Death World: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"We've run into [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|scorpions the size of battle tanks]], three men died from [[Eye Scream|Eyerot]] last week, I've sweated enough to fill a lake, [[Quicksand Sucks|my boots just got sucked into a sink-swamp]] and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|the trees are so thick in places, you can't squeeze between them.]] Emperor help me, I love this place! It's just like home!"''|'''Captain Rock of Catachan''', ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''}}
A
Very few people would ever choose to live there, but since anyone who ''does'' is almost always a [[Badass]], expect any populated Death World to be a [[World of Badass]] by default. Sometimes, [[The Obi-Wan]] may hide out here. Alternately, it may ''be'' [[Mordor]], and/or home for an exceptionally tough and ferocious race. Some actually take advantage of this as a way of [[The Spartan Way|training]] their [[Super Soldier
In real life, every planet outside Earth is dangerous, because we have yet to find a single planet that can support human life. The difference is that fictional Deathworlds are more ''interesting.'' Generally this means they have a relatively breathable atmosphere, have a compelling reason for characters to get out and walk around, and have a variety of dangerous flora and fauna to menace them. A planet that cannot host human life for any amount of time is just "uninhabitable" and not actually a Deathworld.
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== Anime and Manga ==
* The [[Garden of Evil|Sea of Corruption]] in ''[[Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind]]''.
* There are many places in the ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' world that are extremely dangerous to humans. Those regions are closed off to everyone except full-fledged
* The New World in ''[[One Piece]]'' could be considered one, as anyone who has been there then on refers to the first half of the Grand Line as "Paradise". Mind you, the first half is crawling with dangerous pirates, many of which have some pretty badass superpowers, [[Sea Monster|seakings]], unknown weather phenomena, and of course, islands that are somewhat few and far between. And even by Oda's standards it screws with physics! Islands that are consumed by perpetual fire, or plagued with storms where lightning strikes like a downpour, or a giant, floating one are some of the highlights from what we have seen thus far.
** The Grand Line in itself is one of these, from the perspective of the four seas outside of it. It's called "The Pirates Graveyard" for a reason.
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* ''The Angry Red Planet''. Space explorers land on Mars but instead of intelligent life, they're constantly attacked by monsters. When the survivors leave, they get a message from actual Martians, telling them never to return (possibly implying that the attacks were fostered on them on purpose).
* Nearly every world seen in ''[[The Chronicles of Riddick]]'', save Helion Prime, is a planetary-scale deathtrap. Perhaps justified in that most of the planets seen were either uninhabited, or specifically chosen as sites for maximum security prisons.
* Quite probably the ultimate example in film is [[Peter Jackson]]'s version of Skull Island from ''[[King Kong]]''. Featuring [[Big Creepy-Crawlies|the Invertebrates of Utterly Horrific Dimensions]], prehistoric terrors and the most grotesque imaginable (not to mention dangerous) evolutionary
* Morganthus in [[Roger Corman|Roger Corman's]] ''[[Galaxy of Terror]]''.
* The Fire Swamp in the book and film ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'', featuring spontaneous bursts of fire, Lightning Sand, and the [[Rodent of Unusual Size|R.O.U.S.]]
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== Literature ==
* The origin of the phrase is probably the science fiction novel (and subsequent trilogy) ''Deathworld'', by [[Harry Harrison]], which predated ''[[Dune]]'' by more than five years. The planet Pyrrus has very harsh environmental characteristics: twice earth gravity, very high tectonic activity, a 42° axial tilt, and the occasional 30-meter tides. Life could only survive by cooperating temporarily during crises, so every single living thing (plant, animal, microbe...) is psychic. Not just that, but the high radioactivity causes them to mutate and evolve very rapidly. When humanity settles on the planet, they accidentally piss off the local wildlife during an earthquake, causing every living thing to treat humanity as a continuous "natural disaster," driven by one mutual psychic mandate: "KILL THE ENEMY!". By the start of the story, the escalating war has remade everything into dedicated living war machines (tree roots are now venom fanged [[Combat Tentacles]], etc.).
** And, since we're talking about [[Harry Harrison]], there is the literally-named
* Tom Godwin loved this trope to bits. His best-known book, ''The Survivors'' (aka ''Space Prison'') features a group of humans marooned on a world with an environment the aliens figure will kill them all in short order (high gravity, poisonous flora, rampaging "unicorns" and other beasts). [[Genocide Backfire|It doesn't quite work out that way]].
** Another short story has the protagonists land on a paradise world. Unfortunately, shortly after landing their spaceship's engine blows up and other things mysteriously start wearing out very rapidly. {{spoiler|It turns out the entire world's geology is based on diamonds, so diamond dust is everywhere.}}
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** ''Death World'' is also the name of an Imperial Guard (Catachan) novel by Steve Lyons. It takes place on a death world with a flavor of {{spoiler|[[Genius Loci]] .}}
** The classic and first WH40K deathworld is Catachan, which is pretty much a copy of Harry Harrison's.
* Neal Asher's ''Polity'' novels feature two prominent Deathworlds: Masada, a low-oxygen world where just being outside without the proper gear is lethal enough, but it's inhabited by an ecology of nightmare creatures such as Hooders (giant millipedes armored like tanks, whose mouthparts literally disassemble you in tiny little pieces) ...and the planet Spatterjay, an aquatic
* ''[[The Culture]]:''
** The homeworld of the Idirans is described as one of the nastiest places in the galaxy. The Idirans are naturally incredible [[
** Another featured "death world" is quite literally so. The native civilization wiped themselves out long long ago and it is now left as a memorial of sorts, protected by an [[Energy Being]] which is dangerously selective about who can visit the surface. Apparently there are many worlds like this, though most people are smart enough to stay away from them and their protectors.
* The version of Mars portrayed in the ''[[John Carter of Mars|Barsoom]]'' books by [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]] qualifies. Due to an ecological catastrophe in the distant past, the planet is a near-desert, with an atmosphere that is only breathable because of an eons-old "atmosphere factory" that almost no one knows how to fix if it breaks. Just about every type of fauna is carnivorous, and they're all huge. To make matters worse, in order to keep their populations under control, the various humanoid natives have a culture the causes them to exist in a constant state of perpetual warfare, consider assassination and kidnapping to be respectable and honorable professions, and fight duels at the drop of a hat. And the non-humanoid natives make many [[Exclusively Evil]] races seem friendly.
Among those humanoid natives—the Green Men<ref>who aren't particularly man-like, being tusked four-armed big-eyed giants</ref>-- ''one individual in a thousand'' dies a natural death. 98 percent are killed violently, and the remaining two percent voluntarily go on a last pilgrimage down a sacred river {{spoiler|where they are eaten, or sometimes enslaved.}}
** Then there's the various hidden enclaves of practically any sort of monster you could imagine. John Carter wanders into one that consists of a sort of intelligent arachnid puppeteer parasite with specially bred near-headless humanoid creatures that they use as bodies. Another time he finds himself in a city populated by people who can make anything they can imagine into a solid illusion. Any old apparently abandoned set of ruins could turn out to be the lair of some bunch you ''really'' would have been better off not meeting.
