History ApocalypseHow / Class5

* If atmospheric carbon dioxide levels ever drop below 150 ppm, most photosynthesis will stop, plants will die, and everything that depends on plants will die. How close did Earth come to such a disaster, and how recently? Well, during the several most recent glacial periods of the current Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 levels dropped to 180 ppm -- that's only 30 ppm away from Armageddon. These glacial periods happen about every 100,000 years and the last one was a mere 20,000 years ago. We're all damned lucky to be alive. A few multicellular organisms that don't depend on photosynthesis, such as the giant tube worms found near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, may survive, making this more of a class 4.5

* ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'' ''Innocent Sin'': [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep wins as the planet is stilled, effectively wiping human civilization and most surface creatures off the face of Earth. The last remnants of humanity still exists in the Xibalba starship, but they drift endlessly in space and the possibility to rebuild the surface world is slim to none. Humanity is pretty much screwed... [[ResetButton but there's a way out]], if certain individuals are willing to pay the price...]]
* Considering that an {{omnicidal|Maniac}} [[EldritchAbomination dragon-thing]] [[GodOfEvil of supreme power and malevolence]] is [[TheBadGuyWins about to]] [[PlanetEater suck the world hollow]], this is the ''best''-case scenario for what [[NayTheist Defiant]] [[PlayerCharacter Ascended]] are [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong sent back in time to avert]] in ''{{Rift}}''. (It's quite possible, or even likely, that it's [[ApocalypseHow/{{Class6}} far]] [[ApocalypseHow/ClassX worse]] than that.)

'''Thanos:''' At random. Dispassionate, fair — to rich and poor alike. They called me a madman... and what I predicted came to pass.

* Later volumes of ''Manga/RaveMaster'' reveal that the world actually exists due to a ResetButton. Prior to it, the world was one human away from Class 5. This one survivor used the power of Star Memory to reset the world. [[spoiler:But, since reality got tampered, Endless was created to try and jerk the world back to the Class 5 it was.]]
* Hades' plans for Earth in ''Manga/SaintSeiya'' was to create an eternal "Great Eclipse", so Earth would freeze over and all life would die, turning it into a dark world much like the Underworld.
* This is the theorized level of destruction caused by the [[MillionMookMarch Rumbling]] in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan''. [[spoiler:The walls that protect humanity are not man-made, but in fact are made up of thousands, if not millions of mindless Titans the size of the Colossus Titan. The First King of the Walls erected them as a deterrent, threatening to use them to flatten the entire world and kill every single human, plant, and animal beyond the walls. However, only the one with the power of the Founding Titan is able to wake these titans and start the Rumbling.]] [[spoiler:Unfortunately for humanity, in chapter 122, Eren Yeager unleashes the Wall Titans as part of his plan to save his people by exterminating all of humanity. Ultimately, however, it gets no further than 80%.]]

* This is the ''starting'' premise of ''Film/{{Pandorum}}'' and initial best case scenario; then we find out the surviving humans wake up marooned on an ark after an offscreen [[EarthShatteringKaboom Class X-2 event]]. It went FromBadToWorse when the personnel in charge [[GoMadFromTheRevelation went insane]] and left everyone in suspended animation for 900 years, where most of them evolved into [[ZombieApocalypse zombie-like creatures]] that feed on the living. Oh, and the [[TimeBomb ship's reactor]] is melting down.
* This happened to Thanos's home planet Titan as revealed in ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar''. Thanos claims that an OverpopulationCrisis caused the extinction event, but Peter [[OneSteveLimit (Quill)]] notes that the planet itself is off its axis and that gravitational pull is "all over the place", indicating that a lack of resources wasn't the only reason for Titan's demise.

