History ApocalypseHow / Class2

* In ''Anime/MyOtome'', civilization has already pretty much got back on its feet -- it isn't even apparent at first that there ''was'' an apocalypse.

* ''LightNovel/TrinityBlood'' takes place 900 years AfterTheEnd. The events of the series all take place in Europe due to it being the only inhabited continent.
* ''Anime/{{Simoun}}'' takes place long AfterTheEnd, when civilization is back on its feet, though not to its former level.
* Humanity got back on its feet in the ''LightNovel/VampireHunterD'' movies, albeit with some difficulty. Computers and energy weapons still exist, but the largest settlements humans could rebuild are large towns. From what we can gather watching the two movies, there are no more sprawling metropolises in the vein of Tokyo or New York City. In the original novels, there's one such metropolis, though the humans didn't actually build it.

* In ''Anime/SoundOfTheSky'', 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.
* ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'' is a Class 1 disaster due to the Seventh Space War's conclusion. Nearly all the Colonies used a ColonyDrop on Earth, sending it into a seven year Nuclear Winter. However, 15 years after the War, everything is stabilized and despite taking place AfterTheEnd, it is upbeat and hopeful.
* ''Anime/BlueGender'', in which giant bugs ravage the human population of Earth, forcing the humans into space. Admittedly, humans as a species are allowed to survive as small hunter gatherer tribes, but that still necessitates all modern civilization's knowledge and technology to be wiped out lest GaiasVengeance do an encore.
* Although the {{canon}} information is so vague as to be useless, it can be inferred that this was the result of the fall of the Silver Millennium in the {{Backstory}} of ''Franchise/SailorMoon'' -- humanity died out completely everywhere in the Solar System other than Earth, and on Earth the fall was so JustForFun/{{egregious}} that the Silver Millennium and its interplanetary civilization were both completely forgotten. Exactly when this happened is uncertain, although the "thousand years ago" figure frequently bandied about is both historically improbable ''and'' the invention of the Creator/DiC [[CutAndPasteTranslation North American dub]].
* ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'' has humanity defeated and imprisoned in a medieval tech level for 5000 years. The guardian [=AIs=] have a reset option of killing off 90% if the humans get troublesome.
* ''Anime/StellviaOfTheUniverse'' back-story falls half-way between this and Class 1: 99% of humans dead, global civilization mostly wiped out, yet they get right back on their feet in less then two centuries, advancing from the Stone Age to a space-faring civilization. That the near-Class 2 event (the electromagnetic radiation blast from the explosion of a nearby star) is a harbinger of a Class 4 event (the arrival of the much slower physical shockwave from the same explosion) helped ensure that TheApocalypseBringsOutTheBestInPeople. The eponymous Stellvia is one of five enormous space stations built to prevent that event.
* ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' begins centuries after a Class 2, with humanity confined to isolated and impoverished underground villages. The nature of the cataclysm, and the surprising reasons for it, are revealed as the show goes on.

** After that, in [=NOiSE=]: [[CultColony Religious fanatics]] are trying to [[ForTheEvulz bring out the chaos of the Netsphere]] and are doing so by doing less than humane things to people. Against them.....is a single police women who ends up not being able to stop them, and thus the {{Bizarrchitecture}} (built around the Earth) begins to expand rapidly and increase the chaos. DownerEnding.

* ''Franchise/DragonBall'': About 500 years prior to the beginning of [[Manga/DragonBall the first series]], a violent storm raged across the planet Namek, leaving only one Namekian on the ground and another escaped to somewhere in space. Even centuries later with asexual Namekian reproduction, there are only a few hundred Namekians left. During the Frieza saga of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', Frieza, his henchmen and Vegeta almost completely eradicate the Namekian race, aside from the Nameless Namekian who fled all those centuries ago, separated into the light side of Kami and the dark side of Piccolo. Piccolo becomes the only living Namekian on the surface alive prior to most of the race being resurrected by the Earth Dragon Balls and transported by the Namekian Dragon Balls, followed shortly thereafter by Namek's explosion.
* In ''Anime/HeatGuyJ'', after humans appropriated the technology of the [[SuperiorSpecies Celestials]] in [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters their conquest for power]], there were apparently large-scale wars. The result? Earth's human population is reduced to ''seven'' city-states (with some small towns and SpaceAmish villages surrounding them), who are mistrustful of one another and do not trade, communicate, etc. with one another.

