History ApocalypseHow / Class1

* ''Series/OhsamaSentaiKingOhger'': Earth has undergone a Class 1 due to the machinations of the season's GreaterScopeVillain[=s=] the Galactinsects. Their interference in the affairs of Earth [[spoiler: caused a CivilWar that forced much of humanity to migrate off-world and settle on the Earth-like planet Tikyu]]. The humans left behind have been enslaved by stragglers of [[Series/ZyudenSentaiKyoryuger the slain Deboth Army]] the Galactinsects vassalized in exchange for their own survival; leeching all Brave out of humanity and transforming what's left into mindless slaves. The King-Ohgers are sent here by Dagded as punishment for outwitting him; [[BackFromTheBrink inadvertently allowing both Sentai teams to save what's left behind.]]

* ''Series/OhsamaSentaiKingOhger'': Earth has undergone a Class 1 due to the machinations of the season's GreaterScopeVillain[=s=] the Galactinsects. Their interference in the affairs of Earth [[spoiler: caused a CivilWar that forced much of humanity to migrate off-world and settle on the Earth-like planet Tikyu]]. The humans left behind have been enslaved by stragglers of [[Series/ZyudenSentaiKyoryuger the slain Deboth Army]] the Galactinsects vassalized in exchange for their own survival; leeching all desire out of humanity and transforming what's left into a mindless work force to build a VillainWorld with. The King-Ohgers are sent here by Dagded as punishment for outwitting him; [[BackFromTheBrink inadvertently allowing both Sentai teams to save what's left behind.]]

* ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIVRogerWilcoAndTheTimeRippers'' shows an example of this, going borderline Class 2. Vohaul takes over the supercomputer which controls every technology related aspect of Xenon and more, and turns it against the population. In game, Xenon is shown to be a hellhole, with only a few [[LaResistance survivors]].

* In ''Fanfic/AtTheEdgeOfLasglen'', [[spoiler:90 percent of humanity is wiped out due to an engineered plague.]] The only nation to survive intact is [[spoiler:Iceland]], which escaped it due to a very conveniently-timed volcanic eruption. The only other two settlements to retain functional civilization are [[spoiler:Galway and Eryn Lasgalen]], both of which had advanced warning.

* In ''Literature/BloodMusic'', artificially enhanced lymphocytes gain intelligence and spread quickly across the entire North American continent, converting all biomass into more entities like themselves. (Although they are capable of encoding and converting intelligences into their cellular-level versions, so nobody strictly "dies" during the epidemic.) After the incident resolves itself, North America has been wiped clean and humanity in the rest of the world is trying to adjust [[spoiler: to new laws of physics. The intelligences in North America caused the laws of physics to fracture slightly due to the density of observation causing the laws of physics unable to follow their own rules. Surprisingly this is not AppliedPhlebotinum, there are real scientific theories behind such an event, as unlikely as it is to ever occur. Think of a well-regarded theory such as Heinsenberg's Uncertainty Principle which implies that, for any given particle, you can know its position or velocity, but never both, as an observation of one will affect, and therefore prevent observation of the other. Now imagine that someone develops the technology to accurately observe and record both. There is some uncertainty (no pun intended) as to what might actually happen to the observed particle at this point.]]

* In "Literature/TheMoralVirologist", the SyntheticPlague is at least a type 1, since it is intentionally designed to kill anyone who has ever had multiple sex partners, and spreads through the air so that settling down in a monogamous relationship after sowing your wild oats can't save you. The revelation that [[spoiler:the proteins in breastmilk also activate the virus's kill switch, killing babies regardless of the chastity of their mothers]] pushes this potentially into type 2 range if a cure or vaccine isn't discovered in time, and possibly even type 3 if [[spoiler: ''everyone'' who was once breastfed]] is lethally affected.
* In Creator/JohnBarnes' ''Literature/MotherOfAllStorms'', set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, a UN sanctioned nuclear strike on an illegal [[BalkanizeMe Siberian]] military base sets off a chain of events that culminates in a series of super-sized hurricanes that ravage coastlines on a global scale and completely wipe out entire nations (Bangladesh, Japan, Micronesia) as well as the state of Hawaii and cause roughly two billion deaths but thanks to the intervention of [[spoiler: the US' last astronaut raised to a godlike state of cyberconciousness]] civilization as a whole and the United States in particular are preserved with the coastal areas due to become new frontiers.

