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Being doomed isn't always a bad thing, though. Maybe the society simply [[Ascends to A Higher Plane of Existence]], or discover [[The End of the World as We Know It]] means their world has simply ''changed'', not ended. They can survive just fine by giving up the [[Immature Hedonist|wanton hedonism]] of their old existence. Of course, it may turn into an [[Inferred Holocaust]] if no one knows how to plow a field. Or maybe the good guys can use the energy source to conquer all the bad guys who depend on it.
Fantasy and Scifi like to use the '''Terminally Dependent Society''' in conjunction with a [[Fantastic Aesop]] about the dangers in abusing [[Aesoptinum]]. This is often paired by having it created by [[For Science!|foolishly enthusiastic scientist]], you can expect [[Reed Richards Is Useless|its noxious properties to manifest quickly]]. Interestingly, a [[Mad Scientist]] who designs a dependence causing device [[Stock Evil Overlord Tactics|in order to take over the world]] will have it break down/addict him/escape his control as [[Hoist by His Own Petard|punishment]] for his [[Pride]].
In sci-fi, it's almost always a metaphor for the internet. In fantasy, it's generally a metaphor for limited fossil fuel. Generally, these aesops lead to [[No Blood for Phlebotinum]]. Expect two or three characters to escape and become the new [[Adam and Eve Plot|Adam and Eve.]] Mind the inbreeding.
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* The humans in ''[[WALL-E]]'' depend on their ship for all sustenance. The fact that {{spoiler|Earth has actually returned to a moderately habitable state}} does not change the fact that {{spoiler|everyone, including the ship itself, believes}} the humans cannot live anywhere except on board the ''Axiom''.
* In ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire]]'', the Atlanteans and their city are dependent on {{spoiler|the Crystal, which is alive and made up of the spirits of the dead royalty... [[The Lifestream|or maybe all dead Atlanteans]] }}. It gives them vitality and [[Really 700 Years Old|a ridiculously long lifespan]] through {{spoiler|the crystal shards around their necks}} which stop glowing when the power source is taken away, and Milo explicitly tells [[Money, Dear Boy|Rourke]] that they'll die if he doesn't return it. However, no one but the King seemed to know about the {{spoiler|Crystal}}'s influence, though whether they all forgot with time or never knew to begin with wasn't revealed.
== Films -- Live-Action ==
* The glowy Eywa tree in ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' stores memories and coordinates the global ecosystem, it was ''almost'' destroyed until the self defense function was triggered.
** Similarly, the Unobtainium was vital to the humans. While not strictly crucial for survival, it was important for interstellar travel to mitigate the overcrowded,
* ''[[The City of Ember]]'' with its hydroelectric generator.
* The vampires in ''[[Daybreakers]]'' are a society terminally dependent on blood. And they're just shy of wiping out humanity when the movie starts. Whoops.
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== Literature ==
* In the end of ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]''{{'}}s ''The Reality Bug'', {{spoiler|the people of Veelox cannot function without the Lifelight pyramid, a [[Lotus Eater Machine|virtual fantasy program]].}}
* E.M. Forster's short story [https://web.archive.org/web/20140515194710/http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
* In several of [[Isaac Asimov]]'s stories, future humanity is fully controlled by Multivac/AC; however, "The Life and Times of Multivac" is the only one in which the dependent society becomes obliged to do without.
** In another story of his, there's a subversion: An overwhelmingly large percentage of the population are incapable of doing simple math problems. When someone rediscovers how to do it by hand, a country uses it to get rid of computers in planes to make faster, lighter aircraft because they can perform the math by hand, giving them an edge on whatever country they're warring against.
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* From [[Harlan Ellison]]'s ''[[I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream]]'': The internet/computer system AM ends up [[Deus Est Machina|becoming a God]] and destroys humanity.
* One of the early Mad comics (from before the magazine-style revamp) featured a story called "Blobs" which parodied this concept.
* In the ''[[Crowned Kreg]]'' series by Olga Larionova people of one planet after a catastrophe were blind from infancy and lived in symbiosis with other sentients who gave their vision via limited telepathy (and were rewarded quite well). When it turned out it's not that simple and utopic and not even close, the disagreement proved disastrous—everyone's still blind without 'em.
