History ApocalypseHow / Class1

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{The 100}}'' takes place ninety-seven years after a nuclear war decimated Earth, killing all but a small group of humans that happened to be in space at the time. The planet itself is believed to have suffered a Class 3 or 4 but was actually a Class 2

* TheBlackDeath halved Europe and China's populations, killing an estimated one hundred million people and setting civilizations back by centuries in the fourteenth century.

* ''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 million. Nonetheless, 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.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' manages a Class 1 in the series 3 ending episodes. Human life on Earth is ordered decimated the old-fashioned way--10% of the population gets killed while the Master takes control of the planet and enslaves the remainder of humanity. Later, we hear about the ruins of New York, the fusion mills of China and the radiation pits of Europe. Thankfully this gets a ResetButton.

* 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 ''Fanfic/TokimekiPokeLiveAndTwinbee'', [[spoiler:[[OriginalCharacter Aleena]] reveals in "Prophecy of Failure!?" that outside of northern places in Canada, Siberia and Greenland and presumably southerly placee like New Zealand and West Antarctica, civilization has collapsed due to [[GlobalWarming Climate Change]] and wars for limited rescources are the norm]].

* Earth after the Zentraedi attack in ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross''/''Anime/{{Robotech}}'' is around a 1.5: while most of humanity is killed off by a brutal orbital bombing, the survivors and the residents of the SDF-1 were able to repopulate though the help of cloning (which at one point accounted for more than 90% of the human population). Humanity also has plenty of advanced technology acquired from alien sources, and civilization is shown to recover both in the later ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' series such as ''Anime/MacrossPlus'', and in the ''Masters'' and ''New Generation'' seasons of ''Robotech'' (which were [[CutAndPasteTranslation dubbed versions]] of ''Anime/SuperDimensionCavalrySouthernCross'' and ''Anime/GenesisClimberMospeada'' respectively). In fact, thanks to the capture of several automated factory satellites from the Zentradi, humanity in ''Macross'' advances far faster after the catastrophe than it did before it, though civilization on Earth itself still takes some years to recover from the devastation.

* The Second Impact in the backstory of ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', which killed over half of human 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.
* ''Anime/HeatGuyJ'' As explained in a BreakingSpeech given by [[DesignatedVillain Clair]], the people of Earth got a hold of the AppliedPhlebotinum of the resident SuperiorSpecies. That was fine, until they started using said phlebotinum [[NuclearWeaponsTaboo for war]], and most of the population of Earth was wiped out, save for a few hundred-thousand people, who now live in seven isolated city-states (and some small towns/villages surrounding them.)

* 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.)
* 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.
* Earth at the start of ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato'' is this, verging on class 4. Humanity is barely hanging on to underground cities, with the surface uninhabitable.

* In ''{{ComicBook/Crimson}}'', dragons are unleashed all over the world thanks to the BigBad's manipulations when their king is released from prison and they provoke untold devastation. [[spoiler:Lisseth's plan was to KillAllHumans just so she could escalate to a Class X-4 apocalypse level, but thanks to the heroes' efforts, they are able to stop her and put the disaster on this level, since humanity is shown to recover and rebuild after the incident]].

* In ''Film/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. Resurgence which takes place 20 years later confirms that the humans used the Alien technology recovered from the City Destroyers to rebuild their civilization.
* In ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'', the Northern Hemisphere has been caught in a sudden Ice Age. Millions of people are instantly frozen to death and survivors flee to Southern countries.

* 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.
* ''Film/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.

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

* Thanos -- the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]'s GreaterScopeVillain -- faces off against the Avengers in ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'' in an attempt to destroy half of all life in the universe using the Infinity Stones, with the goal of saving the other half by reducing consumption of finite resources. Basically this level applied to ''every'' planet in the universe. ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' shows the aftermath, not only from the consequences of the deaths themselves, but the traumatization of the survivors. One gets the implication that it could have slid into total collapse without the Avengers doing all they can to help the world hold together. Most of the planets in the universe don't have that, with Captain Marvel trying to pick up the slack on her own.
* ''Film/NoBladeOfGrass'': A new strain of blight strikes all members of the grass family, causing widespread famine that, in combination with numerous failed attempts to contain the plague, leads to hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide.