* In ''Literature/WithoutWarning'', an AlternateHistory written in 2009 but beginning in 2003, an energy field of unknown type and origin called "the Wave" wipes out all primates in most of the Lower 48, the more populated eastern half of Canada, about 90% of Mexico and three-quarters of Cuba. This leads to a very different Iraq War in which Hussein goes on the offensive and is joined by Iran [[spoiler: until a threatened Israel launches a pre-emptive nuclear strike on its neighbors]], the global economy starts sliding down the toilet and the world in general starts edging into ''Film/MadMax'' territory. Also untended fires spread due to the lack of human intervention (although automatic sprinkler systems catch some), wiping out large chunks of entire cities with the resulting ash being spread throughout the northern hemisphere in "pollution storms" that wipe out major harvests. Four years later [[spoiler: and three years after the Wave disappears, making the area it devastated enterable again]] in the sequel ''After America'', the food and oil shortages caused by the pollution storms and [[spoiler: Israel nuking the Middle East]] have most civilized nations still on rationing, although no-one is starving, many people growing private gardens and bicycles and horses outnumbering private cars.

* In ''Series/{{Revolution}}'', the world suffers a worldwide failure of electricity due to [[spoiler: a nanotech plague]], essentially sending it back to the 19th century techwise except for [[SchizoTech a few anomalies like automatic weapons and medical knowledge]].

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'' setting has a notable one in the form of the DATAKRASH virus, though it's not known if there were many fatalities from it. The netrunner Rache Bartmoss set up a dead man's switch that would activate two weeks after he died in 2023. The virus itself first started small doing things that'd be consider minor glitches, like swapping small piece of code here and there, but by the time it was identified as a virus by others, it had become damaging to the point that the only thing to do was quarantine sections of the internet from usage. In the end, nearly 80% of the internet was rendered unusable before it was officially quarantined completely. Due to the scale of the damage and safety concerns of potential reinfection, the world of ''Cyberpunk'' as of 2039 has mostly restored to short-range LAN connections. As of the events of '' VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', long-range connections have become available for the rich, but nothing on the scale of old internet.

** The Usurpation: the whole Solar Exalted ruling class is betrayed by its underlings, which results in decades of extremely violent civil war. Hundred of thousands are slain (both participants and collateral victims), entire cities are destroyed, and the whole High First Age society collapses

** The Great Contagion: a supernatural plague with no known cure kills 90% of the world population, mortals and Exalted alike

* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' skirts between this and Class 2. Given 99% of the human population were wiped out by the Locust, the remaining were fighting an offensive war against them and later the Lambent, and that they had to destroy their last bastion to cripple the Locust at the end of [=GOW2=], things didn't look too rosy. [[spoiler: Confirmed to be Class 1 at the end of ''Gears of War 3''. Now that the Lambent and Locust were wiped out, as well as Immulsion, Humanity can finally recover.]]

* The Taikese civilization of ''Webcomic/StarTrip'' were devastated a thousand years ago when an entire continent of their homeworld was destroyed in an act that permanently altered the planet's climate. Exactly why or how [[spoiler: Khut did this]] is unknown, but billions of people died.

* According to Kouta in the ''Manga/ElfenLied'' manga's final chapter, the recent war with the Diclonii was a Class 1, with the bulk of the human race obliterated, but on the road to recovery, although it's likely the human infighting in the wake of the war will drive this into the Class 3 range with mankind truly becoming extinct. The Diclonii themselves suffer their own Class 3 extinction event with possibly three surviving Diclonii at best -- all sterile. (Of course, their population was always much smaller than humans’ to begin with.)
* ''Anime/GaoGaiGar FINAL'' shows an apocalypse between Class 1 and Class 2 due to the actions of the Sol Masters trying to steal all the Dark Matter in the universe. Hundreds of well known cities are in ruins, the ice caps melted, and there were apparently a lot of casualties. However, it seems civilization and humanity will definitely bounce back after a few months to years! All because of Courage!
* The ten year TimeSkip in ''Manga/GetterRobo Armageddon'' has humanity ravaged by the Invaders after a hydrogen bomb combined with Shin Dragon's Getter Beam saturates the Earth with Getter Energy, allowing the beasts to roam free.

