History Main / SpaceIsolationHorror

* ''Film/{{Moon}}'': The protagonist is stuck on the dark side of the Moon all by himself, with very little communication with the world and the claustrophobia starting to drive him loopy... this is before finding out just how horrifying the CorruptCorporateExecutive cabal he works for truly is (without going into spoilers, suffice to say he's more expendable that he expected to be).

* ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'': Thousands of miles away from any help, two men and several frozen passengers and an artificial intelligence that is nowadays one of the Trope Codifiers for AIIsACrapshoot.

->''Exit game. EXIT GAME! [[VillainousBreakdown FUCK, EXIT GAME!]] [[MadnessMantra EXIT FUCKING GAME, EXIT FUCKING GAME, EXIT FUCKING GAME, EXIT FUCKING GAME...]]''

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]

* Dr. 'Bones' [=McCoy=] has a healthy fear of this, as he mentions in the beginning of the 2009 ''Film/StarTrek2009'' movie. He goes on a lengthy diatribe of how dangerous it is to fly around in spaceships like shuttles and what may happen if they malfunction, how alien diseases are horrifying and how space in general is a collection of DeathWorld s with an equally dangerous nothing in between them.
* ''{{Film/Pandorum}}'': A crewman awaking from suspended animation to find the ship he's on in dire straits, and trying to puzzle out exactly what the hell happened. [[spoiler:Bonus points for occurring on a spaceship ''that landed in the ocean and sank,'' making it an example of both types.]]

[[folder:Live-Action Television]]

* In ''{{TabletopGame/Starfinder}}'', getting abandoned in space with no hope of rescue can cause your body to reanimate as a Marooned One, an undead bent of causing as much anguish as possible by getting other space travelers marooned like they were.

[[folder: WebOriginal]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* Implied in Disney's ''Disney/LiloAndStitch'' as the fate of Experiment 626: he's to be taken by prison transport to a barren asteroid, and abandoned there. Perhaps, the authorities forbid capital punishment, or the condemned is too indestructible to be executed. It's still marooning on a cold, lonely rock in the void of space.
[[/folder]]

* ''Series/BlackMirror'': [[spoiler:The ultimate fate of Robert Daly in "USS Callister" - his mind is trapped in the game, unable to exit with all the controls disabled, in an inert spaceship cockpit floating through the infinite darkness of the deleted game, with nothing to do but rant and flail impotently at the controls. Given an offhand comment implying that time doesn't flow the same way in-game as it does in the real world, Daly might be stuck like that forever. Honestly, serves you right for how you treated those sentient game characters you based off your co-workers, you douchebag.]]

* Played straight in the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' episode ''Out of Gas''. The titular gas is oxygen, and running low (with a ship that is dead in the water) means sitting around waiting for a slow and painful death or, in a degree of scary that is hard to argue whether is lesser or higher, risking whoever finds you decides murdering you is more profitable (or more ''fun'') than saving your life.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/in_space_no_one_can_hear_your_brand.jpg]]

* ''Series/TheExpanse'' may be a SpaceOpera, but it uses its limitations as a "hard" sci-fi setting to set up plenty of underlying unsettlement. Pushing too hard on the AppliedPhlebotinum engine will lead to fatal effects from all the hard-Gs. Getting courses wrong mean shooting into deep space, burning in the atmosphere, or crashing into things best left undiscovered. Communications having long delays to get from one point of the solar system to another means that asking for help, if it's ever heard, may be picked up too late for rescuers to do something. Every single major faction is full of cold-blooded bastards that have no problem killing people or doing things that make being ThrownOutTheAirlock look like an act of mercy.

** The 'Pasta ''In From the Cold'' has the protagonist alone in a moon base after the other astronaut died in an airlock malfunction. [[spoiler: The dead astronaut tries to get back in...]]

* ''Series/TheExpanse'' may be a SpaceOpera, but it uses its limitations as a "hard" sci-fi setting to set up plenty of underlying unsettlement. Pushing too hard on the AppliedPhlebotinum engine will lead to fatal effects from all the hard-Gs. Communications having long delays to get from one point of the solar system to another means that asking for help, if it's ever heard, may be picked up too late for rescuers to do something. Every single major faction is full of cold-blooded bastards that have no problem killing people or doing things that make being ThrownOutTheAirlock look like an act of mercy.

* ''Film/EventHorizon'': A rescue mission in deep space that runs into a ship that is not only vile in terms of following NoOSHACompliance, but also because it's become a literal demon from Hell.

