History Main / DePopulationBomb

* In the Creator/MargaretAtwood novel ''Literature/OryxAndCrake'', and its sequel ''The Year of the Flood'', a genetic engineering genius creates a supervirus to wipe out the world's decadent human population, which he plans to replace with a race of genetically engineered new humans. His virus is only mostly successful, leaving (by [[SarcasmMode shear coincidence]] a [[PlotImmunity number of people]] [[EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether he personally knew]] alive.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' franchise features the recurring Armageddon spell, first given to the player character in ''VideoGame/UltimaVI'', that effectively destroys all life on Britannia apart from the caster (apart from ''VideoGame/UltimaVIII'' and ''VideoGame/UltimaIX'', where it kills the caster as well) and, if they're lucky, a few select [=NPCs=], such as [[AuthorAvatar Lord British]]. Naturally, the games are usually {{Unwinnable|ByInsanity}} after casting the spell, so pretty much everyone who ever played these games cast the spell once and only once to see what happens, before reverting to an earlier savegame.

* Done with a vengeance in ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', where over a dozen major U.S. cities are bombed with nuclear weapons, leaving only small towns and two major cities standing.

* The BBC has produced two series, one in the 1970s and one in the 2000s, entitled ''Series/{{Survivors}}'', which had most of the world population wiped out by a virus which it's strongly implied was artificial.

* In ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations II'', the signature ability of the AbsoluteXenophobe Korath Clan is a "Spore ship" that depopulates and permanently toxifies a planet while leaving all its infrastructure intact. RealityEnsues when the conqueror then has to maintain all that infrastructure without any local workforce or tax base to offset the cost.

* ''Film/{{{xXx}}'': A terrorist group plots to send biochemical weapons to large cities all over the world. They use a poison gas called Silent Night, to "kill millions", provoke World War and Civilization Collapse, and to restore global anarchy and "absolute, beautiful freedom".

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, being the deadliest war in human history obviously qualifies. Roughly 80 million people died and just to put that in perspective, UsefulNotes/WorldWarI killed only about a ''quarter'' of that number.

* In the backstory of ''VideoGame/{{NieR}}'', [[spoiler:humanity was wiped out by White Chlorination Syndrome, which was the result of Caim, Angelus and the Mother Grotesquerie entering the real world in the E Ending of ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'' and introducing magical particles to the world. The result is a ZombieApocalypse that wipes out almost all of humanity, the survivors being converted into Gestalts (what you know of as Shades). The "humans" we see in the game are actually {{Empty Shell}}s meant only as bodies for humanity's restoration, but thanks to the effort of Nier, that plan's not going anywhere and humanity will be extinct within a generation.]]

*** Technically, the manual stated that the Liir used a "bioweapon" and that the specific vector was unknown. The sequel states that the bioweapon is known as "The Black" [[spoiler: and is currently the leader of their military. The Suul'ka are actually, very old, [[SpaceWhale very large]], and very insane Liir Elders, the Black is an artificial Suul'ka who is loyal to the younger Liir.]]

* The [[spoiler:killing of Vigilance by Median]] in ''VideoGame/SoulNomadAndTheWorldEaters'' turned Haephnes into a ''very'' slow version of this trope. Births became decreasingly common and the land slowly became more and more barren as a result of [[spoiler:there not being a {{psychopomp}} to maintain the flow of souls]], and by the time the events of the game comes around the land is little more than a dustbowl inhabited by one of the last generations of sentient life. [[OmnicidalManiac Gig]], of course, greatly hastened this process by killing off most of the population and burning most of the land to a crisp.

* ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'': [[spoiler: Thanos successfully obtains all six of the Infinity Gems and wipes out half the population of the entire universe.]]
* ''[[Film/XxX xXx]]'': A terrorist group plots to send biochemical weapons to large cities all over the world. They use a poison gas called Silent Night, to "kill millions", provoke World War and Civilization Collapse, and to restore global anarchy and "absolute, beautiful freedom".

* The entire premise of Film/TheQuietEarth, after a scientific experiment goes awry.

** Most historical cases of changing dynasties were accompanied by a culling of China's population. The chaos during [[UsefulNotes/ThreeKingdomsShuWeiWu fall of the Han dynasty and the rise of the Three Kingdoms]] was particularly devastating. A census conducted before the wars counted around 56 million people. The next century's census -- conducted during the Jin dynasty, which unified the Three Kingdoms -- counted 16 million people. In other words, the wars reduced the population by ''70%''.[[note]]Modern estimates have put the population before and after the war at 60 and 35 million, respectively, which would mean the population was reduced by "only" a half. It's still damn high, though.[[/note]] The transition from Song to Yuan (Mongol) and Yuan to Ming also slashed the empire's population by half. The [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors fall of the Manchu dynasty and ushering of the warlord era]] was actually an ''improvement'' because it wasn't accompanied by a catastrophic depopulation.