* The likely outcome if the ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' had succeeded in stealing Druidia's atmosphere, though some life may have survived in the oceans.
* This is apparently what the Final Protocol used by the Necromongers does to every planet they visit in ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick''.
* ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah'': It's implied that Godzilla going into nuclear meltdown would incinerate the atmosphere causing all life on the planet to perish. It's only due to [[spoiler:Junior absorbing the excess radiation and mutating into an adult Godzilla]] that prevents this from happening.
* ''Film/IndependenceDay'': The aliens' ultimate goal as PlanetLooters who devour every last natural resource on a planet before moving on means that if they win, they'll likely inflict this on Earth in the endgame. Based on their alternate EvilPlan in [[Film/IndependenceDayResurgence the sequel]], it could've actually been a ApocalypseHow/ClassX once they were done with the Earth and ready to move on.
* The cheesy sci-fi classic ''Film/RobotMonster'' had the title baddie wiping out all life on Earth [[EvolutionaryLevels above insect level]], save for a family of humans who took a serum to counteract the invader's AppliedPhlebotinum. (The family lived [[ContrivedCoincidence a short walk away from the cave the alien was living in]].)
* This is the effect of the Doomsday Machine from ''Film/DrStrangelove''. [-[[SoundtrackDissonance We'll...meet again...]]-]
* When the Death Star uses its laser (at minimum power setting!) in ''Film/RogueOne'' on [[spoiler: the Holy City of Jedha]], the resulting blast sends a shockwave through the mantle that sends the ground ''peeling off the moon's surface''. The entire surface of the moon was probably ravaged as a result and won't be habitable for probably thousands of years without major terraforming efforts. Towards the end, [[spoiler:it's used once more against the under-siege Imperial Database Archives on Scarif, killing Imperial and Rebel troops alike, including Death Star co-developer Director Orson Krennic]].
* The [[PlanetLooters Precursors]] plan to trigger one on Earth in ''Film/PacificRimUprising'' by [[spoiler:blowing up the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire Ring of Fire]] through a violent reaction between Kaiju blood and rare earth metals prevalent in lava, causing a worldwide volcanic winter in the process. The PPDC puts a stop to it [[NearVillainVictory with literally seconds to spare]].]]

* Creator/CSLewis's ''Literature/{{Narnia}}'' has the Deplorable Word, an incantation that instantly kills every living thing in the user's world except the user. Jadis of Charn used this long before becoming the White Witch; luckily, alternate magical laws seem to keep it from working on Earth or Narnia itself.
* David Gerrold's ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr'' series is either Class 4 or Class 5. The Chtorr are gradually but inexorably replacing Earth's biome with Chtorr. The apparently inevitable result is the replacement of ''all'' life forms on Earth with Chtorr. [[spoiler: The invasion started at the microbe level, with plagues that devastated the majority of human population. As the invasion continues, more and higher level positions in the food chain are being replaced with Chtorr, with the possible exception of the worms, who appear to be top-tier predators. But since nobody knows exactly what the Chtorr is, it's hard to say for certain.]]
* In ''Literature/TheRoad'', the Earth's biosphere extinction has already occurred and the world is in the final stages of dying.
* Clarke and [[Creator/StephenBaxter Baxter's]] book ''The Light of Other Days'' describes an enormous asteroid that's going to collide with the Earth; large enough that the heat released will more or less sterilize the face of the Earth, such that only the most basic bacteria can survive. It eventually transpires that [[spoiler:this had already happened once, billions of years ago, and the civilization that existed then hid away the life that would eventually evolve into us]].
* Creator/StephenBaxter's ''Literature/{{Evolution}}'' does a FlashForward near the end to the death of the very last lifeforms on Earth. This is so far in the future that the sun has begun to expand in preparation for its collapse into a white dwarf.

* The ''Franchise/StarWars'' [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]] featured a prototype Death Star and the ''[[ComicBook/DarkEmpire Eclipse]]''[[ComicBook/DarkEmpire -class Star Destroyer]], both of which mounted a powered-down version of the Death Star's famous WaveMotionGun from ''Film/ANewHope'', which could "only" "crack the planetary crust" and would likely result in something like this.
** Twenty years before ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'' an experiment on the nature of life went wrong on Kiva and wiped out said life across the entire world, turning it into a GhostPlanet. From orbit it's charcoal-colored, landing on it reveals not so much as a blade of grass. The sentient natives ''sort of'' survived as [[OurGhostsAreDifferent vengeful wraiths]], eager to punish the one responsible - since he's TheAtoner, he doesn't fight.
** In ''ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy'', the Sith release a SyntheticPlague on the Mon Calamari homeworld, killing off all life on the planet within a week. The dead are so numerous that their floating bodies can be seen from space, and the decomposition visibly turns the planet's oceans from blue to a sickly green.
* In the backstory of the Mageworlds books by Debra Doyle, this happens to Entibor.
* In ''Literature/TheKillingStar'', by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, all life on Earth above the level of bacteria is destroyed using a planet-wide relativistic bombardment.