* The Thirteen Day War in the backstory of ''Literature/LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes'' involved a nuclear exchange between the major powers of Earth, which reduced the world's population to 1 billion and some 90 years would pass before order was restored on Earth.

* ''ComicBook/TransformersTwilightsLastGleaming'': At the start of the series, the United States has suffered a Continental case at the Decepticons' hands since the Cons won [[Film/Transformers2007 the battle for the Allspark in Mission City]]. NATO troops have to temporarily occupy the continent for security reasons, and whilst an American government is still functioning, millions are living in shelters and reliant on food aid.

* In ''Fanfic/AtTheEdgeOfLasglen'', [[spoiler:90 percent of humanity is wiped out due to an engineered plague.]] The only nation to survive intact is [[spoiler:Iceland]], which escaped it due to a very conveniently-timed volcanic eruption. The only other two settlements to retain functional civilization are [[spoiler:Galway and Eryn Lasgalen]], both of which had advanced warning.

* In ''WesternAnimation/WallE'', Earth has become an uninhabitable trash dump, but it appears that most of humanity [[HomeworldEvacuation fled]] on cruise ships. We don't have a lot of information about the disaster preceding the exodus from Earth -- including the percentage of Earth's population that escaped into ships. It seems that a decaying form of civilization exists on the ''Axiom'' and sister ships, but from the perspective of Earth, it's a Class 4.

* ''Film/TheWarOfTheWorlds1953''. The Martian machines wipe out an untold number of people around the world.

* In ''Literature/{{Caliphate}}'', a nuclear attack on the United States by Islamic terrorists doesn't cause the USA to collapse, but leads to an autocratic President rising to power, declaring war on the Islamic world in retaliation by nuking all Muslim-majority countries in the world. This causes a chain of events that establish an tyrannical caliphate in Western Europe with an influx of radicalized refugees overthrowing liberal societies and implementing sharia law. In response, most countries follow the USA suit by becoming isolationist fascist regimes and by the time the main narrative takes place, natural resources have been mostly used up and the world stands ever closer to falling into a Class 2 Apocalypse.
* In the "An Orison of Sonmi-451" segment of Creator/DavidMitchell's ''Literature/CloudAtlas'' a series of limited nuclear exchanges has left much of the planet as "deadland" but East and Central Asia still maintain a high level of technology, even though it's an oppressive corporate dystopia. In the next segment, "Sloosha's Crossin' and Evr'thin' That Came After" this has grown to a Class 2 with only a handful of places on the planet maintaining anything like an organized society.

* In ''Literature/TheDreamsideRoad'', governments the world over shut down during a [[GreatOffscreenWar global terrorist attack]], five years before the story begins. Most never returned
* In ''Literature/TheHaremGames'' some unidentified pathogen brings humanity to the brink of extinction by wiping out adult males and severely shortening the lifespan of existing male children as well as almost destroying the viability of male children in utero to the point that live birth is a newsworthy event. Furthermore, it borders on Class 2 due to the fact that the world government falls into the hands of a group of women far more concerned with retaliating against and, in their minds, preventing, the return of the abusive patriarchal societies they came from. They enact policies that make mankind dependent on artificial insemination, and force male teens to fight each other in a tournament until one is left, after forcing them into Battle Harems, with the consent of all all parties involved being a mere courtesy, at best.

* Prior to ''Literature/{{Sabriel}}'', book one of Garth Nix's ''Literature/OldKingdom'' series, something like this occurred thanks to Kerrigor.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': the nebulous [[NoodleIncident Doom of Valyria]] basically wiped a large country off the face of the planet, killing 99.999% of its inhabitants and rendering the entire area a no-go zone even centuries later. Normally this would qualify as a Class 0, but as said country was the center of a continent-spanning empire, its sudden immolation resulted in societal disruptions on a global scale. The most notable one was the Century of Blood, a general Essosi societal collapse complemented by civil war, famine, and barbarian invasions, which saw large chunks of the continent depopulated. The chaos even extended to far-off Westeros (albeit to a much lesser extent), as it caused an otherwise obscure surviving clan of dragonlords to divert their attention to the western continent and embark on their own large-scale dragon-assisted conquest.