* The cities of the Khaiem from ''[[The Long Price Quartet]]'' are dependent on the ''Andat'' for defence and economic prosperity. The andat are abstract concepts made physical that grant total power over that concept e.g. Stone-Made-Soft, Clarity-Of-Vision, Water-Moving-Down etc. The Khaiem have no military power and relatively little technology. The over-dependence on the andat is a major theme of the series.
* The entire world of Matrin in ''[[The Secret Texts]]'' originally ran on ''enormous'' magic usage. Things get extremely ugly and deadly when their source gets cut off.
* ''[[Council Wars]]'' is a near
* ''[[Dune]]''{{'}}s interstellar society is utterly dependent on the
* In ''[[Stationery Voyagers]]'': Without the Muellex, all life-supporting worlds [[Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress|would crash into each other suddenly]] due to their proximity. Also makes the Muellex something of a [[Cosmic Keystone]], since only one world supported all derivatives of humanity originally, and the current setup is only because evil entered the world when Dabor [[Forbidden Fruit|ignored orders]] not to release the Muellex to begin with.
* In the short story
* Scott Westerfeld's ''[[Uglies]]'' takes place in a future where our current society has been destroyed due to a plague that burns up all our oil. The future society thus tries to avoid this trope, making sure to carefully manage their use of natural resources, only to {{spoiler|be overthrown in the end}} since, as David [[
* [[Derek Gunn]]'s ''[[Vampire Apocalypse]]'' has vampires relating to human beings this way. It's also a metaphor for humanity's relationship with oil, which resulted in the whole situation.
* The ''[[Novels of the Change]]'' show that humanity in [[The Nineties]] (let alone our time) would undergo [[The End of the World as We Know It]] without trucking and tractors (other linchpins knocked out by said [[Alien Space Bats|Change]] include electricity, explosives and steam power, but internal combustion is the most immediately lethal one).
* Food might seem like a slightly obvious one to mention, but [[Discworld|Ankh
* [[John Varley]]'s ''Steel Beach:'' CC, the Central Computer that runs everything on Luna, goes insane.
* The final pages of ''[[The Lord of the Rings|The Return
* The Lindauzi of Warren Rochelle's ''[[The Wild Boy]]''. They were regressing to a wild state without the Iani to bond with.
* The L’Dira in [[Star Trek Deep Space Nine Relaunch|''The Lives of Dax'']], whose technology requires a resource their own world has run out of; now, they're wretched [[Planet Looters]].
== Live-Action TV ==
*
** 1) Without the FTL technology, they would have been wiped out by the Cylons in short order.
** 2) The technology for spaceflight; since the 12 Colonies are now radioactive wastelands and the only habitable worlds they find also get found by the Cylons shortly thereafter, without their ships the Colonials would not survive.
** 3) The Battlestar ''Galactica'' itself; from the water filtration system that according to Commander Adama doesn't waste so much as a drop of water while cleaning a ship's supply of water to the ship's DRADIS that allows early warning of Cylon attacks or
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' has a fondness for this trope in its various series.
** ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode
** ''TOS'' adored this trope, especially combined with a [[Master Computer]]. Cue the James T. Kirk patented [[Logic Bomb]]!
** ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' had a society dependent on cloning run into [[Clone Degeneration]]. They were forced to do it the old fashioned way with a neighboring society of Luddites.
** ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "11001001
** In ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'', the Ocampa relied on the Caretaker and his relay to power their underground society, as well as keep them safe from the Kazon.
** In another ''Voyager'' episode, a people created a stasis system that would keep their bodies in stasis and their minds active long enough for their world to become habitable again. As time passed, their fears became manifest in the reality as a clown that would bring out a guillotine when it was unhappy. Two of the people are dead before the crew finds them another one is killed in the process of saving them from it.
** In another ''The Next Generation'' episode, the ''Enterprise'' encounters a ship from a planet that is suffering a species-wide plague that can only be staved off with a drug supplied by a neighboring race. However, this is revealed to be a ploy by the suppliers pushing a highly-addictive substance on unsuspecting people. Due to the [[Alien Non-Intervention Clause|Prime Directive]], [[The Captain|Picard]] agrees not to reveal the truth to the suffering race, but he also refuses to help them fix their few remaining ships (they have degraded technologically) under the same pretext, so that they will eventually be unable to trade with the other race and learn the truth after massive withdrawal symptoms.
* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "Revisions", the computer was sending people to their deaths one by one as the power available fell below the levels required to support the population. It also altered their memories to make sure no one knew what was going on. Also interesting because the computer tricked the population into thinking they couldn't live without being constantly connected to it through an internet-like link, making everyone think they were even more dependent on it than they really were.
** The Goa'uld are completely dependent on their queens to reproduce. Similarly the Jaffa are, for most of the early seasons, dependent on juvenile Goa'uld inside them.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story
* The 2007 ''[[Flash Gordon (TV series)|Flash Gordon]]'' TV series featured Mongo as a [[Hydraulic Empire]] controlled by Ming, who had The Source, the only supply of drinkable water on the entire planet (except for the polar caps, which he controlled through a usurper in the polar regional government).
** And that Source appears to be slowly running out. Which is why he's trying to develop
== Tabletop Games ==
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* In ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'', Drow culture is dependent on magical radiations so that cities were born and died when such deposits appeared and disappeared. Averted with vengeance in Sshamath, which managed to cross the deficiency period and emerge even stronger, having usual cheap solutions replaced with true arcane magic. This made it dependent on wizardry.
** Most cities of Netheril were placed on artificial levitating islands. And when all magic was disabled for a minute or two... Since then, the relevant deity turns magic off "for maintenance" every few centuries, so no long-lasting civilization dares to depend on it ''that'' much.
* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' the Imperium ''needs'' the Emperor to stay alive. He is using his psychic might to keep a hole in reality closed (that if allowed open would destroy the solar system, which is vital to the Imperium). He also plays a role in at least some psykers getting sanctioned, making them more powerful and giving them a little resistance against demonic possession. The Imperium depends on psykers he sanctions for faster than light communication. He also fights the chaos gods on their own turf. But most importantly he, he psychically calibrates the
* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]'', the Lizardmen's spawning pools are, unsurprisingly, where new Lizardmen come from. Thing is, Lizardmen don't know how to make any new ones. And spawning pools aren't naturally occurring. Once the skaven destroy a spawning pool, the Lizardmen aren't getting it back. This weakness is barely mitigated by the fact that skinks aside Lizardmen are [[The Ageless]]. The reason the mitigation is so mild is
* ''[[Stars Without Number]]'' setting is [[After the End]] result of this: the Terran Mandate ceased to exist due to dependency on [[Magitek|psitech]]. It gave them relatively cheap ways of manufacturing exotic materials and transportation via [[Portal Network|jump gates]]. Suddenly, The Scream left most psychics dead or dangerously insane, and as such no one to teach new ones either, and they can't even focus on this problem because without the gates economy collapses in any less than self-sufficient system. The frontier generally had easier time recovering than Core worlds, since they were technologically hobbled and had few gates, thus mostly were left with industry low on psitech and ships capable of interstellar travel on their own.
==
* The plasmids from ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' fit this bill. Everyone used them, and they turn out to naturally hover between being [[Super Serum|Super]] and [[Psycho Serum]] (depending on which you took and if you abused them). Then a civil war breaks out and Ryan had them laced with mind control agents. So, needless to say, this terminally dependent society OD'd.
* The Iifa Tree and the Mist from ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' are a mild example, because the heroes find an alternative energy source.
* To a certain extent, the Lifestream from ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]''.
* OD-10 from ''[[Live a Live]]'' was in turn inspired by HAL from ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]''.
* The city of Lea Monde from ''[[Vagrant Story]]'' was designed as a city-sized spell. The game takes place long after the city has already collapsed on itself.
* The [[Space Jews|quarians]] in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' live on a flotilla of ships in space, and are dependent on their giant greenhouse ships for all their food supplies. So much so that these are kept at the heart of the flotilla for their protection.
** A bigger example is that galactic travel is impossible without the
*** This comes up in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''—the asari bartender on Illium complains that she became a laughingstock for suggesting they try to build their own
**** When the Protheans decided to build their own Mass Relays, their one prototype may not have saved them but allowed them to save galactic civilization 50,000 years later.
*** {{spoiler|Which is the reason for the [[Inferred Holocaust]] of ''[[Mass Effect 3]]''{{'}}s endings}}.
* High Elves and Blood Elves in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' are dependent on magical energy, without which they become physically and mentally twisted husks called "Wretched". Night Elves suffer a similar affliction, but their need for magic is supplied by moonwells.