* Most plant life on [[Cyteen]], in [[C. J. Cherryh]]'s ''[[Alliance Union]]'' [[The Verse|'verse]], is basically a cross between cottonwood and asbestos, and is full of alkaloid poisons and heavy metals to boot. Go outside the precip towers' envelope without protection and you die quick; get a smaller exposure and you die later from lung cancer. The animal life, at least, is slow and stupid. The original colonists started [[
* [[David Drake]] has used this more than once:
** There are the eponymous ''Seas of Venus'' (two stories, ''The Jungle'' and ''Surface Action'') wherein the plants and animals are all varying degrees of dangerous ranging from "inclement" to "you just got killed so thoroughly, your parents are retroactively dead." (This is based on the novella "Clash by Night" by Henry Kuttner writing as Lawrence O'Donnell.)
** ''Redliners''. Burned-out, over-wrought veterans with more than a few ill deeds on their consciences are sent along to safeguard a group of purely-civilian colonists on a new world. They were warned that the planet had dangerous wildlife, but {{spoiler|it turns out to be an enemy base gone wrong, of sorts -- the entire biosphere is a weapons system that evolves itself in response to the defenses (proactive and otherwise) that the protagonists devise}}. See [[When Trees Attack]] for examples.
** The world of Bellevue in ''[[The General]]'' series Drake co-wrote with [[S.M. Stirling]] is only partially [[
** Drake seems to have a particular fixation with killer plants. Aside from the entries above, there are scenes in ''The Jungle'' and ''Cross the Stars'' where men die in their sleep because fast-growing plants grew '''into their bodies.''' The [[Man-Eating Plant|vampire honeysuckle]] attack in ''The Jungle'' is another prime bit.
** ''Cross the Stars'' also has the ocean world Tethys, where practically all the sea life large enough to see is carnivorous, and one species can grow to 40 metres long.
* Many of the planets in [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' books are
** Two notables are Prism in ''Sentenced to Prism'', where near everything is silica based (critters with [[Frickin' Laser Beams|frickin' lazerbeams]]), and the lush (and hungry) jungle of Midworld from the eponymous book as well as the Pip and Flinx vehicle ''Mid-Flinx''.
** Ironically ''Earth'' is considered a Death World in his series ''The Damned'', by a coalition of alien races whose worlds all have low gravity, low tectonics, practically no-axial tilt (preventing violent weather) and few true predators. The average unskilled couch-potato human is more than a match for their trained soldiers. Trained Earth military personnel, especially special-operations types, are essentially incarnate demigods of death by alien standards.
* C. S. Friedman has used this more than once.
** In the ''In Conquest Born'' universe, Azea's fresh water is often contaminated by parasites; its animal life is not tameable and very dangerous; its plant life is poisonous to humans if not prepared carefully; and the atmosphere has occasional poisonous deathwinds. The planet was settled by refugees who had nowhere else to go, and they had to use genetic engineering on themselves to survive since they didn't have the resources for [[
** The ''[[Coldfire Trilogy]]'' features Gerald Tarrant spending several human lifetimes to ''build'' a Death World ecology in his lands with careful planning and study, as well as at least one example of others trying the same stunt ''minus'' the careful planning and study. As the others are mostly adolescents, [[Hilarity Ensues]].
*** And the planet itself in that trilogy is ''already'' a Death World (at least for humans). Tarrant just made his bit of it [[Up to Eleven|even more extreme]].
** And in ''The Madness Season,'' the Tyr homeworld is a
** Not to mention, also from ''The Madness Season,'' the planet Yuang, which is covered with continual toxic clouds and chemical firestorms, and whose atmosphere is laced with poisons so deadly that any contact with it all causes death or severe neurological damage. It's stated that no human could survive there, without help and continuous supplies from other planets.
* In David Gerrold's ''[[War Against the Chtorr]]'' book series, the Earth itself is turned into a
* This is revealed to be the fate of the [[Future Imperfect|legendary human homeworld]] of "Dirt" in the ''[[The Stainless Steel Rat]]'' [[The Verse|'verse]], due to changing orbit.
* Frank Herbert's ''[[Dune]]'': Arrakis and Salusa Secundus might be the [[Trope Maker]] for many. As of the first novel, only about half of those born on Salusa live past puberty. Salusa Secundus is the home world for the feared Imperial Sardukar. One of the reasons they are so feared and elite is that simply surviving long enough to be recruited makes you a [[Badass]] by default.
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** McCaffrey's ''Dinosaur Planet'' is likewise an extremely active ecology, complete with a mix of toxic alien life and adapted prehistoric Earth life. There are even insect swarms which ''eat Dinosaurs bones and all''.
** The Red Star from McCaffrey's ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' series is an extreme Death World, and Threadfall temporarily converts whole swathes of Pern itself into a deathtrap.
* [[Bas-Lag Cycle|Bas-Lag]], the setting used in [[China Mieville]]'s novels is pretty inhospitable on the whole, but it also contains at least two of its own
* The ''War World'' series created by Jerry Pournelle is mainly set on Haven, a frigid prison moon with a barely-breatheable atmosphere, 87-hour days, a harsh ecology, and has been a dumping ground for violent criminals for six hundred years. Then a shipfull of refugee [[Super Soldier|supersoldiers]] move in and [[Death From Above|nuke the last remnants of civilization]], and the neighborhood goes ''completely'' to hell. And some of the recent exiles to Haven came from an even harsher planet called Frystaat, which has [[Heavyworlder|twice Earth's gravity]], blinding ultraviolet sunlight, sandstorms of industrial-grade abrasives half the year, is so hot humans can only live at the poles, and the native life is hunted with anti-tank weapons.
* Terry Pratchett's ''[[Discworld]]'':
** XXXX, or Fourecks, the Discworld equivalent of Australia. When Death asked his library for information about dangerous creatures, he got buried in ''Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses and Lichens of Terror Incognita'' that went at least as far as "Volume 29c Part Three." When he asked about creatures that ''weren't'' dangerous, he received a simple slip of paper that read "Some of the sheep."
** In ''The Science of Discworld'', the UU wizards quickly conclude that ''Earth'' is a
** Fourecks isn't the only place that dangerous on the Disc. There's places where the magic is so strong and so wild that if you go to sleep you probably won't wake up the same shape. Then there's places like the (long since destroyed) Temple of the Sender of Eight, which was within a few days ride of the most populous region on the whole central continent.
* Marduk, in [[John Ringo]] and [[David Weber]]'s [[Prince Roger|March Upcountry]] series.
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** Mirkwood, full of giant spiders and poisonous squirrels.
** Most of the parts of Mordor the heroes have to go through to get to Mount Doom.
* [[David Weber]]'s ''[[Honor Harrington|Honorverse]]'' is full of
** Grayson has so much heavy metals the ''atmosphere'' can get lethal at times.
** The prison planet nicknamed Hell, which isn't all THAT bad a place, except for the subtly different biochemistry of the local flora and fauna. '''All of it'' is instantly poisonous for humans to eat--besides one native equivalent of the potato. ''That'' tuber merely leaves those who eat it with the (treatable) equivalent of brain
** On one world, native bacteria eat ''chlorophyll'', making colonists starve by destroying all their crops?
** On another, [[Heavyworlder|the gravity is about 2.5 ''g'']] and air is so dense that humans could live only on mountaintops, lest they get an ''oxygen'' poisoning.
