History ApocalypseHow / Class1

* ''EscapeFromLA'': Though it doesn't involve anyone actually dying, Snake activates the [[WaveMotionGun Sword of Damocles]] satellite system at the end of the movie, unleashing a massive electromagnetic pulse that neutralizes every electrical power source on the entire planet, thereby (according to the President's [[TheDragon Dragon]], at least) setting the progress of human civilization back about 500 years, [[InferredHolocaust leading to the deaths of thousands]], if not millions, indirectly as a result of entire cities shut down.

* ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'': ''The Deconstruction of Falling Stars'' depicts a future where after a war, technology has fallen back several centuries. In a direct homage to ''Literature/ACanticleForLeibowitz'', it's revealed that at one of the monks shown is a Ranger in direct contact with [[TheFederation the Interstellar Alliance.]]

* ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'': ''The Deconstruction of Falling Stars'' depicts a future where after a war, technology has fallen back several centuries. In a direct homage to ''ACanticleForLeibowitz'', it's revealed that at one of the monks shown is a Ranger in direct contact with [[TheFederation the Interstellar Alliance.]]

* ''ACanticleForLeibowitz'' shows the stages of humanity recovering from [[AndManGrewProud nuclear war]], as civilization rebuilds itself and technology is rediscovered. Then [[HereWeGoAgain there's another nuclear war]]. Fortunately [[spoiler: there are other colonized planets around, and the church has a rocket ship, which they use as the bombs fall.]]

* Prior to ''Sabriel'', book one of Garth Nix's ''OldKingdom'', something like this occured thanks to Kerrigor.

* In ''{{Jericho}}'', 25 of America's major cities have been nuked, including Washington, D.C., 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.

* LRonHubbard's ''Literature/BattlefieldEarth'' has only 30,000 humans left, but the other trillions of beings left in the Universe can be hired as needed to rebuild the world, as the Earth's people more-or-less own the Galactic Bank and hundreds of thousands of unused colony planets.

* In Creator/JohnRingo's PosleenWarSeries, humanity has roughly five billion killed by the end of the war with the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Posleen]]. Arguably they veer into Class 2 territory, but while humanity gets hammered hard, they keep most of their technological knowledge.

* {{Exam}} takes place after a global pandemic wipes out a large amount of the earth's population.

* LRonHubbard's ''BattlefieldEarth'' has only 30,000 humans left, but the other trillions of beings left in the Universe can be hired as needed to rebuild the world, as the Earth's people more-or-less own the Galactic Bank and hundreds of thousands of unused colony planets.

* The world got nuked from hell to back in ''FistOfTheNorthStar'', and it's basically become the world in the Mad Max films. Humanity may one day recover, but for the time it's stuck in a "might makes right" world filled with mohawk-wearing motorcycle gangs.
* ''TrinityBlood'' takes place 900 years AfterTheEnd. The events of the series all take place in Europe due to it being the only inhabited continent.

* In ''NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind'', industrial civilization has obliterated itself from the world. The remaining kingdoms and empires are busily destroying each other through war, and the ever-expanding [[GardenOfEvil Sea of Corruption]] is making large areas completely uninhabitable to all animals except its own giant insects. Thus, a Class 1 disaster threatens to become a Class 3.
* The prestory to ''ErgoProxy'' destroyed essentially the entire biosphere of planet earth, though humans still managed to survive ([[spoiler:Granted they no longer were living on Earth, but...]]).
* In ''SoRaNoWoTo'' a big war against what appears to be aliens results in civilization taking several steps backwards. There are a lot less people around, and few of them knows how to use the remaining technology that was state of the art 200+ years earlier.
* Trunks' BadFuture from ''DragonBall'', devastated by the Androids. King Piccolo's conquest of Earth 300 years prior to the series also amounts to this.
* The Second Impact in the backstory of ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', which killed over half of human population, rose the sea level enough to submerge entire cities and heavily altered the climate.

* The Thirteen Day War in the backstory of ''LegendOfGalacticHeroes'' 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.

* ''YearsOfRiceAndSalt''. The Black Death was 90+ % fatal between the Volga and the Atlantic, depopulating Europe in the 1300s. The book covers the next 6 centuries of how the other civilizations go on without Western civilization's interventions and contributions.

** Forgetting the demon invasion, have we?

* ''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.

* ''WorldWarZ'' shows how humanity [[spoiler:gradually defeats]] the ZombieApocalypse. [[spoiler:At the end of the story, much of the world has been reclaimed (despite losing the majority of the human population) zombies are limited to a few huge herds too big to take on, a couple of cold countries where winter tends to send them into SuspendedAnimation, and the lakes and oceans of the world, where lost zombies roam on the lake bed or ocean floor.]]

* 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, ''TheNewTomorrow'', takes this much closer to a Class 2.

* Earth went through at least one of these in the backstory of ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'', plunging an advanced civilization into barbarism as a result of a global nuclear war. Earth rebuilt and subsequently went through at least two or three more apocalypses, becoming known as [Holy] Terra along the way, but those were part of higher marks on the apocalypse scale.

* JohnChristopher's ''TheTripods'' series of books (''The White Mountains'', ''The Tripods'', ''The City of Gold and Lead'', and a fourth prequel, ''When the Tripods Came'') have a world where a race of extraterrestrials have conquered Earth. They ride around and visit communities in huge three-legged vehicles, and have "capped" every human adult with a device attached to their heads to keep them from starting a revolution and fighting back. The world has more-or-less been knocked back to or just above semi-rural agricultural society, where there is essentially no motorized equipment. A small group of rebels is determined to take Earth back from the tripods, the only question is whether they will have enough time to do so.