* In ''Literature/SewerGasAndElectric: The Public Works Trilogy'' by Matt Ruff, a racist-designed plague turns nearly every person of black African descent on the planet into dust. Only ethnic Africans with green eyes -- a minute fraction of the total -- are spared.
* John Varley's ''Literature/SlowApocalypse''. A gene-geneered bacteria reduces crude oil to an unusable sludge which, along with secondary effects, shakes civilization on a global scale but it survives.
* Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'': the release of a weaponized strain of influenza has wiped out almost all of the human population. What remains eventually get a couple of small working societies up and running.

* The Breaking of the World in Robert's Jordan's ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' series. Also borders on Class 2.

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft Turn Left]]": In the BestOfAllPossibleWorlds style AlternateTimeline, without the Doctor around to save the world, the crises escalate into this over the course of less than two years. Britain ends up under martial law with the whole of England flooded with radiation after the ''Titanic'' obliterates London, the many who are displaced from this are crowded into designated houses, and eventually the "[[ANaziByAnyOtherName England for the English]]" Law gets passed. Nevermind France closing its borders after getting overwhelmed with refugees or sixty million Americans getting turned into Adipose.
* In the backstory of ''Series/TheFlipsideOfDominickHide'' at some point there was a global disaster that killed a massive chunk of humanity and rendered most of the biosphere unusable. Humanity survived thanks to carefully managed habitats, and while technology has advanced again, there are massive waiting lists for anyone wanting to visit the surviving biosphere zones.

* In ''Series/Jericho2006'', 25 of America's major cities have been nuked, including UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC, dividing the country in three. It's arguable whether this belongs in 0 or 1, because for all we know, the rest of the world could be pretty much okay.
** We do know that, due to the Cheyenne Government's cover-up and [[KickTheDog Puppy-Kicking]], Iran and North Korea no longer exist.
** Every government seems to be throwing money and goods at the US in hopes that the wounded beast won't start lobbing nukes at random. In the end, America may drag the rest of the world down with them.

* In ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' the world suffers a worldwide failure of electricity due to [[spoiler: a nanotech plague]], essentially sending it back to the 19th century techwise except for [[SchizoTech a few anomalies like automatic weapons and medical knowledge]].

* ''Series/{{Survivors}}'', created by Terry Nation (he of the Daleks and ''Series/BlakesSeven''), featured the few remaining inhabitants of a virus-ravaged Earth. However, enough human knowledge survived in the form of books to prevent this going to Class 2.
* New Zealand-based family drama ''Series/TheTribe'' -- a government project into anti-aging goes wrong and the resultant virus wipes out all adults in the world. Although the surviving children resort to small insular tribes and anarchy rules periodically from then on, enough knowledge survives in books that technologies can still be slowly rebuilt by those who are smart enough, making this a solid Class 1. Its sequel series, ''Series/TheNewTomorrow'', takes this much closer to a Class 2 as society had regressed further to a pre-industrial, agricultural society (except for the Barbs, who are hunter-gatherers) -- presumably then, the attempts made in ''The Tribe'' to rebuild our technological society did not take for one reason or another...

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'' setting has a notable one in the form of the DATAKRASH virus, thought it's not know if there were many fatalities from it it's revealed the netrunner Rache Bartmoss set up a dead man's switch that would activate two weeks after he died in 2023. The virus itself first started small doing things that'd be consider minor glitches like swapping small piece of code here and there, by the time it was identified as a virus by others it had become more damaging to the point the only thing to do was quarantine sections of the internet from usage. In the end nearly 80% of the internet was rendered unusable before it was officially quarantined completely. Due to the scale of the damage and safety concerns of potential reinfection, the world of Cyberpunk as of '' 2039'' has mostly restored to short range LAN connections. As of the events of '' VideoGame/{{Cyberpunk 2077}}'', long ranges connections have become available for the rich but nothing on the scale of old internet.