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* The homeworld of the Protectors of the Unborn in James White's ''[[Sector General]]'' qualifies, as the only sentient species there never sleeps and has evolved so that it ''needs'' to be continually attacked in order for vital hormones similar to adrenaline to flow through its body, in a similar way as we need to breathe...if it stops being attacked for more than five minutes or so, it will die. The organism is hermaphroditic, and the young are sentient and telepathic from within the womb, as they lose their intelligence when born, and being born sentient would mean instant death. Any world where a species like that evolves qualifies as a Death World.
* The ''Outernet'' series has the planet Aaaaaaaargh, named after the first and last words said by anyone who visits it.
* The [[The Underland Chronicles|Underland]] jungle. Scratch that, the entire Underland may count. Besides the humans have to deal with intelligent races of [[Rodents of Unusual Size]] and [[Big Creepy-Crawlies]]. This isn't to mention the earthquakes, volcanoes, eyeless plesiosaurs, giant squid and the occasional plague outbreak. Good thing the humans have the [[Giant Flyer|bats]] on their
* In [[Stephen King]]'s novella and movie ''The Mist'', much of New England becomes a Death World of savage alien beasts.
* [[Robert Silverberg]]:
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** Valeria, homeworld of the Dutch-descended, vaguely Boer-inspired [[Space Marines|Valerian Marines]], probably also qualifies. In the original novels we don't learn much more about it than it being hot, humid and having [[Heavyworlder|roughly thrice-Earth-standard gravity]]. A [[Expanded Universe|much later RPG sourcebook]] elaborates: it's also heavy on volcanic activity, hence full of noxious fumes and harsh weather, as well as singularly hostile wildlife. The [[Badass Army|Galactic Patrol]] has a major hostile environments training camp there.
* ''[[Star Wars]] ''has seen just about every variant on the theme in its Expanded Universe.
** [[Shatterpoint|Haruun Kal]] may to take the cake. The majority of the planet's "surface" is uninhabitable due to hugely toxic clouds, limiting humans to one giant mesa. This mesa is covered in thick jungle and dotted with dozens or hundreds of active volcanos. Most of the animals, from the big cats and wolves down to the monkeys, are carnivorous and good at
** Also, Mustafar anyone? [[Lethal Lava Land]] much?
** Sullust is another [[Lethal Lava Land]], but one that managed to evolve an ecology and native sapient species. The planet used to be okay, but at one point the Sullustan corporate government decided to abandon all environmental regulations and just transfer the entire population on space stations.
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** Korriban, the Sith Homeworld. That alone should be enough to qualify, but then you have to add in the arid landscape, Volcanoes, and Jedi-Eating... things. If that wasn't bad enough, the planet is also basically a necropolis, filled with the tombs of the Dark Lords of the Sith who once ruled the planet. And the spirits of the Dark Lords haven't entirely crossed over...
** [[I Don't Like the Sound of That Place|Despayre]], a world featuring in ''[[Death Star]]'', has an ecology explicitly like this, with there being approximately no lifeforms which don't have thorns or spikes or poison or ''something''. It's made worse by the fact that it's a [[Penal Colony]] full of all the convicts that the Empire thinks are worse and less redeemable than the ones they send to Kessel - Kessel crooks can serve their term and get shipped back out. Sometimes that's murderers and pirates. Sometimes it's political prisoners. Despayre's convicts do have a chance to be shipped up to work on the Death Star, but knowing the Empire they're not going to be freed after. {{spoiler|And then it's used to test the Death Star's superlaser. [[Earthshattering Kaboom|Without evacuating the population.]] [[Moral Event Horizon|Or the guards.]]}}
** Perhaps the worst of them all is [[Knights of the Old Republic|Malachor V]], the planet destroyed by Revan during the Mandalorian Wars. Prior to the Mandalorian Wars it was a lush, agricultural world. After the Mass Shadow Generator devastated the planet, however, it became an inhospitable world covered in jagged mountains and cliffs, with constant seismic activity and extreme lightning storms. Poisonous gas vents became active, and the only living beings on the planet were Storm
** Said Force wound has the charming side effect of causing great mental anguish to anyone who sets foot on the planet. For non Force-sensitives. Those who ''are'' Force-sensitive (and not protected by the negating power of the Exile) are ''instantly driven into Dark-Side-fueled insanity''. It is theorized this is where Darth Revan... 'made' most of his army.
* The underground prison world of [[Piers Anthony]]'s ''Chthon'' and its sequel ''Phthor'' is a hellish nightmare world. The animals are all deadly and implacable. All the water sources are inhabited by monsters that will either eat you (if you're lucky), or turn you into a distorted zombie component of itself (if you're considerably less so). Native diseases can cause you to suffocate in gallons of your own mucus. The only way out is to either buy your freedom with a
* ''[[The Death Gate Cycle]]'':
** The Labyrinth originally existed as a prison for an entire race, but over time it acquired malevolent sentience and turned into one of these.
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** The planet of Androzani Minor from ''The Caves of Androzani'' features regular semi-volcanic mud bursts, is inhabited by a (admittedly rather unconvincing) carnivorous creature and is the native environment of a mineral which, in its raw state, will kill you within a few days if you so much as touch it. Not to mention you can get shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as there's a rather brutal war going on.
** The planet Spiridon in ''Planet of the Daleks'' is a good example. Plants that spurt quick-hardening glue that can trap you or close off your airways. Plants that shoot spores that, if they touch you, [[Body Horror|starts growing in your skin and spreads fast]]. Tons and tons of carnivorous beasts. Hostile, ''invisible'' natives. Honestly, when the army of insane alien killing machines is the ''least ''of your worries, things are bad.
** The planet
** The eponymous planet from "[[Doctor Who/Recap/NS/S4/E10 Midnight|Midnight]]" is seemingly made entirely of precious gems, and as such has a stake as a high-class vacation planet... as long as you stay inside, as the ''reason'' the planet's soil has turned to gems is because it's constantly exposed to a form of radiation that would incinerate anything living in two seconds flat. {{spoiler|Except for a nasty little [[Body Surf|body surfer]]...}}
** The planet Marinus from ''The Keys of Marinus''. Glass beaches lapped by acid seas. Jungles full of hostile plants and deadly mechanical traps. Frozen wastelands patrolled by packs of man-eating wolves. Bodiless, telepathic slavers. Then there's the WAR...
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** Vulcan itself is pretty harsh by human standards, being extremely hot, dry and rugged, subject to intense electrically-charged sandstorms, and home to man-eating plants and giant, venomous cat-like carnivores.
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'''s "Demon" (Y-class) of planet probably qualifies, although the Federation has armored space suits sufficient to let humanoids brave the crushing gravity, poisonous atmosphere, and intense heat. The shapeshifting "silver blood" native to it was a bit more problematic.
* Several worlds in ''[[Firefly]]'' are Death Worlds, due to toxic interaction between [[Terraform
* "[[Babylon 5|If you go to Z'Ha'Dum you will die.]]"