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Sunstorm'' (second book in ''A Time Odyssey'') has the Firstborn redirected a planet and make it hit the sun around AD 0-10, which caused the sun to make coronal mass ejection , threatening to destroy the whole atmosphere.
* In ''Literature/SaturnsChildren'' this happens as part of the backstory. The robots who are left have enforced a strict quarantine on green goo and pink goo in the hopes that they can reconstitute the biosphere, particularly humans (they seem to be 3 laws robots and miss dealing with the first two).
* In Creator/HPLovecraft's "Literature/TheDunwichHorror", Wilbur Whateley's journal contains several references to the Earth's life being "cleared off", presumably to make way for {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. Averted... but possibly still on the agenda of any surviving ''half''-siblings of Wilbur's.

* Frank Herbert's ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' series, as well as the sequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson include the Obliterator weapon. This weapon was stolen from the Machine Empire by the Honored Matres and used in a SaltTheEarth retreat across the galaxy. They later use an Obliterator against Arrakis in an attempt to destroy the natural source of Spice and a number of their enemies (including Darwi Odrade, Sheanna, and Duncan Idaho). In the Dune sequels, the Guild Navigators use an Obliterator against Richesse at the behest of the Honored Matre rebels to cripple the Bene Gesserit. Although the use of the Obliterator destroys all life on the planet, it's later revealed that a number of the worms of Dune knew that the attack would come (being possessed with prescience thanks to Leto II) and survived the attack by burrowing deep into the planet's crust.
* In the ''Literature/LadyAstronaut'' books, earth is hit with a massive meteor. The rest of the series deals with humanity's attempts to colonize space, because the climate change caused by the impact will eventually lead to a Class 5, including the seas ''boiling''.

* The Season Six finale of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' deals with [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Dark Willow]] attempting to burn the Earth to a cinder. Xander talks her down with the PowerOfLove.
** The Season Two finale had Acathla, a demon who would have sucked the world into Hell. This wouldn't actually have killed anyone - just subjected them to an eternity of torment.

** Special mention to the ''Literature/IronWarriors'' short story "The Heraclitus Effect", in which Honsou uses an experimental ''agricultural aid'' to hyper-accelerate the growth of remnant Tyranid growths on [[spoiler:Tarsis Ultra]] - out of ''spite''.

* In the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' Splat book Elder Evils, this is the most likely worst case for two scenarios:
** Father Lymic's attempt to create TheNightThatNeverEnds would, if not stopped, freeze the entire planet, making it uninhabitable by anyone except himself and his demonic brood. Even if the heroes win and restore the sun, the damage the Elder Evil has done would likely impact the world for generations to come, resulting in a Class 1.
** Zargon's vile slime would likely cause all living beings to die in agony, leaving the world habitable only by the broods of Jubilex and Zargon himself.

* ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'' ''Innocent Sin'': [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep wins as the planet is stilled, effectively wiping human civilization and most surface creatures off the face of Earth. The last remnants of humanity still exists in the Xibalba starship, but they drift endlessly in space and the possibility to rebuild the surface world is slim to none. Humanity is pretty much screwed... [[ResetButton but there's a way out]], if certain individuals are willing to pay the price...]]
* What happens to planets in ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' if you don't kill infected creatures in time in some some Space Stage missions. Everything, except your colonies, dies.
* ''VideoGame/UltimaVI'' and ''VideoGame/UltimaVII'' has the Armageddon spell, which annihilates all life on the planet except the caster and people with natural immortality. (The Xorinian wisps don't think it's very powerful since it can't affect parallel universes, and like to hand it out as a SecretTestOfCharacter. This is also why life in Britannia suffered a drastic setback 700,000 years ago...)