** The Three Spheres Cataclysm at the end of the Primordial War: out of petty revenge, a defeated primordial detonates three of his souls, which annihilates most of Creation (and the people living there) and destroys "nine out of ten important things in the world"

* ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' mixes this with Class 4, with the war against the Black Beast resulting in a toxic mist spreading across all of Earth, rendering the planet totally uninhabitable to humans except on the highest mountaintops, where the mist is too thin to have an adverse effect. Civilization now exists in at least thirteen city-states dotted around the world (though a few are destroyed over the course of the games), with transportation between them via gigantic airships. Nearly all of Earth's species have died out because of this mist, but a few animals and plants seem to have been replaced by mutant variants that can thrive in it.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', most of the world is destroyed, but humanity survives in quite large numbers and most towns are unscathed. However, [[OmnicidalManiac Kefka]] is a god after this and keeps blasting the survivors when he gets bored, pushing the crisis up to Class 4/5 a year later, with plant and animal life dying off and humans struggling to rebuild in-between Kefka's rampages. During the confrontation with Kefka before the final battle, he directly states he's gonna go for Class X and beyond. The party kills him before he gets a chance to try, and the world slowly begins to get the chance to recover in the absence of constant attacks.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesEchoesOfTime'' had a major societal collapse two thousand years ago when the Crystals disappeared, ruining the {{Magitek}}-dependent civilization. In the present day, all that's left is one town and one isolated village. [[spoiler:And the latter is actually a ghost town.]]

* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': By the time ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' rolls around, humanity is in a position like this, with most non-Earth colonies having been utterly annihilated, its military reduced to a handful of fleets, and the war having killed 23 billion humans out of an estimated pre-war population of 39 billion. Nevertheless, the surviving human worlds are still able to maintain their high-tech civilizations, and after the Human-Covenant War ends, humanity as a whole is in ''just'' good enough shape to start reclaiming their lost worlds.

* In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', the backstory of the game involves an incident known as "The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Event In History" (also known simply as "the Tragedy") that allowed a terrorist organization called "Ultimate Despair" to unleash catastrophic levels of unrest around the world. Later games and spin-offs [[ResolvedNoodleIncident go into more detail as to exactly what happened]], showing that half the human race was rendered BrainwashedAndCrazy by [[BigBad Junko]]'s MindControl, turning a large portion of the affected into psychotic murderers.
* Almost voiding the DownerEnding of its prequel is ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' -- it's quite clear that the ZombieApocalypse has come and gone, but thanks to the government being actually competent, civilization itself has endured quite nicely and the outbreak hasn't really knocked people back significantly -- there's even a RealityShow based around it. This, combined with a way to actually ''fight'' the infection means that the epidemic will probably end with humanity on top (admittedly, it's going to take a while...)
* The ''Franchise/DragonAge'' setting has the Blights, which are regular apocalyptic events where near-demonic creatures known as the darkspawn unite into a single horde and emerge from beneath the ground to overwhelm the surface world. These Blights can last decades at best, with the first one being the longest one in existence, lasting nearly two centuries as entire generations lived and died warring with the darkspawn and the most powerful empire of the world at the time being extremely weakened. Thedas suffered five Blights so far, but its civilizations have succeeded in rebuilding themselves afterwards.

* In ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' humankind comes under orbital bombardment from a neighbouring, established spacefaring civilisation just after the first colony ship was launched. Civilisation collapses, then comes back in a form, but as an effective fascist dictatorship bent on forcible expansion into habitable worlds.