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== Tabletop Games ==
* The monster-infested main setting of [[Mortasheen]] '''''is''''' this, with the creator even mentioning that "[the setting] has enough deadly exponentially replicating organisms that ''they just cancel each other out''. "
* This is the official term used by the Imperium of Man in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' to designate [[Single Biome Planet
** Catachan, a jungle world where nearly every animal there is said to be a carnivore, [[Man-Eating Plant|and so are the plants]], the majority of the microbes, fungi, and viruses. Wildlife includes the Catachan Barking Toad, a "jumpy" critter that detonates into a cloud of toxins that kills everything within a kilometer radius if you startle it, and the Catachan Devil, a cross between a scorpion and centipede the size of a train. Every settlement fights a daily battle to keep its structures from being reclaimed by the jungle, and just as icing on the cake the gravity's slightly higher than normal. Living past the age of ten on such a planet is considered an achievement akin to graduating from boot camp, making the Catachan Jungle Fighters legendary among the regiments of the Imperial Guard.
** Fenris, a world that is exclusively [[Grim Up North]]. Its elliptical orbit takes twice as long as Terran standard and means that its long winters freeze almost the entire planet, while its summers bring lava flows and tidal waves as the planet passes close to its sun. The land is constantly changing, making permanent settlement impossible, and its resources are so meager that its population must war amongst itself to survive. Other claims to fame include kraken, dragons, and wolves the size of tanks. The [[Space Wolf|Space Wolves]] wouldn't have their homeworld any other way.
** The [[Warhammer 40000|Blood Angels]] hail from Baal, an irradiated, mutant-infested, post-apocalyptic hellhole. They seek out similar worlds for training and recruitment purposes, such as an asteroid field orbiting a black hole where quakes can send mountains falling into the void, all sorts of evil nightmares lurk about, and it's a thousand miles to the nearest neighboring asteroid. The end result are Space Marines best suited for shock assault.
** The [[Warhammer 40000|Salamanders]] hail from Nocturne, a planet which undergoes constant earthquakes, is covered in ash deserts, and has largely reptilian lifeforms called dragons. There are only seven cities which do not undergo seismic activity, called the Sanctuary Cities. Every 15 years, Nocturne's moon Prometheus begins to exert its gravity on the planet, causing the already high seismic activity to go into overdrive. It then spends some three years undergoing an ice age where the planet is covered in frozen tundra. There is a reason the Salamanders fight more to preserve life than kill enemies. They know how precious it is.
** The world of Urisarach was home to a nigh-extinct race of [[Giant Spider|huge arachnids]] dumped there by other aliens because the monsters were just that unpleasant. It earned its nickname after a failed incursion that nearly wiped out an entire expeditionary fleet of space marines: "[[Punctuated! For! Emphasis!|This. World. Is.
** Yet these are relatively mundane locales compared to Daemon Worlds, planets utterly corrupted by the warping influence of [[The Corruption|Chaos]], where reality is reforged on the whims of daemons and the laws of physics are guidelines at best, the results looking something like a collaboration between H.R. Giger, Heironymous Bosch, and M.C. Escher. Despite being the home turf of the [[Legions of Hell]] and the fact that the planet may be [[Genius Loci|literally trying to kill you]], some foolhardy explorers poke around Daemon Worlds, as many are former Eldar homeworlds swallowed up by the warpstorm spawned by the race's calamitous Fall, and still contain ancient relics. Few survive, [[Fate Worse Than Death|none survive intact]].
* The jungles of Lustria in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' are everything nasty about the Amazon with the added benefit of [[Lizard Folk|Lizardmen]] whose [[Mayincatec]] culture is fine with human sacrifice. The Dark Elves' homeland of Naggaroth is a shadowy, bleak continent whose native wildlife includes hydras and cold ones (flesh eating dinosaur-like creatures), and with sparse resources that force its cruel inhabitants to turn to piracy to survive. And worst of all, of course, are the Chaos Wastes, the polar regions around a gaping hole in reality that leads straight to hell
The entire world has since to this with a huge infusion of raw magic into anywhere they could stick it. Now it's anyone's guess whether that forest consists of normal trees or EVIL DEATH-TENTACLE TREES OF HORRIBLE TOXIC DOOM. You don't want to know what some of the other terrain pieces are like.
* [[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]] settings:
** The ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' has one of these in the form of the Underdark, a ''massive'' underground realm full of all sorts of things that want to kill you. If it's nasty and it's murderous, it probably lives
** ''[[Eberron]]'' has a lot. First there's Khyber, its underdark [[Follow the Leader|stand-in]]. Then there are certain planes of existence (Xoriat, the plane of madness, Shavarrath the Battlefield, Mabar, the plane of death, etc...) and some evocatively named regions of the mortal world: the Shadow Marshes, the Mournland, Frostfell, the jungle continent of Xen'drik & the Demon Wastes.
** ''[[Dark Sun]]'''s Athas, a world rendered barren by [[Green Aesop|overuse of magic]], which in ''D&D'' 2nd Ed. had you starting at level 3 so you weren't killed the first time you stepped outside. As ''Yamara'' [http://www.yamara.com/yamaraclassic/index.php?date=2006-02-23 put it]--
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'''Nessus''': One big flat plane, with some canyons. You have nowhere to hide from all the forces of the heart of Hell. No, the canyons are [[It Got Worse|worse.]] }}
** As of fourth edition, Baator is now a [http://images.yuku.com/image/pjpeg/45536ba641a897edcc85536f05a293fe97906a7c.jpg planet]. The one thing that won't kill you? Falling from the upper atmosphere, which is where most people who come here arrive. Why? Because the place isn't merciful enough to kill you that quickly.
** In 1st & 2nd Ed and ''[[Planescape]],'' there's still the various elemental planes (such as Fire, which is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]) along with deadly variants such as Vacuum, Ooze, and Ash, as well as the seven lower planes. The settings were at least 2/3s
** Of the domains of [[Ravenloft]], Necropolis is the most extreme Death World, draining the lifeforce from any living creature. Bluetspur, Saragoss, Timor, the Wildlands and Keening are likewise hostile to human life, and the Shadow Rift can make you vanish from existence if you enter it the wrong way. The Mists themselves can be a Death World too, depending on what you encounter there.
** Limbo, the dimension of utter chaos. While most of it is just boiling 'nothing specific' that only takes form when subjected to conscious will, there is a large island of stable land floating there too. It is a jungle and an extremely deadly one - since chaos-infused creatures acquire [[Healing Factor]] by default, any predator living there has to be all the more deadly. And the constant mutation gives evolution more chances to get the 'ultimate predator' right than seems believable. Not that the local plants are any better...
** And, putting all the rest of the examples to pitiful shame, you have the Far Realm. Try to imagine a place where Lovecraft's [[Cosmic Horror
* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'':
** Phyrexia is pretty much a techno-organic hell, complete with nine spheres, each with its own charmingly bloodthirsty hazards. [[wikipedia:Phyrexian|The Other Wiki]] has a pretty detailed description.
** Grixis and Jund, from ''Shards of Alara'' are death worlds. Grixis is similar to Phyrexia: cut off from green and white mana, the sources of life, it's a dying world infested with armies of the living dead, which fight furiously over the limited (and dwindling) supplies of life force, and even that apparently tastes like stale water or air. Jund is a world cut off from blue and white mana, the sources of order, and is a wild, volcanically active jungle filled with canyons, dragons and similar beasties on the top, and everything trying to kill you on the way up or down. On the bright side, the life magic is strong enough and the food chain is so horrifyingly efficient that there are no undead.
