only kill mosquitoes.
  • Double Subverted: That was a cover story - they're only using the virus to kill dissidents.
  • Deconstructed: After the virus hits, humanity gets hit hard. All of the millions of essential personnel who disappeared will never return, meaning their skills will never be recreated. The basics of a society's infrastructure - like agriculture, farming, and construction - go unfulfilled, meaning society itself collapses.
  • Reconstructed: The survivors have to learn to adapt - which is what happened in the past anyway.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Enforced:
  • Averted:
    • There is no virus.
    • Alternatively, the virus doesn't depopulate the earth.
  • Invoked: A terrorist group creates the virus and unleashes it on the countries they hate most.
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: Doctors work around the clock and find a cure before it's too late.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

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