* ''Anime/TurnAGundam'': This was the end result of the Turn A using the Moonlight Butterfly across all of the Earth's surface. The ability works by spreading nanomachines around that attack technology, turning it into sand. 2,000 years later, Earthborn humanity is barely up to early 1900s technology levels. [[spoiler:The final battle of the series is trying to stop Ghingnham and the Turn X from doing this ''again''.]]
* ''Literature/FromTheNewWorld'' features the aftermath of this scale of destruction, caused by psychic powers running rampant, 1,000 years in the future. Approximately 50,000-60,000 people live on the Japanese archipelago, and there is little knowledge of the state of the rest of the world. A relatively advanced society has stood for a couple of centuries after unknown generations of unstable feudalism and tyranny, but [[SpaceAmish technologically it remains static by choice]]. Most likely because keeping even a moderate population of highly destructive psychics in check is an incredibly arduous task.
* The world in ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' suffered through this. [[spoiler: After a devastating war against Akatsuki which left tens of thousands dead, Madara activates Mugen Tsukuyomi and traps the entire population in a dream and hooks them up to the [[EldritchAbomination Shinju]] which slowly begins turning them into White Zetsu's. Thankfully, Naruto and Sasuke save the day]]
* ''Anime/GenmaWars'' is set in a distant future Earth where humans were dominated by a demon race known as the Genma. Society has been pretty much destroyed, technology is medieval with a few pieces of lost technology laying around and humans live as badly-mistreated slaves ''at best'' and literal cattle ''at worse'' under their masters. Its revealed that [[spoiler: their downfall was actually engineered by the Genma themselves, who have infiltrated the government and other positions of power during the modern times, conspired to initiate a nuclear war so they could rule over the ashes]].
* ''LightNovel/TheAsteriskWar'': In the wake of an extinction-level event known as Invertia, the entire world has turned into a {{Dystopia}} led by a MegaCorp. Entire countries have been forced back to a system of monarchic rule or even reduced to slums, because it would be profittable for said MegaCorp. The only place that isn't a [[CrapsackWorld Crapsack Location]] is the Asterisk city, used primarily as a stage for very dangerous martial arts duels and tournaments among superhuman teenagers.

* The Dutch comic ''ComicBook/{{Storm|DonLawrence}}'' has civilization destroyed by Soccer. Played completely straight too. Specifically, [[spoiler: a huge solar storm hit space stations transmitting TV signals at a time when eighty percent of Earth's population was watching the world cup final, and so logically, their TV's fried them]]

* Megatron's infiltration protocol in ComicBook/TheTransformersMegaseries is a six-stage plan to take control of an already-inhabited world with comparatively few Decepticons. Done right, it results in this. The events of ''[[ComicBook/TheTransformersAllHailMegatron All Hail Megatron]]'' were intended to be this for Earth.

* In ''Film/TheTimeMachine1960'', the UsefulNotes/ColdWar becomes hot with the [[NukeEm nuclear bombing]] of London, witnessed firsthand by the time traveler. He travels even further into the future and saw that a Class 2 had occurred with the human race split into two groups, the cannibalistic Morlocks, who bred the slow, peaceful Eloi as cattle.
* ''Film/DawnOfThePlanetOfTheApes'' is closer to this than Class 1, given that [[spoiler: 90% of humanity is wiped out and what's left only exists in small pockets. At least one is running out of resources.]] What's more, [[spoiler: Koba]] aimed to pull a Class 3A apocalypse, leaving apes the dominant species. [[SequelHook He may yet succeed]] [[spoiler: even though he's dead.]]
* ''Film/KingsmanTheSecretService'' has a mix of this and Class 3a, [[spoiler:depending on how long Valentine was intending to leave his hand on the machine it could have been a Species-Extinction event, except for the few hundreds he selected and people living in remote areas without electronic devices. In any case a societal collapse was guaranteed. The movie leaves ambiguous [[InferredHolocaust how far it went]]]]. [[spoiler:Presumably not very far, since Dean and his mates survived]].
* ''Film/ThePostman'': It seems to be a class 2, since the townspeople ask about if Europe survived, but things are vague.
* ''Film/BirdBox'': A societal level one, to judge by the news reports, as the plague of suicides has swept across the globe, with millions dead.
* ''Film/TheRover'' is similar to the first ''Film/MadMax'' film - economic collapse happened ten years previous, and it's unlikely that society will recover.

* David Brin's ''Literature/ThePostman'' (1985) is set in the aftermath of "the Doomwar", an apocalyptic war that shattered the United States. The protagonist is 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. Poigantly, it's later revealed that the Doomwar would've been a Class 1 if not for the [[CrazySurvivalist Holnist militias]] sabotaging any efforts at recovery. Better known as the [[Film/ThePostman film starring Kevin Costner]].

* Stephen King's ''Literature/TheStand'' -- the flu has wiped out almost everyone (we see only the situation in America, but it is confirmed several times the pandemic was global), but the forces of good and evil are [[TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive calling the survivors]] to two cities, and once they begin to gather it turns out there are thousands. The potential for abuse of abandoned power sources is a main issue, suggesting that after evil is defeated humanity will get right back on its feet in terms of technology (which actually [[ParanoiaFuel worries]] some of the [[LuddWasRight protagonists]]). In the end, [[spoiler:God sets off a nuke in the evil city]] (perhaps surprisingly, more an example of ChekhovsGun than DeusExMachina), and the folks in the good city appear to [[spoiler:be starting right down the road to rebuilding the old civilization, warts and all]].
** Of course, 99.44 percent of humanity being wiped out and all, it's unlikely they could simply restart all that technology outside of a few cities. It seems more likely that ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' is an alternate-reality future America, AfterTheEnd, since it's confirmed that Captain Trips happened there in the distant past, as well. Which places it in a high Class 2, verging on Class 3.
** Also see ''Literature/SwanSong'' by Robert R. [=McCammon=], which deals with the aftermath of a nuclear war and bears certain ... similarities to ''Literature/TheStand''.