*** Naya, the green-centred shard, also qualifies. At first glance it may seem less threatening than Grixis or Jund, assuming your first glance happened to miss the ''50 foot tall monsters walking around the place''. Fortunately, they're prone to missing you
** The recent plane Zendikar is shaping up, too. Zendikar is a world where D&D-style adventuring isn't the path to wealth and glory, but survival. Full of ancient ruins filled with booby traps, with variable gravity, the land itself alive and cranky, and a chaotic force called the Roil ripping through and randomizing the landscape...well, let's put it this way: the largest center of civilization on the whole plane is a city of vampires.
{{quote|"Granted, the world of Zendikar itself has done its best to kill you. A geopede bit clean through your leather climbing harness two miles up a sheer face of Mount Valakut, plunging you into a ravine--which fortunately bore water, but unfortunately also bore some rapids-loving breed of piranha. The same second you managed to get your hands on one of those strange stone hedrons in Turntimber, you crashed headlong into a crude earthen pit, facing a baloth who looked like it had just heard the dinner bell. You had almost arrived at the misty Jwar Isle, with your maps and guides intact, when the sea decided to take your journey personally, coalescing into an enormous, briny maw and swallowing your galleon whole, washing away all of your cargo and most of your resolve...you've seen more than your fair share of trail guides perish under rolling balls of lava, snatched up by hungry-tentacled gomazoa, or shriveled up skin-to-bone by a fierce case of mire blight, but that's the open trail for you."}}
*** And then the [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldrazi]] [[It Got Worse|returned]]. Which isn't necessarily a catastrophe, [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193658 as long as you've lived a fulfilling and complete life without regrets].
** The plane of Rath, an artificial plane created by Yawgmoth (yes, that's the same guy who runs Phyrexia) as a forward base for attacking the plane of Dominaria. The entire plane is made of "flowstone", a semi-intelligent rocklike material that can be commanded to take any shape or form. It contains such lovely locations as the Death Pits of Rath, the Furnace of Rath, and the City of Traitors. It is also (probably) the original home of the slivers, a species of vicious, predatory, vaguely insectoid creatures with a hive mind that not only allows them to share thoughts, but also ''physical traits''. Any sliver born with a new mutation quickly passes that trait onto the rest of the hive, and this rapid adaptability makes them a deadly menace to most other forms of life. When the invasion came, the plane of Rath "overlaid" itself on the central plane of Dominaria, ceasing to be a distinct plane and unleashing its myriad horrors on Dominaria. (The stronghold, however, overlaid on a volacno; the slivers, in the bowels of the fortress, were cooked alive. As it turned out, though, extinction only delayed their threat.)
** Dominaria itself spent some time as a
* Banshee, the planet where most of the action is in ''[[Deadlands]]: Lost Colony'', is a place where evolution got dialed to 11 a long time ago; even the tamest places on Banshee occasionally have to deal with a humongous lizard-like creature called a "Rex" by the locals. There are worse places. {{spoiler|Banshee [[Genius Loci|doesn't like it that way, either.]] }}
* [[Legend of the Five Rings]] gives us the Shadowlands, which are a bit of Hell on Earth... literally. Not only is it home to such jovial creatures as tribes of murderous goblins, gigantic man-eating Oni (i.e. demons), and not only is the landscape full of every devious trap regular Nature can devise (tar pits, deserts, poisoned rivers...), but the geography itself ''changes dynamically so that the traveller will get hopelessly lost''. Oh, and of course, who could forget that the longer you stay there, the more you'll catch the Taint, an uncurable and disfiguring disease that eventually turns you into a zombie or Oni. All in all, not a very tourist-friendly place.
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** ''Fallout 3's'' Capitol Wasteland is the worst version shown so far. The ruins of DC are filled with homicidal mutants. The sewers are home to insane (and different) mutants. The outskirts are held by [[Exclusively Evil|Raider tribes]]. On top of this, all food and water is radioactive unless put through time-consuming purification; the one source of clean water is being used as a delivery device for a bioweapon.
* Chiron, a.k.a. Planet of ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', has an environment highly toxic to humans and animals, predators (including aquatic and aerial forms) with [[Psychic Powers]] and [[Body Horror]] modes of reproduction and, incidentally, is semi-sentient and not very fond of humans or other unassimilated sentient thought. And then there's that whole "accidentally killing off all life on its surface every few million years" thing. It's actually a pretty nice place... while it's asleep. Too bad you show up when it's starting to come out, as it were, of REM.
* The planet Malta in ''[[Freelancer]]'' has Cardamine floating in the air; breathing that stuff is the in-game equivalent of breathing heroin. (It even gets into your genes, making the addiction permanent for you ''and'' all of your descendants.) In the same system, the planet Carinae seems idyllic, but its local biology is extremely poisonous to humans. Leeds, meanwhile, is so goddamn polluted their people lose their senses of smell and taste within 6 months, Pittsburgh is an inhospitable ball of sand and stone, while winters in New Berlin last an entire year and reach temperature similar to the ones in the Antarctica
* In the ''[[Command & Conquer: Tiberium]]'' series, ''Earth itself'' has been turned into a [[Death World]] due to the transformation caused by the ludicrously lethal yet economically valuable Tiberium--which in ''C&C3'' was revealed to be a {{spoiler|[[Gray Goo]] [[Depopulation Bomb]] to weaken/xenoform Earth for the extraterrestrial Scrin's invasion}}. Unfortunately for them, [[Magnificent Bastard|Kane]] had [[Xanatos Gambit|other plans.]]▼
Still, these places are a walk in the park compared to one of the unlandable earth-like planets. Said planet is hidden in a radioactive nebula cloud, but the planet itself is almost ridiculously Earth-like, right down to having massive biodiversity. It's even described as a Paradise. It just has only one tiny problem regarding human settlement. All the life—both the animals and plants—have a chemical that's quickly and 100% fatal to humans. Humans wisely decided not to attempt colonization.
▲* In the ''[[Command & Conquer: Tiberium]]'' series, ''Earth itself'' has been turned into a
* The ''[[Unreal Tournament 2004]]'' Onslaught map simply called Red Planet is a weird hybrid. It's a planet without a sun, but the entire planet somehow radiates its own red light constantly. According to the map description, the effect drives a man insane within 18 hours. Thankfully (or not), you won't live that long...
* The planet Kaduna 3 in the hybrid [[Interactive Fiction|IF]] game ''Gateway'' is one of these. It has spiky plants whose spikes shoot at you if you as much as breathe at them, worm-like creatures that cling to you the moment you depart your ship and will gnaw your space suit off if given enough time, and other plants that grow so quickly that you'll die if you stay in one place more than a few turns. And then there are the spiders and snakes...
* The game ''Elite II: Frontier'' came with the booklet ''Stories of Life on the Frontier'', short novels set in the game universe. One depicted a group of game hunters visiting Bigg's World, a jungle planet where everything was vicious, deadly and/or poisonous. In an interesting twist, ''human proteins'' were even more poisonous to the native wildlife...