* ''VideoGame/{{Uplink}}'' features a non-lethal Class 1 [[spoiler:that happens when the Revelation virus destroys the Internet]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Terinu}}'s'' backstory has the Earth being subjected to an attack 500 years previously by the Varn Dominion using a titanic tractor-pressor beam to to destroy major population centers via earthquakes and tsunamis. This results in a Class 1.5 destruction as somewhere between one and a half to three billion people die in the initial attack and subsequent chaos. Australia was left intact with a functioning economy however, as a sort of human game preserve. In addition, the Vulpine suffered a 50% population loss as they were hit by the "Bloody Plagues" during the subsequent human led rebellion.
* ''Webcomic/TheZombieHunters'' [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture near-future]] [[AfterTheEnd Post]]-ZombieApocalypse setting finds the planet overrun by TheUndead, and the TheVirus ''did'' in fact serve as a DepopulationBomb. What [[EndangeredSpecies few humans remain]] cling ''very'' tenuously to Class 1 status, with the struggle to avoid ''[[InferredHolocaust becoming]]'' a full-bore Class 2 as a driving force in the plot. To keep their [[IslandBase Island]] [[PoliceState Military Base]] running, and the populace [[CosyCatastrophe cozy]] they [[FantasticCasteSystem depend]] on teams of [[TyphoidMary dormant]] ZombieInfectee DisasterScavengers (the eponymous "[[SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom Zombie Hunters]]") to [[ActionSurvivor venture]] out into "[[ScavengerWorld the Wastes]]" and risk getting [[ViralTransformation bitten]] to retrieve [[{{Plunder}} much-needed salvage]]. They only have two helicopters and a ship to work with. A handful of [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate doctors, scientists]], [[TheEngineer engineers]] and [[TheArmy Military]] are respectively trying to FindTheCure, keep the island's technological infrastructure running, and build a viable secondary colony on the mainland. The loss of any of these people or things, even a relatively [[WeHaveReserves expendable]] Zombie Hunter, represents a huge setback for the potential future of the human race.

* In ''{{Webcomic/Wychwood}}'', the interdimensional alien invasion devastated the planet and left most of it in ruins. A little over two decades later, the surviving parts of human society were on their way to rebuilding with the aid of some alien technology left behind... [[spoiler:only for the rift to reopen, and a fresh invasion to begin.]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyThreeDoomsday 1983: Doomsday]]'', a timeline from the [[http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Alternate History Wiki]], is set in a world where a nuclear war occurred in the early eighties. Most of the nations in the Northern Hemisphere cease to exist, yet the survivors manage to establish new states in their wake. The Southern Hemisphere, meanwhile, escapes mostly unscathed.

* Thanks to the lack of canon in Website/SCPFoundation material, any SCP subject could cause this or worse if it breaks containment. SCP-6004, for example, decimated global civilization and restored much of the environmental destruction wrought by human encroachment on nature when it woke up, and now the Foundation works with national governments and other anomalous organizations to limit activity that would reawaken it.
* According to a [[http://what-if.xkcd.com/8/ What If?]] segment that answered the question of what would happen if everyone in the world jumped all at once from the same spot, [[spoiler:Rhode Island would be overwhelmed by the volume of people trying to leave, billions would die of starvation, society would have to be rebuilt from scratch and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking it would not cause an earthquake]]]].

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': [[spoiler:[[MillionMookMarch The Rumbling]] is a 1.5 -- 80% of the global population is killed off, but humanity is shown to be recovering three years later.]]

* In ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' we see Earth just after WorldWarIII. Suffice to say, Vulcans were VERY surprised that humans could develop FTL under such conditions.
** A Class 1.5 Catastrophe is depicted in "Friendship One", an episode ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. [[spoiler: The planet in question was devastated 100 years ago, and the civilisation has not recovered yet, but ''Voyager'' is able to help, and it seems that now, with atmosphere cleaned, they WILL recover.]]

* The Second Impact in the backstory of ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', which killed over half of the Earth's population, rose the sea level enough to submerge entire cities and heavily altered the climate. By the time the series proper begins, civilization has gotten back on its feet in some places, but the almost complete emptiness of Toyko-3, the city the series is set in, is heavily emphasized during the series.
** The Rebuild movies further drive the point home that life, human or animal, can only be sustained in controlled environments after the impact.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': [[spoiler:[[MillionMookMarch The Rumbling]] is a 1.5 -- 80% of the global population is killed off, but humanity is shown to be recovering three years later.]]

* ''Film/ChildrenOfMen'', where humanity is slowly going extinct due to a combination of universal infertility and the resulting societal collapse [[spoiler:everywhere in the world but the United Kingdom -- which is now fascist]]. Class 3 is not entirely ruled out.
* ''Film/Contagion2011'': A worldwide pandemic that spreads about as easily as the flu, and kills about a fifth of the people infected. The US government survives, but things get pretty rough for a while.