* The [[UsefulNotes/TheArabSpring Syrian civil war]]. A census taken in 2011, several months before the war, counted 21 million people in Syria. As of 2017, the country has a population of 17 million. The major reason for this depopulation is not because of deaths (not that it's insignificant; a half million Syrians died during the course of the war), but rather the truly staggering amount of WarRefugees who fled the country; 5 million Syrians are currently living in other countries.

* Not including plagues or epidemics, the worst natural disasters in history by number of casualties were the 1931 floodings of the Yellow River in China, which resulted in the deaths of ''at least'' a million people. The Yellow River is by itself the deadliest area for natural disasters in history, as it's even the location of the ''second'' deadliest natural disaster in history, the Yellow River flood of 1887.

* ''VisualNove/HatofulBoyfriend'': In 2070, a lethal form of bird flu spread around the world, killing over 70% of the human race. The remaining humans then tried to spread a counter-virus to kill off the birds which were spreading the disease, but the virus instead changed the birds into [[UpliftedAnimal hyperintelligent mutants]]. Humans and birds waged war for thirty years, eventually resulting in birds becoming the dominant species. By 2188, the human population is less than 140 million, living in the wilderness and not allowed to self-govern. [[spoiler: Depending on what ending you get, this can become full-on human extinction.]]

* In ''Anime/DeathNote'', the Kira killings. More specifically, the ones after Light started having Mikami act as his proxy. Mikami went more than a little crazy with his newfound power (which included [[{{Namedar}} the Shinigami Eyes]])...and even criminalized such ''horrible'' things as being lazy. Between that and all the Kira-related incidents up to that point, there were likely several ''[[AMillionIsAStatistic millions]]'', or even ''billions'' of people killed off worldwide. When [[spoiler: Mikami killed himself and Light's name was written down by Ryuk]], and all the Kiras (and most of the Kira Cult devotees) were gone, and the world was going (more-or-less) back to normal save for a few small remnants of the Kira Cult, it's likely that many countries were facing this issue. (Not helping matters is the fact that even ''before'' Kira got started, the ''Manga/DeathNote'' Universe seemed to have a male-female gender ratio that was ''extremely'' skewed towards males, which does not lend itself towards maintaining a stable population to begin with. This did not seem to change all that much after Kira...and Kira probably made it worse by killing off large numbers of reproductive-age women.)

* In ''Film/{{Automata}}'' natural occurring solar flare activity has skyrocketed to the point that planet earth is now mostly desert and radiation is slowly poisoning organic life.

Unfortunately, coming from a DeathWorld where only the strongest and meanest survive means that the krogan are all genetically and culturally inclined towards hyper-aggression, and rather than adapt to their decreased birthrate they kept on killing each other as much as ever, without the super-fertility to compensate. Wrex points this, and the tendencies of the krogan to scatter and work as thugs for hire rather than pull together to preserve their own culture, as contributing more to the decline of the krogan than the genophage itself. Demonstrating himself as one of the few really progressive krogan, Wrex argued in favor of focusing on breeding and rebuilding, but gave up the fight in disgust and disillusionment when his own father tried to kill him over their differing views. In ''Mass Effect 2,'' he's revealed to have taken over clan leadership on Tuchanka and is busily dragging the rest of his species kicking and screaming into a more sustainable way of life.

* In ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'' the [[TheVirus Rash Illness]] killed and mutated into trolls most of the human race, leaving only few survivors who were lucky or TheImmune. When the story starts, the already sparsely populated Iceland is down to about 60% of the population the country had in real life at the time of publication [[lalelnote:note]]Iceland's real population is growing while the story's is static, so the ratio is dropping as the comic continues[[/labelnote]]. Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, meanwhile, went from populations in the millions to numbers oscillating between 10,000 and 20,000. The level of depopulation is illustrated well on [[http://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196 this poster]] (scroll to the lower half to see comparison).

* In ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'' the [[TheVirus Rash Illness]] killed and mutated into trolls most of the human race, leaving only few survivors who were lucky or TheImmune. When the story starts, the already sparsely populated Iceland is down to about 60% of the population the country had in real life at the time of publication [[lalel:note]]Iceland's real population is growing while the story's is static, so the ratio is dropping as the comic continues[[/label]]. Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, meanwhile, went from populations in the millions to numbers oscillating between 10,000 and 20,000. The level of depopulation is illustrated well on [[http://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196 this poster]] (scroll to the lower half to see comparison).

* In ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'' the [[TheVirus Rash Illness]] killed and mutated into trolls most of the human race, leaving only handful of survivors who were lucky or TheImmune. The level of depopulation is illustrated well on [[http://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196 this poster]] (scroll to the lower half to see comparison).

* The entire premise of Film/TheQuiet Earth, after a scientific experiment goes awry.