* The Breaking of the World in Robert's Jordan's ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' series. Also borders on Class 2.
* ''Literature/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 [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]], and the lakes and oceans of the world, where lost zombies roam on the lake bed or ocean floor.]]
* Creator/GregBear:
** 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 HandWavium, 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.]]
** Bear also manages a Class 1 in [[spoiler: ''Literature/{{Eon}}'', this time by full-scale global nuclear exchange.]] Add to this the Class X in ''Forge of God'', and he'd wiped out most of humanity three times in three of his earlest novels.

* 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.
* Prior to ''Literature/{{Sabriel}}'', book one of Garth Nix's ''Literature/OldKingdom'' series, something like this occurred thanks to Kerrigor.
* In the ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'' series, the ''First'' Apocalypse exterminated an entire cradle of human civilization, the Ancient North. Now its ruins are haunted by baying Sranc. At least they killed the [[EldritchAbomination No-God]], though: his very existence caused infants to be stillborn for eleven years. The main point of the series is to prevent the eponymous Second Apocalypse, which would entail the resurrection of a now-unstoppable No-God and an eventual class 4-6, all so that the two surviving Ichoroi can avoid going to Hell.

* In ''Without Warning'', 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.
* In John Barnes' ''Mother of All Storms'' 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.
* John Varley's ''Slow Apocalypse''. 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.
* In ''{{Literature/Doom}}: Hell on Earth'', humanity suffers a die-back at the hands of the "demons"/Freds. All nations have been devastated and mankind is struggling to avoid extinction.
* In the "An Orison of Sonmi-451" segemnt of David Mitchell's 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.
* This is what [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight the time traveller Phanthro]] is trying to accomplish in the ''Literature/{{Relativity}}'' story "Tempest".
* The background scenario for Joe Haldeman'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.
* The apocalypse in ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' was at least continental, probably global. In the first book, Katniss describes a massive natural disaster: "the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land." Wars erupted as factions tried to claim the limited remaining resources, and this appears to have led to the collapse of the North American nations that we currently know. Some time after that, about 75 years before the present, a massive rebellion resulted in further destruction; District 13 was seen as a particular threat since they controlled the nuclear power and potentially weapons, so the Capitol bombed them into oblivion.

* The technological apocalypse in the ''Daybreak'' series wipes out roughly ninety percent of the human race between 2024 and 2026, but the United States is still, barely, hanging on. That said, most of the surviving humans are now BrainwashedAndCrazy by Daybreak and are intent on continuing the devastation until the planet becomes a Class 3. [[spoiler:The final book in the series shows them partially succeeding as the last U.S. President resigns from office and the country ceases to exist as the final pockets of civilization are overrun.]]
* 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.
* 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.

* ''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.

* 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.]]
* ''Series/{{Jeremiah}}'' shows life after a plague has wiped out nearly every post-pubescent human being.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'' manages a Class 1 in the series 3 ending episodes. Human life on Earth is ordered decimated the old-fashioned way--10% of the population gets killed while the Master takes control of the planet and enslaves the remainder of humanity. Later, we hear about the ruins of New York, the fusion mills of China and the radiation pits of Europe. Thankfully this gets a ResetButton.
* 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 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 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/{{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]].
* In the series finale of ''Series/{{Leverage}}'', {{Inspector|Javert}} Sterling says that [[InterpolSpecialAgent Interpol]] is [[spoiler:refusing to prosecute the culprits of the 2008 financial crisis]] to avoid one of these - a global economic crash - due to lack of faith in international finance.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' varies from place to place. A number of modern cities have been (re)built, including a scant few that survived from before the magically-charged cataclysm, but only the most powerful states expand their influence beyond the borders of their own cities (or have "city" be plural, for that matter). Mankind is slowly rebuilding, but the initial catastrophe of the Coming of the Rifts was ''just'' shy of a full-blown Class 2. It's taken the world 300 years of rebuilding to reach the point of a Class 1.5 and is only a couple of good shoves from falling back into Class 2 territory. The presence of alien monsters/invaders/the return of magic has been both a blessing and a curse, as some areas have come back much faster than others, but ''very'' differently than how they were before and often with humans at the bottom of the pecking order.
* The post-WorldWarThree world of ''TabletopGame/{{Twilight 2000}}'' is Class 1, bordering on Class 2. It's clear that humanity has a lot to do, but generally implied that civilisation would rise again. The starfaring game ''2300 AD'' was {{Ret Con}}ned into being a sequel, so this interpretation is more-or-less official.
* The Anime Multiverse Setting of TabletopGame/BigEyesSmallMouth has Enid, a world in which most of humanity was driven into arcologies underground by violent storms, that since ravage 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 ''TabletopGame/{{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 ''TabletopGame/NukeWar'', if you win, it's only a Class 1 disaster; if everyone loses, it's somewhere from Class 2 to 4.