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'':
** The krogan homeworld, Tuchanka, is pretty much one of these. The most common cause of death before the invention of gunpowder weapons was "eaten by predator". The krogan themselves evolved into one of the toughest, meanest, and most temperamental sapient species in the galaxy as a result. And managed to make their homeworld even ''worse.''
*** A world in the same system as Tuchanka is even worse--a Venusiform planet. Many krogan went out of their spaceships to the surface of the planet, deciding that if one of them survived, that'll be the sign of a real man. The number of survivors? '''''1!'''''▼
Let's not forget that the aforementioned "toughest, meanest, and most temperamental sapient species in the galaxy" is actually, judging by their eye placement, evolved from a ''prey species.''
''After'' the invention of gunpowder, their most common cause of death became "death by gunshot", and it ''stayed'' that way once they got off their homeworld. Furthermore, when they were discovered by the salarians, they were in the grips of a nuclear winter with the last remnants of their race struggling to survive.
Finally, once they were taken off their planet and placed in a safer environment, their population ''exploded'', since without Tuchunka's many natural dangers to balance out their [[Explosive Breeder|birth rates]], they were impossible to contain.
▲*** A world in the same system as Tuchanka is even
** Several of the planets visited in the game ''will'' kill you over time unless you're wearing a protection suit or stay in the Mako, and even a protection suit won't help in the worst places. Furthermore, some planets are inhabited by massive Thresher Maws easily able to chew through a shielded armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle in one bite. The same vehicle that can absorb quite a few shots from even the worst Geth energy weapons. Also subverted in a couple of examples: the planets have oxygen and are teeming with life, but the native microbes or pollen provoke deadly anaphylactic shock to humans.
* The Dark World in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past]]'' pretty much illustrates this
** Hyrule in general counts throughout the series, even the light world. A place where crows steal your money, setting ordinary bats on fire just powers them up, chickens are highly organized and vengeful unstoppable engines of ruin, and the flowers variously explode, shoot you with seeds, try to eat you, or sell you overpriced low-quality merchandise. [[It Got Worse|And then there are the actual monsters]].
* The world of Balaho from [[Halo]] has an atmosphere of methane, suffers from two winters, and is subject to random geysers of fire popping out of the ground. Disease is also rampant, forcing the inhabitants to burn the bodies of their relatives as basically an everyday chore. Considering that this is the Grunt homeworld, you'd think they'd be a bit tougher for all this. Though there are many hints that they are actually pretty dangerous in their native environment; the fact that they have to wear heavy and fragile environmental suits anywhere else drops their combat effectiveness to basically zero.
* ''[[Metroid]]'':
** SR388 Before Samus wiped out the Metroids (practically indestructible floating beings which can shoot destructive energy blasts and drain the life from any being they come across), they were the dominant lifeform on the planet (despite there apparently being only a few dozen of them) and any other creature had to be ''very'' strong in order to survive in such an ecosystem. After Samus wiped them out, the planet is taken over by a kind of shapeshifting bacteria ([[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|which the Metroids were the primary predator of]]) which most likely wiped out all other life on the planet, and prove a severe threat to human researchers (and eventually, the whole galaxy). Its very telling that Samus ultimately has to [[Earthshattering Kaboom|vapourise the whole planet]]
SR388 hadn't even been given a proper planet name simply because it was so desolate, dangerous and just plain remote that nobody wanted to acknowledge it further. It's noted after the first game that Samus goes extremely out of her way just to get to the planet, nevermind the fact it hosts not one but ''two'' forms of life that, if left unchecked, could destroy the galaxy.
** You spend about half your time in ''[[Metroid Prime]] 2'' running around [[Dark World|Dark Aether]]. Not only does the resident [[Hive Mind]] and its troops want to kill you, but the toxic atmosphere constantly drains your health unless you find a spot to rest in.
** Zebes is a rather nasty place too. It's been described to be uninhabitable for normal humans (Samus was able to live there only because of being infused with Chozo blood, and even then she was only able to survive in the least deadly areas) and filled with miles of underground caverns crawling with all kinds of dangerous creatures. It got nastier when the [[Space Pirates]] conquered it, too (now the rain's acidic).
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** The Pirate Homeworld, too. It is plagued by constant acid rain powerful enough to eat through the strongest of metal, and even energy shielding. All rock formations seem to have been melted away, and the only structures are very well shielded, making the planet appear to be completely metal. At the time Samus visits, it's also {{spoiler|being transformed into another Phaaze by a Leviathan, and features giant pools of phazon and tentacles reaching up from the surface.}} It's clear from the beggining that this place is bad news.
* ''[[Fable II]]'' has Wraithmarsh, a swampy region that's over run with Banshees and Undead. Ironicly, Wraithmarsh used to be one of the villages of the first ''[[Fable (video game)|Fable]]'', one of the nicer ones, and the one where the Hero was born.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' the people who might have come into contact with the fal'Cie are deported down to the main planet Pulse, which is supposedly a
* ''[[Gears of War]]'''s Sera seems like a fairly nice place....until you realize that underground it is coursing with explosive, mutagenic chemicals that cause terrible sickness in humans, and aboveground during the wintertime, it is quite common to encounter "razorhail," which are shards of glass-sharp ice pouring down from the sky and able to rip human beings apart and even damage ''tanks.'' And that's before you get to the Locust Horde and all the other assorted monsters roaming underground... On top of that, there's the Kryll. It's not known whether they are part of the the Locust Horde or if the Locust just control them. What ''is'' known is that they'll eat ''anything'' that comes into the darkness at night in seconds. ''Nighttime'' will kill you on Sera.
** By the time of ''Gears of War 3,'' [[It Got Worse]]. While the Kryll have been wiped out, it is now entirely possible for Lambent Stalks to erupt anywhere, spewing bioluminescent, homocidal mutants without warning (even over the ocean!). The surface-dwelling Locust have gone feral, killing anything they see. And to top it all off, Imulsion, the miracle energy source all the human tech runs on, {{spoiler|is a parasite that is consuming Locust and humans alike.}}
* [[World of Warcraft]]:
** Outland, the shards of a destroyed planet where the fact that it exists partially in the endless darkness of the Twisting Nether that gives demons their powers is the only thing sustaining gravity and an atmosphere. What with the Hellfire Penninsula, Netherstorm, Shadowmoon Valley, and Blade's Edge Mountains (where ''black dragon carcasses'' decorate the landscape, killed by the mountain-sized gronn), every zone here falls under this trope except the verdant Nagrand, creepy Terokkar Forest, and just-plain-weird Zangarmarsh (which is still full of fungus and predators).
** There are parts of Azeroth that could probably qualify as
* ''Killzone 2'' reveals the Helghast world of Helghan to be a death world, with giant killer dust storms, air that goes from "nastily polluted" to "downright freaking acidic", lightning bolts with enough juice to destroy ISA armored vehicles...and then there's the Helghast themselves, who had to evolve into hulking, bald, glowy-eyed Neanderthals in order to survive in Helghan's environment. This was briefly discussed in the manual and cutscenes of the first game, but this is the first time we get to see first-hand just ''how'' bad it is
Prior to Killzone 2 being made, this was a case of [[All There in the Manual]] as the Helghast world and the Helghast's struggle to adapt to it conditions was explored in more detail in an historical timeline on the official Killzone website.