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': anyone with a mid-sized ship and a handful of fusion torches can achieve this by attaching the torches to a sufficiently sized asteroid and accelerating it at the nearest planet. The fact that the asteroids usually have to be towed in from hundreds of millions of kilometers away makes it slow and comparatively easy to prevent if you have local space superiority (either by destroying the enemy ship before the crew can disembark, or by just picking off the crew and their building-sized torches on the asteroid with either your space guns or your own disembarked ground force). If you ''don't'', then even a handful of terrorists in a freighter can cause a planetary extinction. The krogan rendered several turian worlds uninhabitable this way during the Krogan Rebellions, which just [[BerserkButton pissed the turians off more.]] The ''Bring Down the Sky'' DLC focuses on stopping a group of terrorists from doing just that, and a scientist they took hostage describes what happen if you fail:
-->''X-57 is twice the size of the asteroid that wiped out the Earth's dinosaurs. It would be like millions of fusion bombs striking at once. With the heat of the blast, a thousand kilometers away, clothes would ignite. There'd be global wildfires. Air shock will flatten everything for hundreds of kilometers. Terra Nova will die, Shepard- not just our colony, the planet. There'll be a climate shift, mass extinctions, the ecosystem won't recover for thousands of years. Millions maybe.''
** Regular orbital bombardment can also accomplish this with more security, albeit it's more expensive. A lot of worlds you visit have planet descriptions that say they used to have sapient life but have now been rendered uninhabitable after a long period of bombardment by dreadnought-scale weapons. The implication is that the [[AbusivePrecursors Reapers]] were responsible.
** According to Javik, the Protheans "burned hundreds of worlds" during their own version of the Rachni Wars. Given his wording and the instance of a Collector ship (derived from Prothean technology) reducing a city to slag in literally five seconds in ''Anime/MassEffectParagonLost'', it was likely accomplished with ship-mounted particle beam weapons.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'' takes place during the buildup to a Class 5. [[spoiler:If the Purple Clan gets the [[PhysicalGod Indigo Child's secret]], the continuation and inevitable extinction of humanity and all other life is the [[MultipleEndings ending]]. There's a ray of hope in that it's said a new Indigo Child has been conceived... but the implication is that it's too late.]]

* The notorious Corrupted Blood Incident had the potential to do this to the entire ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' game world, and had it been intentional on the part of the developers, it clearly would have. Despite being a glitch [[OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow that was eventually repaired]], the effect it had on the game world was ghastly, leaving skeletal remains of [=PCs=] and [=NPCs=] alike strewn on the streets of the major towns and cities. (Oddly enough, actual epidemiologists and counter-terrorists have studied the incident for its implications of how human populations could react to a real-world epidemic.)
* Lots of ways to get this in ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion 2''. Excessive bombing, especially with biological weapons ends like that. If you give Space Crystal a chance, it wipes your colony with Death Spores. When you fail to defend a colony from [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Space Amoeba]], it devours everything and, after it finished its lunch, every planet in the system is toxic forever (or until Class X variant is applied).
* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' sees the Protoss initially doing this to every single planet that the Zerg have colonized, wildlife or Terrans notwithstanding.
* ''VideoGame/TabulaRasa'' started off AfterTheEnd of human civilization on Earth with this. In the opening video, Sarah Morrison's voice over says "We never stood a chance?" Not the Bane's forces, the world militaries made quite a showing after the initial invasion. So rather than fight it out, the Bane ''[[ColonyDrop dropped Ceres onto Earth]].''
** Remember the Miracle Planet video? That was a simulation of an impact by a 500 km wide asteroid. Ceres is 950 km wide.