* Creator/SMStirling's ''Literature/ThePeshawarLancers'' centers on a set of comets hitting the North Atlantic and North America in 1878, creating tidal waves that ruin what is left of the U.S. and most of mainland Europe. Britain (having lucked out with Ireland as a waterbreak) is dealing with the nightmarish winter that follows when a group of scientists predict that Spring will not come for another three years at best. So of course they evacuate the Army, the Royals, a chunk of the nobility and government, the contents of several Universities, as much factory gear/skilled workers they can get their hands on, and so forth over to India. The book itself starts in 2025, with the Angrezi Raj pitted against the plots of a Russian Empire run by a [[ReligionOfEvil Satanist cannibal cult]] and guided by an order of precognitive slaves.

* Creator/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.
* Creator/JohnChristopher's ''Literature/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.
** ''When the Tripods Came'' was published some thirty years after the first three, in 2000, and is an extremely moving book, for all its simplicity.

* Creator/SMStirling:
** In the Literature/{{Emberverse}} , a mysterious event causes all recent power sources to stop working at all (electricity, steam engines of any useful efficiency, gunpowder, etc.). About 95% of humanity dies off in the first year from starvation and lack of knowledge on how to survive in primitive conditions. Another large percentage of what's left dies off once cannibalism is no longer an option due to lack of other humans. By the end of the first book it's clear humanity is going to survive -- most remaining threat comes from would-be warlords and despots, who want to enslave rather than kill -- but the cultures that are springing up aren't precisely what you'd expect. Then there's the reborn Kingdom of Britain that shows up in later volumes. It seems the U.K. military evacuated the Royals, a solid selection of reference materials, a few thousand lucky/skilled souls, etc. to the Isle of Wright and is steadily recolonizing a Britain occupied by "Brushwood Men" (and dealing with [[RoyallyScrewedUp Mad King Charles and his Icelandic Queen]], but that is beside the point).
** ''Literature/ThePeshawarLancers'' accomplishes much the same thing with a series of cometary impacts that destroy industrial Europe and the eastern United States in the late 19th century, setting the stage for a {{Steampunk}} 21st century where the British Raj in India, an ascendant Japanese Empire, and the Empire of Brazil are the dominant world powers. France is a shadow of its former self and Russia [[spoiler: is controlled by a EldritchAbomination-worshipping death cult]].
* ''Literature/TheZombieSurvivalGuide'' dubs this a "Class 4 Outbreak" of the ZombieApocalypse -- when there are so many zombies that humanity is overwhelmed.

* ''Literature/ADeepnessInTheSky'': Every planet-bound human civilization goes through this at some point due to the limits of technology, and has been doing this for thousands of years. The Emergents manage to stave this off through MindControl, but the true answer as of ''Literature/AFireUponTheDeep'' seems to be to move to the parts of the galaxy where FasterThanLightTravel is possible. In the case of ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', this is the answer for poor weak sophonts of human-level intelligence. [[spoiler:The ultimate answer of beings beyond the Powers is to move the zones of space where singularity can occur closer to you.]]

* ''Literature/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' by John Wyndham. The light from a meteor shower renders most of the human race blind, leaving them vulnerable to carnivorous walking plants that sting you to death and eat your corpse, and reproduce rapidly. Don't bother watching the [[Film/TheDayOfTheTriffids 1962 film]] which conveniently has a HappyEnding when they suddenly discover that the Triffids [[spoiler: can be killed with sea water]].
* ''Literature/EightWorlds'': An alien invasion literally plows human civilization out of existence, supposedly to benefit Earth's true higher life forms: dolphins, sperm whales and other cetaceans. At that time, humanity had one single developed colony on the moon. They were warned -- once -- never to land on Earth again. Four hundred years later, humanity had settled all the other 'junk' planets in the solar system. What continues to happen on Earth is a sweet mystery.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
** "Literature/Nightfall1941", a planet with six suns experiences night only once every 2049 years. Each time, the darkness drives almost everyone insane and they destroy civilization. At the end the scientists are unable to convince the people of the danger and it all happens again, but they're able to save their data about the event so that the next cycle might avoid the same fate. (Of course, given that this has happened nine or ten times before, it's very much implied that all this might be for naught, as by the time the next cycle's civilization is advanced enough to understand the data, it may well have degenerated into myth.) This is the exact situation in the novel version; one of the reasons the scientists aren't believed is because it's revealed that their prediction ''exactly'' matches the apocalyptic prophecy of an ancient cult.
** ''Literature/PebbleInTheSky'': Once the setting shifts to Earth in the far future, it's established that [[EarthThatUsedToBeBetter Earth now has large areas of nuclear wasteland, and visitors from off-world wear lead-lined clothing]]. The radioactive planet is slowly becoming completely uninhabitable.