* The premise of ''[[Heavy Metal (animation)|Heavy Metal]] F.A.K.K.2'' is that the planet is defended from invasion with a universally recognized beacon declaring it to be a Death World. And if you wander outside of civilization, that's exactly what it proves to be.
* The setting of the ''[[Avernum]]'' series. An enormous cave system similar to the Underdark (see above). By the start of the series, several large caves are civilized enough to support cities. The First Exploration, however, found an underworld full of slithzerikai (savage lizard-people), undead, demons, and giant bugs. Part of the fun in the first game is to find the remains of the first explorers, all without fail dead in some corner of Avernum.
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* Char in ''[[Starcraft]]'' is a [[Single Biome Planet]] of [[Lethal Lava Land|volcanoes]], which the [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Zerg]] have come to call a de facto homeworld. One soldier reports that "the planet itself joins in the killing". Zerus, the real Zerg homeworld, was very similar.
* ''[[Borderlands]]'' brings us the wonderful planet of Pandora, which resembles many peoples idea of Hell. Days that are 90 hours long, seasons that are ''7 years long'', at least five wholly unique species of omnivorous creatures perfectly willing, and capable, of bagging humans, almost no natural food, ditto water, massive heat, horrendous weather, {{spoiler|a completely frozen area with active volcanoes}}, a population of untold numbers of angry ex-convicts, armed to the teeth, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and finally, midgets]]. The local plants get in on the act as well. One inhabitant experimented with rolling herbal cigars from the local flora. The result? Death from massive internal bleeding.
* The various [[Pokémon]] regions, where bugs the size of car tires are the norm. People in the Pokeverse say that traveling without a Pokemon companion of your own is dangerous. They are not joking.
Even in a [[Lighter and Softer]] Death World like the Pokeverse, ''[[Pokémon Colosseum]]'s'' Orre stands out in particular. First, it's based on real-world Arizona, which neighbors hellish California and Nevada. So, natural ''desert'' is the majority of the landscape. Second, if you think humans have it bad, wild Pokémon in Orre are said to be rarer than ''water'', and that's saying something given that the only flowing water in the Eclo Wastes is in Phenac City and Agate Village. Third, the place is a [[Wretched Hive]] with the criminals in charge, and [[Complete Monster|Cipher]] is top dog. Isn't it fitting, then, that the most [[Badass]] protagonist in the history of the series happens to come from this very hellhole?
* [[Discussed Trope|Discussed]] in ''[[Ultima Underworld]] II''. When speaking to Iolo about the worlds beyond the blackrock gem, he expresses concern that one of the gem's facets could lead to an ocean floor or a planet of poisonous gases. (It doesn't.)
* ''[[Total Annihilation]]'' has a few: Barathrum (named after a Latin word for Hell) is [[Lethal Lava Land]], Kral is covered in ''seas of acid'', and Core Prime is a sterile metal-covered world inhabited solely by thinking machines.
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** The Gorak's Plane that was visited very shortly during the "Fairy Tale, Pt. II" quest, which is a [[Pocket Dimension]] populated entirely by powerful, vicious monsters.
** The God Wars Dungeon. Imagine a huge open space with dozens of deadly monsters running around, protecting insanely powerful bosses with powerful bodyguards. Even some of the most experienced players tend to avoid that place.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has the Shadow Shard, four zones of floating rocks, populated by a conglomeration of minor [[Eldritch Abomination
* The eponymous planet of Kalevala in ''[[Legend of Kalevala]]'' is brimming with biomechanical creatures that are all trying to kill the protagonist, pits of lava and acid, and all sorts of spikes, bombs, and other hazards. Turns out {{spoiler|it's ''only'' a [[Death World]] for the protagonist; he is inhabiting the body of a Kuririi, which everything on the planet has been ''programmed'' to destroy}}.▼
And now, in the backstory of ''Going Rogue'', we have Praetoria, an alternate Earth where the majority of the planet has been taken over by the [[Animal Wrongs Group|Devouring Earth]], led by the [[One-Winged Angel|Hamidon]]. By [[Magitek|part-scientific, part-magical means]], Hamidon caused [[The End of the World as We Know It]], by causing the Earth itself to literally ''rise against humanity''. The player can't actually leave the safety of the city of Praetoria, but apparently, should you leave, the rocks, trees, and fungi around you will ''literally'' come alive and kill you.
* Don't let the colorful, 2D graphics deceive you--the randomly-created worlds of [[Terraria]] are Death Worlds, one and all. Killer slime can be found in the safest environments. Vultures, sharks, hornets bigger than you are, killer bats, and even piranhas await you above ground. Razor-sharp feather-slinging harpies inhabit the upper atmosphere. The underground is filled with skeletons, killer roots, vampire bats, and far enough down, demons. The hills and caverns are steep enough that you can die from fall damage just by traversing the terrain, not to mention the risks of drowning or falling into pits of lava. Meteors and Hellstone will burn to the touch unless you've built a charm to ward them off. Legions of zombies and enormous, disembodied eyes will pound at your door all night, every night. Eventually, an army of goblins will descend upon you with little warning. And every night has a chance for the Blood Moon to rise, increasing the number and might of the zombies, and turning even the harmless bunnies of the wilderness into walking horrors.▼
▲* The eponymous planet of Kalevala in ''[[Legend of Kalevala]]'' is brimming with biomechanical creatures that are all trying to kill the protagonist, pits of lava and acid, and all sorts of spikes, bombs, and other hazards. Turns out {{spoiler|it's ''only'' a
▲* Don't let the colorful, 2D graphics deceive
** The first instructions you get upon starting the game are on "surviving your first night."
* Planet Ortega in ''Space Quest III'' requires wearing special underwear to survive the intense heat.
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* In [[Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger]] near the galactic core lies the homeworld of the Kvrk-Chrk. In addition to having extremes of temperature, gravity, pressure, radioactivity, etc. that would be immediately lethal for most other lifeforms, it has a biosphere so aggressive that the natives have to eat their food ''still alive and kicking'' in order to ingest it before necrotic parasites do.
** Then there are the Kvrk-Chrk themselves, who consider awake and screaming a FLAVOR, have carapaces that would put a tank to shame, and can rip any other species to shreds effortlessly. The aforementioned extremes on their planet makes them essentially immune to all but the most extreme forms of weaponry (and even the most extreme might only annoy them briefly). Among their other quaint customs is, when visiting a neighbor, ripping off one of their own limbs to offer as a snack. They also consider all other intelligent lifeforms "chatty food". They once declared war by taking a defenseless colony ship and brutally butchering the crew, then broadcasting recordings of the slaughter on all channels, promising that this would be the fate of every other species in the galaxy. The only reason they didn't wipe out the competing empires is because they found out the hard way that being unparalled engines of annihilation on the ground doesn't help too well when the guys you're fighting against can annihilate entire systems with a single shot from a stellar lance several lightyears away.