* Most ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games start or end up here. Some notable examples include ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiI'', ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', and ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor''. ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiII'' takes place a century after one of these.
* In the ''VideoGame/ImprobableIsland'' [[TheVerse world]], the EMP War was an interesting cross-level. With the exception of people with pacemakers, nobody died, yet technology was pretty much knocked back 50 years since nobody actually knew how to make silicon computers anymore.

* ''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.

* ''VideoGame/{{Uplink}}'' features a non-lethal Class 1, [[spoiler: that happens when the Revelation virus destroys the Internet]].
* 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...)
* ''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]].
* 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.
* The destruction of the Torus Aeternal a year prior to ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Albion Prelude]]'' caused [[ColonyDrop millions of tons of debris to rain down on Earth]]. The Terran military reacted to the attack [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge pretty much how you'd expect]].

* 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 rebuild themselves afterwards.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' is set in a Class 1.5 scenario, due to Calamity Ganon overpowering Link, Zelda, and the Champions in their first battle, and virtually destroying the Kingdom of Hyrule. Though the kingdom itself has largely been erased for 100 years and horrible monsters freely roam the lands, far-flung towns and villages managed to escape the devastation and have mostly recovered.

* ''TabletopGame/TechInfantry'' has a large meteor strike the earth and render it temporarily uninhabitable, but by that point, humans have colonized many other planets, so the species survives.
* Coruscant in ''Roleplay/TheGunganCouncil'' had at least a quarter of its surface damaged and possibly even wiped out by a Death Star exploding in its orbit.

* ''VideoGame/NightOfTheLivingAlternateHistory'', also on the Alternate History Wiki, depicts a ZombieApocalypse that kills millions and devastates almost every country in the world. A lucky few, such as Australia and New Zealand, survived with minimal damage.

* In ''Litature/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.

* ''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.]]

* Thanos -- the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]'s GreaterScopeVillain -- faces off against the Avengers in ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'' in an attempt to destroy half of all life in the universe using the Infinity Stones, with the goal of saving the other half by reducing consumption of finite resources. [[spoiler: He succeeds]].

* In ''VisualNovel/{{Danganronpa}}'', presumably an event of this scale has happened before the events of the game.

* In ''Litature/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. Futhermore, 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.

* 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.

* There are a number of Supervolcanos on Earth and we get approximately one big eruption every 100,00 years. One example is the Yellowstone supervolcano, which could cause a Class 1 event for America thanks to the spread of lava and ash, and possibly even cause another Ice Age if the ash stays in the atmosphere long enough. [[FridgeHorror While the Yellowstone supervolcano]] [[OhCrap is overdue for an eruption]], it's showing no signs of doing so (we would know months in advance thanks to seismic activity) and may never erupt again - but don't be disappointed, it's only the 21st most dangerous volcano in America.

* An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would at minimum cause a class 1 event wiping out a majority of the USA and parts of Canada within a few hours due to both the initial eruption and the spread of lava and ash. Additionally particles sent into the atmosphere by the eruption would cool down the earth and block sunlight causing mass crop failure leading to widespread famine and potentially causing another ice age if the particles stay in the atmosphere long enough. [[FridgeHorror While the Yellowstone supervolcano]] [[OhCrap is overdue for an eruption]], it's showing no signs of an eruption - but don't be disappointed - it's only the 21st most dangerous volcano in America.

* An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would at minimum cause a class 1 event wiping out a majority of the USA and parts of Canada within a few hours due to both the initial eruption and the spread of lava and ash. Additionally particles sent into the atmosphere by the eruption would cool down the earth and block sunlight causing mass crop failure leading to widespread famine and potentially causing another ice age if the particles stay in the atmosphere long enough. [[FridgeHorror Keep in mind that the Yellowstone supervolcano]] [[OhCrap is overdue for an eruption.]]