* This is what happens to Lore at the end of the ''Doomwood'' saga in ''VideoGame/AdventureQuestWorlds'' if you choose to [[spoiler:betray Artix and allow Vordred to become the Champion of Darkness, allowing him to unleash the mother of all {{Zombie Apocalypse}}s on Lore by turning all life in the world undead]].
** The ''Doomwood II'' saga, and in particular the ''Adventure Quest Worlds: Zombies'' universe, has [[spoiler:Sepulchure actually unleashing one of these on Lore with his zombifying fog after killing Death. The way things are shaping up, the only people left in Lore who are still human are your character, Artix (who is the Champion of Darkness) and Gravelyn (who has just been revealed as the Champion of Light)]].

* In ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'', several races have Atmosphere Deprivation Weapons. These have the effect of setting the atmosphere ''on fire''. If only one or two are fired, it only results in a Class 0 effect (the size of a continent) - however, it only takes a few to render the planet completely and permanently uninhabitable. It happens several times.
** In the backstory, a vengeful [[TheEmpire Taiidan]] Admiral uses these on many populated Hiigaran worlds (though admittedly the Hiigarans had bombarded his planet with conventional weapons beforehand). He only stops because of a galactic outcry for peace.
** In the first game, on the third mission, you [[spoiler:return to Kharak (your home planet) after your first Hyprspace run... only to find it [[DoomedHometown burning as a result of ADW bombardment.]] One of the most unexpected [[DoomedHometown Doomed Hometowns]] ever, and is also a real TearJerker. Sure, Kharak was a tiny, almost inhospitable desert planet... but it was home. Add to that the fact that almost the entire Kushan population was down there, leaving your Mothership and her fleet the last Kushan in the galaxy, and you really, really begin to hate the Taiidan Empire (who were responsible). Oh, and the reason? You broke a treaty that was ''four thousand years old'', stating you couldn't develop Hyperspace technology, that not one single Kushan even ''remembered''.]]
** Then in ''Homeworld 2'', set 100 years after the events of the original Homeworld, [[spoiler:the Vaygr attack Hiigara with a massive fleet consisting of three [[KillSat Planet Killers]]. These are incredibly cool, but just happen to each carry a large payload of [=ADWs=], which they try to drop on Hiigara. You have to destroy the missiles before they enter the atmosphere, and then use the [[LostSuperweapon Sajuuk's]] WaveMotionGun to destroy them, because it is [[MadeOfIron the only gun that even has a chance of denting them.]]]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Cytus}}''' backstory, a mysterious and incurable virus wipes out all sentient life on Earth, save for robots.
* ''VideoGame/FlightRising'' has ''two'' apocalypses in its lore. The first was caused by humans making a giant machine which blew up and accidentally brought the Arcanist into the world. The second was caused by [[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds the Arcanist dicking around with the Shade]].

* The Neutron Sweep Planet Killer weapon from ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' fires a massive wave of radiation on the target world, killing everything on it. Given the sheer damage it does to the biosphere, that world takes a -30% Habitability penalty for the next decade, so some unicellular life survived it.

* ''TabletopGame/TechInfantry'' has a the moon severely structurally weakened by having miniature black holes repeatedly fired ''through'' it, then a large starship crashed into the crater at a large fraction of the speed of light, shattering the moon into a billion pieces. The fragments of moon rock shower down onto the surface of the Earth, creating enough kinetic heating from the impacts to ''melt'' most of the surface of the Earth and boil the oceans.

* This is one of the endings in ''{{VideoGame/One Chance}}''.

* WordOfGod has confirmed that this would have been the ultimate result of Nightmare Moon's actions in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' (as during TheNightThatNeverEnds the entire planet will inevitably freeze over), had she not been defeated. (The ''Pony Psychology'' fan work series has an entire chapter devoted to Celestia [[WhatTheHellHero lecturing Luna on the true consequences]] of the environmental and ecological effects of an endless night - with frighteningly accurate scientific references and detail - mostly in an attempt to quell the notion that Nightmare Moon might have been doing them a favor.)