* ''Literature/RiddleyWalker'': It's two thousand years -- we think -- after a nuclear war blasted everyone back to Iron Age technology. In the two millennia since the war, mankind has been getting by in a sort of neo-tribal existence, by digging up old rusting metal out of the earth to salvage the scrap metal. All history is orally related via Punch-and-Judy puppet shows and half-remembered accounts of the war are woven together with scraps of the legend of St. Eustace. And the English language is mind-blowingly different.
* Current conditions are like this in ''Cthulhu's Reign'', an anthology of Creator/HPLovecraft-inspired AfterTheEnd tales. In most stories it's a temporary condition, as events are rapidly progressing towards a Class 3 or Class 4.
* ''Literature/TheWildBoy'' by Warren Rochelle-somewhere between this and the next, since it was unnatural means, but humanity wasn't totally extinct and was back in pre industrial mode living in the ruins (the ones not being bred by the Lindauzi anyway)
* ''Literature/ABoyAndHisDog'': The unnamed city is divided among scavenger gangs underneath which lies a CrapsaccharineWorld that maintains a decent level of technology but which is dying out from inbreeding.
%%* ''Literature/TheFireUsTrilogy'' features one of these, although it's very close to being a Class 3.%%ZCE
* Paul O. Williams' ''Pelbar'' series, in which the majority of the human race was wiped out a thousand years previous, by a [[spoiler: meteor storm which triggered an atomic exchange.]] Commonly known as the Time Of Fire. Only remnants of the time are scattered ruins and various radioactive dead zones.
* In Mary Gentle's ''The Golden Witchbreed'', [[{{Precursors}} the eponymous species]] who inhabited the planet of Orthe created a virus called Ancient Light, which could sterilize the entire planet of all organic material and fuse the terrain into a glass-like substance. Luckily, it was stopped, and only some parts of the planet were affected. The Witchbreed survived only as a few hybrids in one of their outposts and most of their advanced technology was lost, while their slave race rebuilt medieval-level civilization in the unaffected regions.
** However, in [[SuddenDownerEnding the ending]] of the sequel, ''Ancient Light'', [[spoiler: [[TheCaligula Calil Bel-Rioch]] releases Ancient Light again, after destroying the city of Casabaarde, which contained the only way to stop the virus, thereby causing a Class 6. The Orthans can't even be saved by being relocated off world, since they're dependant on Orthan microbes to survive.]]
* Patrick Tilley's ''The Literature/AmtrakWars'' are set in an America that has recovered ecologically centuries after a nuclear war. A civilization of underground cities has developed from nuclear bunkers, and they are now spreading out to wage a genocidal war against the hunter-gatherer civilization that lives in the open.
* ''Literature/TheMazeRunner'' turns out to be set after one of these: [[spoiler:A combination of Solar Flares and a virus, collectively known as the Flare, has wiped out civilization outside a few tiny bases, leaving the world a barely-habitable wasteland roamed by [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Cranks]], with some parts having been scoured of all life.]]
* In the twist ending of ''Literature/TheCityOfEmber'',[[spoiler:it turns out that the eponymous city is an underground enclave built to weather a series of nuclear wars and deadly plagues. The outside world has regressed to pre-industrial levels. However, the people are still fairly well off, and, with the help of the Emberites and a few caches of LostTechnology, are starting anew by the end of the series]].
* ''Literature/{{Anthem}}'' takes place in a medieval society centuries after the collapse of civilization due to the victory of collectivism. Critics of Rand like to say that this is what happened to the world after ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' even though it was written first.
* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': The Desolations were a cyclical example of this trope. Apparently, 90% casualties (of the entire human race) are not uncommon, and it's considered a toss-up as to whether humanity will have struggled back up to ''bronze'', let alone iron, by the time the ''next'' Desolation gets here. For various reasons, the current Desolation was delayed much longer than normal, allowing humanity to work their way much farther up the tech tree.
* ''Literature/TheTapestry'': The end of the second book features [[spoiler: [[BigBad Astaroth]] acquiring the [[RealityWarper the Book of Thoth]] and using it to screw around with the truenames of anything he doesn't like. This results in Earth being reduced to a medieval CrapsackWorld: all technology past the Middle Ages being destroyed and wiped from memory, the vast majority of humanity being wiped out, and the few tens of millions of survivors being subjugated by [[EvilOverlord demonic rulers]].]]
* Edgar Pangborn's ''Davy'', ''The Company of Glory'' and the stories collected in ''Still I persist in Wondering'' and elsewhere, take place in North America (mostly New England) in the decades and centuries following a limited nuclear/biological war that caused polar ice cap melting, altering the shape of the coastline. Society regresses to a feudal level, though some individuals continue to fight uphill battles against ignorance and cruelty.
* ''Literature/{{Kronk}}'': Society is headed this way . P939 inhibits all aggression, which also inhibits most of human drive. [[spoiler:It might make its way up to a Class 3 when the Hate Plague aspects come into play]].
* ''Literature/MythAdventures'': Deva suffered an ecological disaster many generations ago, rendering the land and seas incapable of sustaining its civilization. The native Deveels only survived by becoming the dimensions' wiliest cross-world traders, forfeiting and forgetting their pre-catastrophe way of life.
* In ''Literature/{{Worm}}'', the [[OmnicidalManiac Endbringers]] are slowly inflicting this on humanity over the course of decades of regular attacks, destroying cities, killing superheroes, and wiping out infrastructure. Attempts to recover between attacks can mitigate some of the damage, but every character is aware that humanity is slowly becoming extinct, and there's nothing they can do about it. As of the aptly named Extinction arc, [[spoiler:Scion has pulled a FaceHeelTurn and inflicted this scale of damage on multiple alternate earths]].