* ''{{WALL-E}}'', in which Earth has become an uninhabitable trash dump, but it appears most of humanity fled on cruise ships.

* By the time ''{{Halo}} 3'' rolls around, humanity is at least in a position like this, with most non-earth colonies having been utterly annihilated, the entire remaining military capacity of humanity being about a dozen starships and a few hundred thousand soldiers, and the human population being reduced to less than one percent of its former numbers, about 300,000,000 according to the Bestiarium. If the Gravemind spared any of its unknown numbers of FTL-capable ships to spread the Flood, then not only will they easily overwhelm the entire galaxy, but the Ark, the only safe haven from the rings and the means by which the galaxy will be reseeded post-activation, has been severely damaged and is now inaccessible. If this is the case then either the Flood will absorb all life in the galaxy, or the rings will destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, making this a hybrid of a class 3 and class X-2 either way.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker]], set AfterTheEnd, features Ganon laying waste to Hyrule prior to the start of the game. Later, the three gods flood the land, although it's not clear how much of the entire world is affected, or how many fled to higher ground.

* This is the setting for the {{Fallout}} universe. After [[NukeEm global thermonuclear war]] wipes out civilization and much of the human population, a post-nuclear {{Zeerust}}-filled CrapsackWorld provides the backdrop for the games.

* In ''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 ''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 UrExample is the various Great Flood myths that appear in various cultures. Western tropers are probably most familiar with the Judeo-Christian version in the [[Literature/TheBible Book of Genesis]], but ''TheEpicOfGilgamesh'' was earlier, making this OlderThanDirt.

* In ''IndependenceDay'', most major cities are destroyed, but it seems humanity will survive... though it's debatable whether an InferredHolocaust has occurred, which would knock this film into the Class 2 range.

* ''{{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 Level 2.

* ''{{Children Of Men}}'', 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.

* Greg Bear also manages a Class 1 in [[spoiler: [[{{TheWaySeries}} ''Eon'']], this time by full-scale global nuclear exchange.]] Add to this the Class X in ''Forge of God'' mentioned below, and he'd wiped out most of humanity three times in three of his earlest novels.

* 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, ''TheNewTomorrow'', takes this much closer to a Class 2.

* The Anime Multiverse Setting of {{Big Eyes Small Mouth}} has Enid, a world in which most of humanity was driven into arcologies underground by violent storms, that since ravish the lands. There's also a world-spanning war going on between two factions that try to restore the planet in two different ways.
* The VITAS plagues cut back the global human population by about 1/4 in the future history of ''{{Shadowrun}}''. Some countries weathered the pandemics better than others, with North America coming through relatively intact, while some Third World regions such as Madagascar were left virtually deserted.
* In ''{{NukeWar}}'', if you win, it's only a class 1 disaster; if everyone loses, it's somewhere from class 2 to 4.

* {{Sword of the Stars}} - humankind comes under orbital bombardment from a neighbouring, established spacefaring civilisation just after hte first colony ship was launched. Civilisation collapses, then comes back in a form, but as an effectiive fascist dictatorship bent on forcible expanson into habitable worlds.

* {{Metro 2033}} takes place in Moscow after a nuclear war has destroyed most of Russia (and presumably most of the rest of the world.) Civilization has survived by moving into the subways and sewers beneath the city and humans now live in self-contained underground cities. Of course, the tunnels are now overrun by mutants and other dangerous creatures and the player has to run a gauntlet through underground cities run by communists and Nazi's.

* Coruscant in ''TheGunganCouncil'' had at least a quarter of its surface damaged and possibly even wiped out by a Death Star exploding in its orbit.

* A strong enough solar flare could render most electronics (especially ones with computer chips) severely damaged and useless, which would knock humans back to the 1930s in terms of technology. However, it is temporary, so after the turmoil (caused by removing essential technology like radios, the computers in plane cockpits and the machines hooked up to hospital patients), we would be able to replace it eventually.

* In JohnRingo's PosleenWarSeries, humanity has roughly 5 out of every 6 people (that is, about five billion) killed by the end of the war with the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Posleen]]. Arguably they veer into Class 2 territory, but while humanity gets hammered hard, they keep most of their technological knowledge.

* ''Children Of Men'', 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.

* David Brin's ''The Postman'' (1985), which features a drifter who finds a postal uniform, and starts a postal network in an effort to stay fed, and ends by reuniting the northwest USA. Better known as the FilmOfTheBook starring Kevin Costner.

* The main land in ''The Obernewtyn Chronicles''. They got hit by a nuclear holocaust that left most of the land and water tainted.
* In ''Sewer, Gas and Electric: 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.

* Prior to ''Sabriel'', book one of Garth Nix's ''Old Kingdom'', something like this occured thanks to Kerrigor.

* In ''Jericho'', 25 of America's major cities have been nuked, including Washington, D.C., 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.

* ''Jeremiah'' shows life after a plague has wiped out nearly every post-pubescent human being.

* Sword of the Stars - humankind comes under orbital bombardment from a neighbouring, established spacefaring civilisation just after hte first colony ship was launched. Civilisation collapses, then comes back in a form, but as an effectiive fascist dictatorship bent on forcible expanson into habitable worlds.

* Metro 2033 takes place in Moscow after a nuclear war has destroyed most of Russia (and presumably most of the rest of the world.) Civilization has survived by moving into the subways and sewers beneath the city and humans now live in self-contained underground cities. Of course, the tunnels are now overrun by mutants and other dangerous creatures and the player has to run a gauntlet through underground cities run by communists and Nazi's.

* ''[[TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker]], set AfterTheEnd, features Ganon laying waste to Hyrule prior to the start of the game. Later, the three gods flood the land, although it's not clear how much of the entire world is affected, or how many fled to higher ground.