* Although it [[Wall of Text|practically qualifies as a literature example]], [[Subnormality|"A Christmas Eve in the Future"]] has a [[Shell Shocked Senior|Shell Shocked Spess Mehren]] tell a confessional story of his experiences in a psychic
* [[Homestuck]]:
** Alternia. This is a world whose inhabitants are nocturnal because ''zombies'' wander around during the day. This is a world where the fauna are so vicious, 13-year-old children are expected to be combat-capable. This is a world where the only significantly large body of water is inhabited by a [[Eldritch Abomination|very large thing]] that must constantly be sacrificed to to prevent it from [[Brown Note|using its psychic powers]] on the whole populace. This is a world that serves as the training ground for a [[Proud Warrior Race]] that practices [[The Spartan Way]]. Thankfully, the protagonists from Alternia are sufficiently [[Badass]].
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* The ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' Hazard Scale has four full levels of this. 7) Planetary warzone; 8) [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]; 9) Unavoidable death in ~10 seconds; 10) Unavoidable death within nanoseconds.
* [[Felarya]], [[Not Safe for Work|NSFW]] except everything is trying to ''[[Author Appeal|eat]]'' you. Or just kill you. Or, you know, ''both''. The writer specializes in vore, so, as expected, most of the flora and fauna in his magnum opus are based on one question: "How many ways are there for a creature to eat someone?" There's a creature for every possible method. How about gassing you and growing roots into you to suck out the juices? Or portals ''out'' of that hell being created by creatures who live between dimensions and will ''snatch you while you're in [[Subspace or Hyperspace]]'' for dinner? The ones on the ''low'' end of his hazard scale aren't ''safe,'' they just need to be ''near'' you to kill you as opposed to, say, creating a wind tunnel to suck you up from over a hundred yards away. It's amazingly creative. However, if you're not a voreaphile, the sheer number and creativity of ways you can suddenly find yourself in something's gut make it scary, not sexy.
** It gets better. He has most of his critters forgo the whole 'chewing' bit even when they've got big teeth. When - not if, ''when'' - something in Felarya makes a meal of you, you don't get to die quickly when the jaws close, no. You get a nice acid bath that can take ''days'' to finish burning your flesh and bones down to nothing. When the only mercy a world has is that if you're lucky, you run out of oxygen before you can suffer too terribly, you know you're in a
* [[That Guy With The Glasses]]' version of [[Superman|General Zod]] plays up Krypton's canonical deathworldiness. Apparently, apart from anything else, the acid rain ''melts heads''. And the beverage of choice is uranium slurry.
* ''[[Little Lenny Penguin And The Great Red Flood]]'''s land of the eldritches, which is pretty much [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]], a land chock full of [[Eldritch Abominations]]. As an added perk, they can turn you into one of them. (And the experience is quite unpleasant.)
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** There's also Hobo 13, the military training planet. It's a barren wasteland inhabited by deadly predators and covered all sorts of other hazards. The Tallest send Zim there to get rid of him and immediately open a betting pool on how long he'll survive.
* Parodied in ''[[Futurama]]''; there's a sector of inhabited space called the "Death Zone", but it's just a name, like the Forbidden Zone, or the Zone of No Return. ''All'' the zones have names like that in the Galaxy of Terror.
* The planet Karn on ''[[Buzz Lightyear of Star Command]]''. It's a nature preserve and [[Single Biome Planet]]
* Third Earth, on [[Thundercats]], has such charming locales as the Phosphorus Desert (where the sand can burn the flesh from your bones with a mere touch), the Crumbling Cliffs of Vertigo, and the Field of Daggers. There's theories it may be humanity's Earth in the far
* In one episode of the nineties ''[[Fantastic Four]]'' animated series, [[The Starscream|Terrax]] tricked Galactus into devouring a world so awful that it ''poisoned Galactus''.
* [[Rainbow Brite|Rainbow Land]] is this before Wisp saves it. Giant monsters are everywhere including the rivers. There are constant earthquakes resulting in rock slides and lava flows. Oh and if you try to get close to the [[The Faceless|Evil One's]] [[Evil Tower of Ominousness|castle]]? Lightning strikes you and turns you into an ice/crystal statue.
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* The highlands of Papua New Guinea. It's not TOO bad if you know what you're doing (like the locals) or have their help. However, the Japanese tried going through it to capture Port Moresby after their invasion fleet turned back after the Battle of the Coral Sea. An estimated 75% of their forward fighting troops were killed, wounded, or became ill, and over 60% of the total force didn't make it back to their starting point.
* [[I Don't Like the Sound of That Place|Death Valley]]. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].
* Ilha da Queimada Grande, a small island off the coast of Brazil, and crawling with very deadly Golden Lancehead
* South America's [[wikipedia:Atacama Desert|Atacama Desert]] is so arid that not even bacteria can live there.
* Antarctica. At least Australia has a permanent human population. And the interior of Antarctica doesn't permanently support ''any'' life. Emperor penguins live there part of the year to breed and raise their chicks, and the males (who stay there the longest) lose half their body weight doing it.
** On a related, but much smaller, note: Mount Everest. If you're a strong-lunged mountain climber, you'll need an oxygen mask to avoid losing your mind in the thin air and walking off a cliff; if you're a regular person, you'll suffocate before you can get the mask on. It's also got unpredictable snowstorms, and if the cold doesn't kill you, it'll freeze your toes
* [[Glorious Mother Russia|Russia]]. Certain regions of it are suprisingly mild as
* New Mexico has a stretch of desert called "the Jornada Del Muerto," i.e., The Dead Man's Trail. This is a chillingly lifeless hundred-mile desert trail completely devoid of life and water. Before the rise of the automobile crossing the Jornada was frequently deadly; when conquistadors from New Spain discovered it they named the first pueblo they found on the other side "Socorro" - Spanish for "help." In 1945 its lifelessness was confirmed when it was used as the test site for the world's first atomic bomb.
* Africa. It's the only place where a meaganerie of large mammals still remain, the heat is very intense, there's an outbreak of all kinds of diseases, and it's home to the most dangerous snakes on Earth.
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** Which makes it strangely fitting that this is the Planet the Devil takes his alleges Name from. (Lucifer = Morning Star = Venus)
* Speaking of carbon dioxide living near <ref>ie within 16 miles of</ref> [[wikipedia:Lake Nyos|Lake Nyos]] is quite hazardous given its nasty, if occasional, habit of belching 1.6 million tonnes CO<sub>2</sub>
* The universe itself is basically one immeasurably vast Death World intent on snuffing out all life and making it impossible for whatever survives to have any real significance in the universe.
* The universe itself is basically one immeasurably vast [[Death World]] intent on snuffing out all life and making it impossible for whatever survives to have any real significance in the universe.<br /><br />As an example, you find yourself out in space. Everything in an unsealed part of your body has escaped and other parts are swelling due to the lack of outside pressure, you're being bombarded by all sorts of nasty x-rays and gamma-rays and whatever-rays you can think of. Micro-meteroites keep flying through your body, letting even more of your precious body fluids blow out. You're cooked alive by a nearby star, only to freeze when you get stuck into a sunless orbit around a nice planet you want to call home. You use your personal jet pack to land on the planet, at which point you realize too late it's too close to the star and an earthquake topples a mountain on top of you, it gets covered in lava, and then a giant meteor lands on you. You think the worst is behind you, then the star collapses and you're whisked into the event horizon and eventually expelled by the black hole as radiation. You're floating around, enjoying your time radiating all over the place as you and the rest of the universe slowly converts all of the usable energy into heat. Welcome to the universe, enjoy your stay!▼
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