* ''Literature/TheTaking'': This is considered to be the best-case scenario at the hands of the [[AlienInvasion invaders]] by many of the townsfolk, with only small pockets of humanity surviving on a radically altered Earth. They're right, but not for the reasons they thought. [[spoiler:The invaders are actually TheLegionsOfHell, out to take the souls of the insufficiently virtuous, which apparently amount to most of humanity. Most of the rest are virtuous, but lack useful skills and are raptured as a result. This leaves only those who are both virtuous and skilled as well as the children of those who were taken to rebuild with the help of some ill-explained EasyLogistics hand-waved in during the last few chapters while the invaders and the apparent HostileTerraforming leave faster than they appeared.]]
* In ''Literature/StationEleven'', society falls when a plague wipes out a large portion of humanity and much of the rest dies due to the resulting lack of infrastructure, modern medicine, and so on. What little modern technology remains a couple decades later later is only there due to people going out of their way to preserve it. [[spoiler:By the end, humanity appears to be on a slow march back to modernity, with at least one community producing its own electricity.]]
* ''Literature/TheInheritanceCycle'': The exact nature of the Fall of the [[{{Precursors}} Grey Folk]] is ambiguous, but it's indicated to be around this scale. All we know about it is that a [[GoneHorriblyWrong miscast spell]] caused the extinction of all but a few of the Grey Folk and the loss of most if not all written records from the time, inspiring the remaining Grey Folk to enchant the very concept of magic itself with [[LanguageOfMagic safeguards]] to prevent a recurrence. Also, the Arcaena cult (whose membership includes Heslant the Monk and [[spoiler:Jeod]]) believes that [[EternalRecurrence a similar event will take place]] in the relatively near future, and are dedicated to stockpiling information against it. There's no stated connection, however, between the Arcaena or their beliefs and the Grey Folk.
* In "Literature/TheStar", a ShortStory by Creator/HGWells, the story ends with nearly complete social collapse on Earth, due to a wandering star almost [[ColonyDrop hitting the planet]].
* ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'':
** The First World State collapses due to a catastrophic energy crisis and ensuing starvation and mass rioting, in addition to accidental releases of an ancient nerve plague which quickly spreads all over the world, effectively sending humanity back to the Stone Age.
** The Second Men, who are especially vulnerable to disease, suffer repeated diebacks from plagues, generally at the level of Continental to Planetary Societal Collapse, before they finally attain the relative stability of their zenith. Similar collapses are also caused by an extensive ice age and a single world war.
** The Fifth Men undergo a near-total Social Collapse as imperfect adjustments to Venus' environment, an incurable gastric disease and a degenerative neurological affliction devastate their race and reduce them to scattered island-dwelling barbarians.
* The novel ''Literature/MindGames'' involves a [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt system apocalypse]] in which magic starts working and electronics stop working. The disruption to transportation and communications networks, along with the fact that wildlife starts mutating into hideously dangerous monsters, immediately causes widespread disruption. Though the novel only takes place during the first few days of the event it is implied that this will take human civilization down several pegs.
* ''Literature/TrailOfLightning'' is set after the Energy Wars and the Big Water destroyed global industry and flooded chunks of the world. The Dinétah nation is reduced to scavenging technology and food from ruins and farming for subsistence. The economy is reduced to barter system dominated by handcrafts.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'': Individual planets suffered everything up to and including Class 5 in the Final War, but human civilization as a whole is starting to reclaim the stars 80 years on.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'':
** Earth went through at least one of these in the backstory, 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.
** A significant number of Imperial worlds are ancient human colonies that fell into this, either independently or as part of larger-scale cataclysms and wars, then slowly worked their way back up to higher tech levels over the course of thousands of years. The degree of recovery varies from world to world -- some reach industrial levels by the time the Imperium finds them again, some develop agricultural societies and some remain firmly in the Stone Age.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Degenesis}}'', a German roleplaying game set AfterTheEnd sees presumably all of civilization completely destroyed. Humanity got back to their feet, making the initial apocalypse only a Class 1 case. However, since the asteroids left some alien material that constantly expands its turf, the survival of the human race is all but probable.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Mystara}}'': The Great Rain of Fire, a planetary cataclysm that devastated the world 3000-odd years ago, knocked human and elven civilization from scifi-grade technology back to savagery. The exact nature of the weapons Evergrun's elves and Blackmoor's humans threw at each other is unknown, but nukes were probably the ''least'' of them, as their conflict was so violent that it ''changed Mystara's axial tilt''. Note that this same event rates as a Class 3 for some of the other races that were around back then, and that still others only subverted a Class 3 because the Immortals preserved some of them in the Hollow World.
* ''TabletopGame/BlissStage'': The Bliss destroyed civilization by making the earth a TeenageWasteland.
* Creator/WhiteWolf:
** ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'': The "Crucible Of God" scenario in the final supplement, ''Gehenna'', ends in this (if the [=PCs=] ''win''), with about 90% of the Earth's humans (and corresponding numbers of most other life) dead.
** ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'' has a similar endgame scenario. Class 2 is the ''best'' possible outcome of the Garou's battle against the inevitable titular Apocalypse. Gaia only knows what could happen if the werewolves ''lose''.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': The Yozis are trying to do this to Creation, but it only falls into this category because they're not going to kill all humans. If the Yozis were to succeed it would be worse than a Class Z.

* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Dragons'' includes an apocalyptic scenario where a StandardFantasySetting finds itself overrun with dragons for unknown reasons -- possibilities given in the book include dragons deliberately ramping up their fertility to deal with an increase in dragonslayers, the eradication of a predator that normally thins out populations of newborn dragons and a mass summoning spell, as well as combinations thereof. Regardless of the reasons, the world finds itself overrun with dragons rampaging where they wish and destroying anything in their way, leading to a widespread collapse of civilization.

* ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' gives the player the option to instigate a non-lethal Class 2: because [[spoiler: all global communication and technological infrastructure is being routed through Area 51 so TheConspiracy can control it, destroying the facility sets everybody back a few centuries]].
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'', 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 ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' universe. After [[WorldWarIII global thermonuclear war]] wipes out civilization and much of the human population, a post-nuclear {{Zeerust}}-filled AWorldHalfFull provides the backdrop for the games. Social organization is tribal in most cases and only the New California Republic even approaches [[Literature/GunsGermsAndSteel Jared Diamond]]'s definition of a "state".
* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiI''. [[NukeEm Thor's Hammer.]] [[GodIsEvil The Great Flood.]] Japan's left as a charred, sunken husk of what it was. [[CrapsackWorld It's implied the world beyond is little better if at all]].
* ''VideoGame/{{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 Nazis.

* The freeware game ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'' begins with a vast majority of all life on the planet blown to bits, your job is to try to save the remaining life from being blown into even tinier bits.
* By the end of ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'', most people either become [[OurZombiesAreDifferent -wels-]], are absorbed into the BigBad, are eaten by -wels-, or are killed by "angels." Only a handful of people survive, clinging to life in a couple locations.
** This isn't the first time either. Several thousand years before the start of the game, the Zeboim era was a technology rich society that was done in with a combination of low birth rates and nuclear war.
* ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' has a backstory that includes a Class 2, although by the time the game actually begins, enough centuries have passed that civilization has made its way back to a rough analog of steam technology with electricity in [[DecadeDissonance a few scattered places]].
** [[spoiler: Valua gets hit with a Class 0 in the later stages of the game. If the Elders of the Silvite Civilization would have succeeded in collecting the Moon Crystals, another Class 2 would have taken place.]]

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock''. The delusional AI [=SHODAN=] of Citadel Station planned to destroy every major city on Earth from space to assert her (its?) godhood over the survivors. Failing that, she also tried to unleash a plague of mutagenic virus on the planet, which would turn pretty much everybody into mutant-zombies.
* Mankind was kicked back to the stone age 3000 years before the beginning of ''VideoGame/ArcTheLad'', [[spoiler: Arc 2 ends with ''merely'' a Class 1 extinction.]] [[PlayerPunch You can hate the writters for this]]

* ''VideoGame/IAmAlive'' The entire world is massively FUBAR by some unknown cataclysm. The player must navigate the shattered, devastated ruins of what was once New York in order to find his daughter and girlfriend.
* Franchise/{{Halo}}:
** The backstory has explained that the Jiralhanae/Brutes and the Unggoy/Grunts both did this to themselves before the Covenant discovered them, the former due to a major nuclear war, and the latter due to over-industrialization.
** Additionally, this was one of [[spoiler: Mendicant Bias]]'s many threats of what it would do to [[spoiler:the Forerunners]] after he went rampant and [[spoiler:joined the Flood]], [[spoiler:which would more or less be DramaticIrony, since [[AbusivePrecursors the Forerunners]] had also done this a millennium earlier to Humanity]]. In a way, it did succeed; though [[spoiler:the surviving Forerunners managed to rebuild their lives in exile]], the various species they had saved from [[spoiler:the Flood and the Halos]] had their societies reset to the hunter-gathering level.
* The Fall of D'ni from the ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' Verse probably belongs here as much as anywhere, as it snuffed out an entire civilization, albeit one headquartered in a single city and dispersed across an untold number of Ages beyond that world.
* The last missions of ''[[VideoGame/StarCraftII StarCraft II]]'''s ''Wings of Liberty'' campaign are about inflicting this upon the Zerg. Only part of one planet is cleansed of the Zerg, but according to WordOfGod (and the sequel), without Kerrigan (who was in that part) the Zerg broods start fighting one another, reducing them from a coordinated interplanetary threat to isolated (if fierce) local threats. Recovery is impossible without another central guiding intelligence, or until and unless Kerrigan recovers and re-establishes control. A lot of effort goes into preventing the latter. [[spoiler: It fails.]]
* The future as shown in ''[[VideoGame/ANewBeginning A New Beginning]]'' is this thanks to an ecological apocalypse driven by mankind's unwillingness to do anything about climate change. Worse, it is outright stated that things will go to Class 6 thanks to an imminent solar flare and the Earth's depleted atmosphere.