** Goblins are somewhat dependent on [[Mineral MacGuffin|kaja'mite]] for their superior intelligence. As the supplies have dwindled and they resort to more diluted forms, goblin society and technology has declined.
* In ''[[Phantasy Star II]]'', the terraforming on Mota and the carefree lifestyle of its people are dependent on [[Master Computer|Mother Brain]] for everything. Three guesses on what happens to her and what happens to [[Spell My Name with an "S"|Motavia]] in between II and IV.
* In ''[[Armored Core]] For Answer'', much of humanity (those who could afford it, at least) is dependent on the Cradle habitats they live in. One option the player can take later is to side with Old King and bring them down for the lulz.
* In ''[[Star Control]] 2'', the Utwig are highly dependent on the Ultron, a precursor artifact which gives them prophetic powers. When it breaks, the Utwig enter [[The Eeyore|a perpetual state of mourning]] and are too depressed to do anything. Hilariously, everyone else is convinced that the artifact is absolutely useless. Whether it actually does anything is left ambiguous.
** It is made clear that the Utwig are highly dependent on the Ultron simply because its breaking made them enter a perpetual state of mourning (since they were convinced of its power). This has nothing to do with whether the Ultron actually ''does'' anything, it's just that they didn't get the Ultron until shortly before breaking it, and that breaking happened ''at most'' a few years back.
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* The first ''[[Fallout]]'' game starts with the main character being sent out of the Vault to find a new water chip, without which the Vault will run out of clean water.
** This is actually true for all Vault populations. They are completely reliant on the technology of the Vault for their needs and any disruption in the service can be fatal.
* The civilization of magic in ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' is
== Web Originals ==
* ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' has a serious problem with people developing Baseline Hyperdependency Syndrome (that is: humans are spoiled rotten by the AIs) and nothing has even gone wrong yet, although many groups predict that collapse is imminent.
* ''[[Neopets]]''{{'}} [http://www.neopets.com/medieval/index_evil.phtml Darigan Citadel] was once a normal medieval town, until someone stole the magic orb fertilizing their crops. Now the land is about as fertile as a cinder block.
== Web Comics ==
* Mother in ''[[Dresden Codak]]'': a world-assimilating AI/ [[Grey Goo]] /[[The Singularity|Singularity]] that provides everything Humanity asks for—to point of making people unnecessary, irrelevant and progressively infantile. They go to the verge of extinction as life in the virtual worlds she/it provides takes precedence over breeding. When humanity finally goes to war with Mother, victory comes at a terrible cost: much of human history and culture dies with Mother, every human is [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|blinded]].
== Real Life ==
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*** By extension, oil, whose production is believed to have peaked.
*** And all the monocultured staple crops such as corn and wheat. If disease or climate change devastates them...
* Every society or species, real, imaginary, sentient or otherwise is terminally dependent on something, oftentimes something which is completely taken for granted. For example, all life on earth is highly dependent on a massive hydrogen
** Yes, well, in that case I'd say that the big fusion-plant running our solar system is at least ''fairly'' tamper-proof.
* Electricity is a crux these days, as the Eastern Seaboard found out a few years ago{{when}}. It is used in everything from communications and transport right on down to food preparation and recreation, and then one tree falls...
** That's the gist of the essay ''[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/208573871_World_Energy_Production_Population_Growth_and_the_Road_to_Olduvai_Gorge World Energy Production, Population Growth, and the Road to Olduvai Gorge]]''.
*** [[Captain Obvious|Obviously that did not happen.]]
* As seen in [[Crippling Overspecialization]], many animal species are terminally dependent on a specific food or environment, such as giant pandas (bamboo) and polar bears (the vanishing sea ice).
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* A government that takes advantage of this is known as a [[wikipedia:Hydraulic empire|hydraulic state]].
* Raise your hands, tropers: how long could you stay sane if the internet up and disappeared?
* An "Earthlike"
* This can happen to countries who rely on cash crop farming to support their economies, especially in developing countries such as areas of Africa in the form of cotton and rubber to provide for its citizens and cover its expenses.
* The plight of bees worldwide has led many to speculate on how hard it would be for us to pollinate all the plants we rely on without them.
* There's [http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/bizarre-ant-colony-discovered-in-an-abandoned-polish-nuclear-weapons-bunker/ a dystopian ant
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