* The effects of climate change can easily do this, even if humans get time to adapt to the changing world. The most immediate effects start with a rise in water levels due to the melting ice caps, which means very little to us now, but in the future this rise could very well sink coastal cities that are unprepared to handle them, and since most of humanity lives by the ocean, this would be catastrophic. But that is just one of the most visible effects. The true extent of climate change is even worse. The gradual messing-up of our planet would cause an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters. For example, hurricanes would be stronger and occur more often, devastating the American Eastern Seaboard. Some areas, like the American Southwest, are expected to get a major decrease in rainfall (something which is already occurring), rendering those areas unlivable for humans due to the lack of easily accessible water. The climate, on average, will get hotter around the globe, but climate and weather are very different things, meaning winters could be colder (as with the collapse of the Polar Vortex which devastated North America in the winter of 2013) and snowier. A change in climate, even one as small as a few degrees Fahrenheit, could cause widespread crop failure and famine. Food prices would go up, economies would collapse, and waves of refugees would flee from equatorial areas to more habitable regions, putting further strain on the available food supply. The increased natural disasters could also result in a collapse of infrastructure, including hospitals, roads, and emergency services, causing thousands to die. It isn't all bad though; at least the northerners get to have sunnier weather on average. It just comes at the cost of immense human suffering and lives, of course.

* In ''Fanfic/IAmWhatIAm'', this occurs in Xanders' future. Hundreds of portals opened all over the world, allowing millions of demons to enter the Earth and resulting in TheUnmaskedWorld. The new Watchers Council, leading the [[TheChosenMany empowered Slayers]] gathers its forces and starts to close the portals and then joins forces with the world militaries to force the demons back. It [[EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion takes]] [[SubvertedTrope months]] for all the portals to be closed, but by then the demon population had increased massively. While the Protectors of Humanity would keep most demons at bay, nightlife outside of a Settlement, which were newly built cities some of them the size of US states[[notes]]probably the smaller ones, as Xanders' Settlement is implied to be located in New England[[/notes]], is very dangerous as its compared to life in Sunnydale, with a sixty percent chance of dying from something other than natural causes.

* In ''Fanfic/IAmWhatIAm'', this occurs in Xanders' future. Hundreds of portals opened all over the world, allowing millions of demons to enter the Earth and resulting in TheUnmaskedWorld. The new Watchers Council, leading the [[TheChosenMany empowered Slayers]] gathers its forces and starts to close the portals and then joins forces with the world militaries to force the demons back. It [[EasilyTwartedAlienInvasion takes]] [[SubvertedTrope months]] for all the portals to be closed, but by then the demon population had increased massively. While the Protectors of Humanity would keep most demons at bay, nightlife outside of a Settlement, which were newly built cities some of them the size of US states[[notes]]probably the smaller ones, as Xanders' Settlement is implied to be located in New England[[/notes]], is very dangerous as its compared to life in Sunnydale, with a sixty percent chance of dying from something other than natural causes.

* ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' ''begins'' with a Class 1, with an army of manic machines having taken control of the whole world, except for the domed city of Corinth. The whole bonkers thing is reversed by the time ''Samurai'' rolls around.

* The world after the Zentraedi attack in ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross''/''Anime/{{Robotech}}'' is around a 1.5: while most of humanity is killed off by a brutal orbital bombing, the survivors and the residents of the SDF-1 were able to repopulate (though the help of cloning, which accounts for more than 90% of the human population). They also have their advanced technology, and civilization is shown to recover, both in the later ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' series such as ''Anime/MacrossPlus'', and in the ''Masters'' and ''New Generation'' seasons of ''Robotech'' (which were [[CutAndPasteTranslation dubbed versions]] of ''Anime/SuperDimensionCavalrySouthernCross'' and ''Anime/GenesisClimberMospeada'' respectively).
** Definitely applies for the ''Robotech'' version, but could be thought to be inapplicable to the original ''Macross'' version of the events. While 99.9% of humanity has been killed, there it hasn't really caused a 'reduced state' of civilization. In fact, due to the use of cloning mentioned above, as well as the capture of several automated factory satellites, civilization advanced far faster after the catastrophe than it did before it.
** It does apply for the original Macross. Sure, after watching the macross sequels one tends to forget how massive the destruction was, but go rewatch the series, or take a look at the exploration of the devastated earth shown in DYRL (not to be disregarded because in both the series and DYRL Earth was in pretty much the same devastated state). Of course, being a Japanese show, they know they can quickly recover just like they recovered from the devastation caused by the two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However just like we cannot deny the effort they have put to recover from that, we can't deny either the desperate efforts of the surviving humans onboard the SDF-1 Macross to rebuild Earth and quickly put civilization back to acceptable standards.

* 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/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/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.