* ''VideoGame/NieR'' has an interesting twist on this. After the "WCS Disaster" killed a massive amount of the world's population, society is now at a medieval level. The twist is that [[spoiler:humanity became Shades in order to escape the disaster, and the people in the world are clones that the Shades intend to inhabit - the world is medieval because the clones developed sentience, and their civilization has only reached medieval level so far]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Rage}}'' takes place over a hundred years after the asteroid 99942 Apophis collided with Earth and wiped out human civilization. Lots of people (including the protagonist) were preserved in underground Arks with the hope that they could rebuild. Seeing as how the game takes place in a DesertPunk wasteland, that rebuilding didn't go as well as planned.

* Possibly the case in ''VideoGame/TheLongDark''. Apparently, the geomagnetic shift that completely did in all electronic devices from car batteries to radio sets to the plane you were flying on (leaving you stranded in the frozen Canadian wilderness) has affected the entire planet.
* Planet Aether teeters between this and Class 3 in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes''. The Luminoth, which were the dominant species of the planet, saw a meteor was going to crash into their world and everything they tried failed to deter the meteor's course while their efforts also strained the planet's energy. They took shelter and waited it out. The Luminoth survived, but the meteor's impact opened a dimensional rift and let loose a race of monster beings known as the Ing. The Ing fought the Luminoth in a great war for years and stole their technology and their planet's energy to use for their own ends. With the theft of the planet's energy in several regions, the affected regions suffered a total climate change (Agon was once fertile plans and is now a barren desert while Torvus used to be a forest and is now a swamp). Not only were the Luminoth's numbers greatly reduced, but Aether was on the verge of Class X destruction with the final energy controller being in U-Mos's hands. U-Mos had put the rest of his surviving people in a deep sleep until the day they'd win the war. Samus happened to show up in the nick of time (on a mission unrelated to the war) and managed to acquire the Energy Transfer Module, which the Ing was close to obtaining and would have sealed their victory.

* In ''VideoGame/BloodRayne2'', an vampire apocalypse takes place when Kagan's Cult develops a gaseous substance that allows vampires to walk under daytime, causing them to emerge from the shadows and enslave humanity. While its implied to be a Class 0 Apocalypse, as the whole event appears isolated to one unnamed city, according to Severin all of civilization has crumbled in question of hours and the ending shows that humans were reduced to a few underground pockets lead by Brimstone Society.
* In ''VideoGame/AMindForeverVoyaging'', the 2081 simulation becomes this as the result of the Plan taking effect: Your town of Rockvil has become the FallenStatesOfAmerica, bordering on [[ApocalypseHow/Class3A Planetary Cause-Engineered Human Species Extinction]], and quite possibly [[ApocalypseHow/Class5 Planetary Multi-Cellular Species Extinction]]. The environment has been devastated, all governmental authority has collapsed, buildings are decaying with no one to fix them, violent gangs rule the streets, and [[PostApocalypticDog dogs have gone feral]] [[ImAHumanitarian and prey on humans]]. Telephone poles have been chopped down for firewood, no edible food or water is available, leaving you to starve to death, and a cemetery has been overgrown with weeds, neglected, and vandalized. The USNA has truly become a DeathWorld due to the effects of the wrong political party taking control.
* The world of ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' is currently in a Class 2 state, with humans reduced to primitive tribes, and the ruins of a much more advanced human society being all around them. [[spoiler: Turns out, this is the result of Project: Zero Dawn, designed to reseed the Earth after the [=FARO=] robot swarm inflicted a ''ApocalypseHow/Class6''.]]
* The demons of ''VideoGame/Doom2016'' want nothing more than to destroy our world and ruin our humanity. Too bad their one major obstacle happens to have [[TheDreaded already started doing that to Hell]] [[OneManArmy and is their one obstacle]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'''s space stage grants players with the Scientist archetype the 'Gravitation Wave' ability, which generates a pulse of powerful gravity that destroys all man[[note]]Read: alien[[/note]]-made structures on a chosen planet. It violates the galactic code, and thus makes any nearby empires pretty irked at you. Except for [[OmnicidalManiac the Grox]], who find it pretty funny.
* The titular rimworlds of ''VideoGame/{{Rimworld}}'' have already gone through a Class 2 many many years before the game starts, with the ancient remains of buildings, road networks, and industrial machines scattered all around the map. Scattered collections of human settlements dot the globe, with the most advanced towns generally about modern-day in terms of technology level and plenty of lower-tech tribal groups as well. The remnants of the advanced civilization that used to be here are encountered as you go along, in the form of ancient vaults that house [[PeopleJars stasis pods]], occasional groups of highly-advanced {{Killer Robot}}s, and toxic plumes from long-abandoned chemical plants that have finally exploded and decided to settle on top of your settlement.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' series, a Class 2 occurred centuries before the collapse of Ys, which itself was a Class 1. The Eldeen's continent was destroyed by unknown means, scattering humanity, demi-humans/beastmen, and a small fraction of Eldeen to the Eresian lands.
* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' appears to be set in the aftermath of this, with humanity having regressed to tribal society living among the ruins of the Old Ones and robot dinosaurs roaming the earth. How this apocalypse occurred and where the robot dinosaurs came from is one of the driving questions of the game. [[spoiler:When you eventually get your answers, it turns out that Earth actually went through a class ''6'' apocalypse; All life was stripped away by a RobotWar. The modern dinobots are part of a terraforming project the Old Ones created before their extinction in order to FlingALightIntoTheFuture, and all modern life is descended from artificially gestated clones.]]

* ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' ends, canonically, with a nuclear war breaking out (though it remains unclear as to who started it) and a societal collapse. We get to see the results 17 years later in ''VideoGame/FarCryNewDawn''. Bonus points for the villains constant calling the impending apocalypse "The Collapse".

* ''ComicBook/DarkAgesMarvel'' puts the planet at this level. An EMP burst from an alternate dimension is used to destroy a machine known as the Unmaker, but the creature kills Dr. Strange in the process, leaving the dimension open, shutting down all technology. The first issue jumps ahead seven years to where humanity is rebuilding, but now has to deal with Apocalypse and his minions.

* ''TabletopGame/BluePlanet'': The Blight that struck Earth caused a worldwide famine that killed over half of the people on the planet, which caused massive societal collapse. Seventy years after the Blight was defeated, large parts of the world are still lawless 'free zones'.

* David Brin's ''Literature/ThePostman'' (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 [[Film/ThePostman film starring Kevin Costner]].

* ''Literature/{{Cell}}'', by Creator/StephenKing. We see only [=US=] residents, and the book doesn't really address other places, but there's really no reason to think any place with cell phones was spared.

* ''Series/See'' takes place several centuries after a plague wiped out civilization and reduced the human population to roughly two million people. The survivors all lost their sense of sight, forcing humanity back to an Iron Age level.

* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' the {{d|inosaursAreDragons}}ragons [[http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20100518.html did this to themselves]] with an "iridium bomb," wiping out the [[PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs dinosaurs]] in the process. All because they panicked during a clumsy FirstContact.

* ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' ends, canonically, with a nuclear war breaking out (though it remains unclear as to who started it) and a societal collapse. We get to see the results 17 years later in ''VideoGame/FarCryNewDawn''.

Planetary-scale Societal Collapse. This takes an entire planet back to at least a pre-industrial age -- if not hunter-gatherer level. Recovery may or may not be possible.

* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'': The technological and social levels of the societies encountered in the game seem to indicate that a Class 2 occurred some time in the setting's past. [[spoiler: It didn't. The apocalypse was a GreyGoo-based ''Class 6'', and the world was re-terraformed and re-populated by clones without access to pre-Apocalypse tech.]]

* ''Franchise/DragonBall'': About 500 years prior to the beginning of [[Manga/DragonBall the first series]], a violent storm raged across the planet Namek, leaving only one Namekian on the ground and another escaped to somewhere in space. Even centuries later with asexual Namekian reproduction, there are only a few hundred Namekians left. During the Frieza saga of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', Frieza, his henchmen and Vegeta almost completely eradicate the Namekian race, aside from the Nameless Namekian who fled all those centuries ago, separated into the light side of Kami and the dark side of Piccolo. Piccolo becomes the only living Namekian on the surface alive prior to most of the race being resurrected by the Namekian Dragon Balls and transported by the Earth Dragon Balls, followed shortly thereafter by Namek's explosion.

* In ''Anime/MaiOtome'', civilization has already pretty much got back on its feet -- it isn't even apparent at first that there ''was'' an apocalypse.

** ''Literature/PeshawaLancers'' accomplishes much the same thing with a series of cometary impacts that destroy industrial Europe and the eastern United States in the late 19th century, setting the stage for a {{Steampunk}} 21st century where the British Raj in India, an ascendant Japanese Empire, and the Empire of Brazil are the dominant world powers. France is a shadow of its former self and Russia [[spoiler: is controlled by a EldritchAbomination-worshipping death cult]].

* ''Literature/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]].

* In ''ComicBook/Crossed'', this is the end result of the titular plague. Within 12 years of the outbreak, the uninfected human population bottomed out at less than 1 million people. By 2050, the Crossed population had been thinned by disease and violence to the point where the uninfected population began to grow again. By 2108, the people of North America have managed to claw their way back to a roughly 18th-century level.

* The Dutch comic ''ComicBook/{{Storm|DonLawrence}}'' has civilization destroyed by Soccer. Played completely straight too. Specifically, [[spoiler: a huge solar storm hit space stations transmitting tv signals at a time when eighty percent of Earth's population was watching the world cup final, and so logically, their tv's fried them]]

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's classic short story, "Nightfall", a planet with six suns experiences night only once every 2049 years. Each time, the darkness drives almost everyone insane and they destroy civilization. At the end the scientists are unable to convince the people of the danger and it all happens again, but they're able to save their data about the event so that the next cycle might avoid the same fate. (Of course, given that this has happened nine or ten times before, it's very much implied that all this might be for naught, as by the time the next cycle's civilization is advanced enough to understand the data, it may well have degenerated into myth.) This is the exact situation in the novel version; one of the reasons the scientists aren't believed is because it's revealed that their prediction ''exactly'' matches the apocalyptic prophecy of an ancient cult.