* ''Film/{{Reminiscence}}'': Planetary Scale Societal Disruption due to Mass flooding across the earth and while society is still intact, it has to live by night to cope with extreme temperatures in the day, could slide into ApocalypseHow/Class2 or ApocalypseHow/Class3A.

* In French film ''Film/TimeOfTheWolf'', humanity is in dire straits although it's never fully explained why. The audience only knows that the infrastructure has collapsed, uncontaminated water is scarce and livestock have to be burned. A nuclear disaster is likely. May be considered a Class 2.
* ''WesternAnimation/WallE'', in which Earth has become an uninhabitable trash dump, but it appears most of humanity fled on cruise ships. We don't have a lot of information about the disaster preceding the exodus from Earth -- including the percentage of Earth's population that escaped into ships. It seems that a decaying form of civilization exists on the ''Axiom'' and sister ships, but from the perspective of Earth, it's a Class 4.

* In Creator/GregBear's ''Literature/BloodMusic'', artificially enhanced lymphocytes gain intelligence and spread quickly across the entire North American continent, converting all biomass into more entities like themselves. (Although they are capable of encoding and converting intelligences into their cellular-level versions, so nobody strictly "dies" during the epidemic.) After the incident resolves itself, North America has been wiped clean and humanity in the rest of the world is trying to adjust [[spoiler: to new laws of physics. The intelligences in North America caused the laws of physics to fracture slightly due to the density of observation causing the laws of physics unable to follow their own rules. Surprisingly this is not AppliedPhlebotinum, there are real scientific theories behind such an event, as unlikely as it is to ever occur. Think of a well-regarded theory such as Heinsenberg's Uncertainty Principle which implies that, for any given particle, you can know its position or velocity, but never both, as an observation of one will affect, and therefore prevent observation of the other. Now imagine that someone develops the technology to accurately observe and record both. There is some uncertainty (no pun intended) as to what might actually happen to the observed particle at this point.]]

* ''Literature/{{Eon}}'', also by Creator/GregBear, eventually features a [[spoiler:full-scale global nuclear exchange]] that inflicts Class 1 damage on human civilization.

* In Creator/JohnRingo's ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'', humanity has roughly five billion killed by the end of the war with the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Posleen]]. They draw close to entering Class 2 territory, but while humanity gets hammered hard, they keep most of their technological knowledge, both native and Galactic.
* ''Literature/LucifersHammer'' (1978) looks much worse at first, what with a comet's direct impact apparently destroying civilization, China nuking Russia (and getting nuked by both the Soviets and USA in retaliation), a cannibal army roaming through what's left of California, and the lack of any organization outside the local level. But by the end of the novel, we still have electricity (from a nuclear power plant, even), at least regional government, and contact with people that can put a plausible claim toward being the national government. Amusingly, the authors claim (and suitably demonstrate!) that it was the mailman doing his job that kept civilization afloat and the story out of the nastier categories below. It's also speculated, though never established, that countries south of the equator would escape the impact and the worst of the weather changes. If that's true, Australia, South Africa and most of South America could probably maintain social order.
* In Creator/{{Greg Egan}}'s "Literature/TheMoralVirologist", the SyntheticPlague is at least a type 1, since it is intentionally designed to kill anyone who has ever had multiple sex partners, and spreads through the air so that settling down in a monogamous relationship after sowing your wild oats can't save you. The revelation that [[spoiler:the proteins in breastmilk also activate the virus's kill switch, killing babies regardless of the chastity of their mothers]] pushes this potentially into type 2 range if a cure or vaccine isn't discovered in time, and possibly even type 3 if [[spoiler: ''everyone'' who was once breastfed]] is lethally affected.
* In Creator/JohnBarnes' ''Literature/MotherOfAllStorms'' set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, a UN sanctioned nuclear strike on an illegal [[BalkanizeMe Siberian]] military base sets off a chain of events that culminates in a series of super-sized hurricanes that ravage coastlines on a global scale and completely wipe out entire nations (Bangladesh, Japan, Micronesia) as well as the state of Hawaii and cause roughly two billion deaths but thanks to the intervention of [[spoiler: the US' last astronaut raised to a godlike state of cyberconciousness]] civilization as a whole and the United States in particular are preserved with the coastal areas due to become new frontiers.