* If atmospheric carbon dioxide levels ever drop below 150 ppm, most photosynthesis will stop, plants will die, and everything that depends on plants will die. How close did Earth come to such a disaster, and how recently? Well, during the several most recent glacial periods of the current Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 levels dropped to 180 ppm - that's only 30 ppm away from armageddon. These glacial periods happen about every 100,000 years and the last one was a mere 20,000 years ago. We're all damned lucky to be alive. A few multicellular organisms that don't depend on photosynthesis, such as the giant tube worms found near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, may survive, making this more of a class 4.5

* Most scientists predict that the final mass extinction will take place as early as 1 billion years from now because by then the warming and expanding Sun will actually raise temperatures on Earth so much that all carbon dioxide will literally be stripped from the atmosphere. When carbon dioxide levels reach a low enough level, all plants will become extinct because plants need carbon dioxide to survive, and consequently the loss of plants will remove all oxygen from the atmosphere as well, and combined with even faster warming, will also end all animal life.
** Of course, if humanity or an equally intelligent descendant thereof is still around in 1 billion years time we'll hopefully be either long gone or have such advanced technology to laugh at the sun.

* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'':
** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'' ''Innocent Sin'': [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep wins as the planet is stilled, effectively wiping human civilization and most surface creatures off the face of Earth. The last remnants of humanity still exists in the Xibalba starship, but they drift endlessly in space and the possibility to rebuild the surface world is slim to none. Humanity is pretty much screwed... [[ResetButton but there's a way out]], if certain individuals are willing to pay the price...]]
** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' also has this going in the BadEnding. [[spoiler:Izanami decides humanity desires emptiness, and engulfs the world in her fog. As this will allow the Midnight Channel to merge with the real world, this means Shadows will run rampant among humans; which would cause societal breakdown at least and the extinction of several species at most, given all humans would either be killed by Shadows or [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie get turned into Shadow Selves]]]].

* This is the theorized level of destruction caused by the [[MillionMookMarch Rumbling]] in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan''. [[spoiler:The walls that protect humanity are not man-made, but in fact are made up of thousands, if not millions of mindless Titans the size of the Colossus Titan. The First King of the Walls erected them as a deterrent, threatening to use them to flatten the entire world and kill every single human, plant, and animal beyond the walls. However, only the one with the power of the Founding Titan is able to wake these titans and start the Rumbling.]] [[spoiler:Unfortunately for humanity, in chapter 122, Eren Yeager unleashes the Wall Titans as part of his plan to save his people by exterminating all of humanity.]]

* Franchise/{{Godzilla}}:
** ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah'': It's implied that Godzilla going into nuclear meltdown would incinerate the atmosphere causing all life on the planet to perish. It's only due to [[spoiler:Junior absorbing the excess radiation and mutating into an adult Godzilla]] that prevents this from happening.
** ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': The {{novelization}} states that Ghidorah's WeatherManipulation would've eventually covered the entire Earth in his lightning-filled PerpetualStorm, and that this would've brought about the end of all non-alien life on the planet. Assuming Ghidorah made his Perpetual Storm a permanent part of Earth's atmosphere via HostileTerraforming or he just remained on the destroyed planet forever to sustain it, this would most likely come up to ApocalypseHow/Class6.

** ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': The {{novelization}} states that Ghidorah's WeatherManipulation would've eventually covered the entire Earth in his lightning-filled PerpetualStorm, and that this would've brought about the end of all non-alien life on the planet.

* In the ''Doctor Who'' spin-off ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'' serial "[[Recap/TheSarahJaneAdventuresS2E9E10TheTemptationOfSarahJaneSmith The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith]]", this is implied to be the fate of Earth in the AlternateTimeline where the Trickster "sucked the life out of the world" in the 1950s. London is a grim, barren wasteland devoid of any plant life, and while some humans still exist as the Trickster's slave labor (building starships so he can invade other worlds), apparently the single small group numbering the dozens who are seen are the last humans on Earth.

[[folder:Film — Animated]]
* This appears to be the setting in the Shane Acker film ''WesternAnimation/{{Nine}}''. The only things left? Sack people. And horrific machines. [[spoiler: The ending however, shows that bacteria have returned, starting the evolution of life all over again]].

** ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': In the film it's unclear just how bad King Ghidorah's HostileTerraforming would've been if he'd won and could've been as low as a ApocalypseHow/Class3A (although the film still heavily implies that humanity wouldn't be the only species who suffered and that species suffering would actually be in the ''majority''). The film's {{novelization}} however states that Ghidorah's WeatherManipulation would've eventually covered the entire planet in his lightning-filled PerpetualStorm and that this would've brought about the quick end of all life on the planet except Ghidorah.