* With Neo Arcadia being the only major civilization in the world during ''VideoGame/MegaManZero'', [[spoiler:[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Craft/Kraft]] causes one by firing the cannon on Ragnarok at Neo Arcadia just to kill [[BigBad Dr. Weil]]. According to official sources, the death toll was approximately ''20,000,000'' casualties.]]

* ''Film/{{Reminiscence}}'': Planetary Scale Societal Disruption due to Mass flooding across the earth and while society is still intact, it has to live by night to cope with extreme temperatures in the day, could slide into Class 2 or Class 3.

* The background scenario for Creator/JoeHaldeman's "A !Tangled Web" and "Seasons" has it that most of the Northern Hemisphere has been destroyed in a nuclear war, but South America, Africa and Australia mostly survive. A faster-than-light drive is subsequently invented by Hartford, an Australian concern, and a Spanish- and Swahili-speaking "Confederación" pushes out to the stars.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

* ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIV'' shows an example of this, going borderline Class 2. Vohaul takes over the supercomputer which controls every technology related aspect of Xenon and more, and turns it against the population. In game, Xenon is shown to be a hellhole, with only a few [[LaResistance survivors]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Uplink}}'' features a non-lethal Class 1, [[spoiler: that happens when the Revelation virus destroys the Internet]].

** The Rebuild movies further drive the point home that life, human or animal, can only be sustained in controlled environments after the impact.

* ''ComicBook/TransformersTwilightsLastGleaming'': At the start of the series, the United States has suffered a Continental case at the Decepticons' hands since the Cons won [[Film/{{Transformers}} the battle for the Allspark in Mission City]]. NATO troops have to temporarily occupy the continent for security reasons, and whilst an American government is still functioning, millions are living in shelters and reliant on food aid.

* This is revealed to be the case in ''Anime/NowAndThenHereAndNow''. Shu is not TrappedInAnotherWorld that is a desert planet, he's actually been transported 10 billion years into the future where the sun is in the red giant phase of going supernova, evaporating almost all of the surface water on the planet, leading society to dissolve into disparate desert towns that are raided by a local tyrant who amassed power by using child soldiers.

* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', it's strongly implied that something on this scale happened shortly after the appearance of Quirks, due to the rise of powerful supervillains and the comparative lack of superheroes (and lack of regulation governing what few heroes there were) to fight them. A short 'dark age' at this point in time is often cited as the reason why the world of My Hero Academia is not significantly more technologically advanced than the modern day despite being indicated to take place at least two centuries in the future.

* In ''Literature/WithoutWarning'', an AlternateHistory written in 2009 but beginning in 2003, an energy field of unknown type and origin called "the Wave" wipes out all primates in most of the Lower 48, the more populated eastern half of Canada, about 90% of Mexico and three-quarters of Cuba. This leads to a very different Iraq War in which Hussein goes on the offensive and is joined by Iran [[spoiler: until a threatened Israel launches a pre-emptive nuclear strike on its neighbors]], the global economy starts sliding down the toilet and the world in general starts edging into ''Film/MadMax'' territory. Also fires caused by untended fires spread, due to the lack of human intervention (although automatic sprinkler systems catch some) wiping out large chunks of entire cities with the resulting ash being spread throughout the northern hemisphere in "pollution storms" that wipe out major harvests. Four years later [[spoiler: and three years after the Wave disappears, making the area it devastated enterable again]] in the sequel ''After America'', the food and oil shortages caused by the pollution storms and [[spoiler: Israel nuking the Middle East]] have most civilized nations still on rationing, although no-one is starving, many people growing private gardens and bicycles and horses outnumbering private cars.

* ''Literature/{{Eon}}'', also by Creator/GregBear, eventually features a [[spoiler:full-scale global nuclear exchange]] that inflicts Class 1 damage onto the humanity.

* In ''Literature/Winchester'', many cities were destroyed and nations like America collapsed after WWII turned nuclear for both sides, but the trains still run and electricity can be found, with some places like Texas coming close to the pre-war standard of living.