** Two years later, in ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'', more members of the Slitheen family nearly put out the Earth's sun, so they can scavenge the dead planet to the highest bidder. The Veil Androvax's homeworld is also left uninhabitable by the sun going out.

* It's implied that Franchise/{{Godzilla}} going into nuclear meltdown in ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah'' would incinerate the atmosphere causing all life on the planet to perish. It's only due to [[spoiler:Junior absorbing the excess radiation and mutating into an adult Godzilla]] that prevents this from happening.

** According to Javik, the Protheans "burned hundreds of worlds" during their own version of the Rachni Wars. Given his wording and the instance of a Collector ship (derived from Prothean technology) reducing a city to slag in literally five seconds in ''Anime/ParagonLost'', it was likely accomplished with ship-mounted particle beam weapons.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'' takes place during the buildup to a Class 5. [[spoiler:If the Purple Clan gets the [[AGodAmI Indigo Child's secret]], the continuation and inevitable extinction of humanity and all other life is the [[MultipleEndings ending]]. There's a ray of hope in that it's said a new Indigo Child has been conceived... but the implication is that it's too late.]]

* In one ''[[Roleplay/GlobalGuardiansPBEMUniverse Global Guardians]]'' story, the Guardians traveled to a world in which the criminal MadScientist Doctor XX had succeeded in eradicating all male life on the planet through a tailored virus. By the time the heroes arrived, the virus had died off... and the remaining human population (all female) had descended into ''Film/MadMax''-style post-Apocalyptic barbarism due to the sure knowledge that the human race was doomed to utter extinction.

** ''Literature/HaloTheFallOfReach'' established that the Covenant's main mode of operation against human worlds is "glassing", a systematic bombardment of the planet's surface with plasma weaponry that vaporizes the ecosphere and reduces the surface to a uniform glassy mineral. About the only time they ''don't'' do this is if a human world has Forerunner relics on it. Later sources dial down the power of glassing a bit: the Covenant don't actually ''have'' the ability to 100% glass an entire planet and wage a large-scale war at the same time. The damage is still catastrophic, but many planets that the Covenant don't consider important only receive a cursory glassing, which often leaves survivors who are able to survive on their ruined worlds for years afterwards. And restoration of glassed planets is possible, even if the process is still lengthy and arduous.
** The UNSC have the experimental NOVA Bomb, which blows up planets.

'''Strange:''' Let me guess. Your home.\\

'''Strange:''' Genocide?\\

* The worst case scenario in ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' involved this, if the asteroid "the size of Texas" would have hit, killing everything larger than bacteria.

* The eventual fate of Earth in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Robots-Empire-{{Literature/Foundation}}'' novels, due to gradually increasing background radiation, which starts as a Class 0 event and gradually rises up to this level. It takes long enough that everyone eventually moves out into space.

[[folder:Film]]

* This appears to be the setting in the Shane Acker film ''[[WesternAnimation/{{Nine}} 9]]''. The only things left? Sack people. And horrific machines. [[spoiler: The ending however, shows that bacteria have returned, starting the evolution of life all over again]].

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has a number of cases of this: an atmosphere is burned off in [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration "The Chase"]], the Metrion Cascade killed everything on Rinax as detailed in [[Series/StarTrekVoyager "Jetrel"]], and if the whole thing wasn't a trap, the Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order attack fleet would have bombed the Founder's homeworld down to its core in [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine "The Die is Cast."]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho''
** The Slitheen family wish to enact this on Earth to make a profit. By inciting a world-wide nuclear armageddon, they would be able to sell off the radioactive "molten slag" left over as cheap fuel.

** Desolation, the planet from "The Ghost Monument" used to be civilized, but has been wiped completely clean by [[spoiler: the Stenza, who forced the inhabitants to build them weapons and test them on the surface]]. The only living organisms remaining on the planet are flesh-eating microbes in the water.