->''"In space no-one can hear you scream."''

-->-- ''Film/{{Alien}}''

-->--''Film/{{Alien}}''

* {{Film/Pandorum}}: A crewman awaking from suspended animation to find the ship he's on in dire straits, and trying to puzzle out exactly what the hell happened. [[spoiler: Bonus points for occurring on a spaceship ''that landed in the ocean and sank,'' making it an example of both types.]]

* The short story "The Cold Equations" and its various adaptations could count as this: they are about a pilot of a small spacecraft with limited capabilities facing a difficult decision to space a human stowaway whose presence endangers his mission. The different adaptations feature somewhat different endings.
* Another example occurs in "Literature/TheNothingEquation", written by the same author who wrote "The Cold Equations." A scientist named Green is left alone in a one-man observation bubble that has had catastrophic effects on his predecessors. Over time, he becomes paranoid as the realization weighs on him that it's just him in a relatively thin-skinned pod miles from anywhere with the "nothing" of space all around.

* The repeated line about ''Space is dark/And it's so endless/When you're lost it's so relentless'' from one of Creator/MichaelMoorcock's books was later set to music by space-rockers Hawkwind, who also mined Moorcock's book for another bleak song on the same theme, The Golden Void ''(Golden Void/Speaks to me/Denying my reality/Lose my body, lose my mind/Solar wind, I flow like wine...)''

* ''Videogame/AxiomVerge'' is an other-dimensional version, with many of the H.R. Giger-esque art styles, haunting music, and a deliberate homage to lots of ''Franchise.Metroid'''s style and gameplay.

There aren't any other sentient beings within years of your location, but it doesn't matter since [[Film/{{Alien}} In Space Nobody Can Hear You Scream]]. Perhaps you can start an ApocalypticLog so that when people do arrive, they know what you've been through and how to prevent the situation from happening again -- it also allows you to talk to, and fill your days with, something, which might help prevent you from [[GoMadFromTheIsolation going mad from the isolation]]. Still, you will likely [[CosmicHorrorStory consider your slow, lonely death]] by maybe starvation, maybe [[VaderBreath suffocation]], but probably not suicide as you [[ICannotSelfTerminate don't even have the implements to end it all]].

-> ''"Just for once I'd like to see a spaceship in a horror game that actually seems like it might have been a nice place to live. You know, tasteful light-fittings, eloquent lacquered wood panels, or, at the very least, throw a fucking carpet down now and then. At least that way it would almost be a surprise when it gets invaded by a horde of flesh-eating mutants. Frankly, if you paint your spaceship gun-metal gray and fit it with about half as many flickery-ass fluorescent lights than are necessary, then you might as well rename it the USS Kill Beast Buffet."''
-->-- '''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'''

SubTrope of SciFiHorror, and a form of ClosedCircle CosmicHorrorStory.

Functions by means of EnclosedSpace.

''link to this on the following pages: {{Horror}}, SurvivalHorror, SciFiHorror, CosmicHorrorStory''
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''[[SpaceMadness You're alone, in the cold depths of space, without hope of even seeing another human or your home before you die.]] [[NothingIsScarier You may not know if you die,]] [[TheNothingAfterDeath because space already looks like oblivion.]]''

* ''[[ChzoMythos 7 Days a Skeptic]]'' - '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''
* ''VideoGame/DeadSpace'' series - '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''
* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' 3 - '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' series - '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''

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!!Examples of the undersea version:
-- '''Potential other trope'''
[[folder: Literature]]
* ''Literature/{{Sphere}}'': The whole book is a constant discussion about how being stranded in the bottom of the ocean is asking for horrible trouble -- the enclosed spaces are surrounded by a deadly atmosphere, the isolation will drive people insane, the mere act of living involves an awful lot of juggling with dangerous elements and relying on machines that can fail, communication is very hard (when it's possible)... and then there's the little fact about the titular artifact and how it includes "RealityWarpingIsNotAToy" into the list.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Bioshock}}'': The city of Rapture was just asking to fail. A utopia built on GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke (and, oh yeah, what makes it possible is addictive and can drive people mad) and Objectivism (which meant a lot of people would eventually try to do anything, including bloody murder, to get whatever they wanted), and by the time the games start collateral damage from battles and lack of maintenance means that everything's falling apart.
* ''Videogame/{{SOMA}}'' is an underwater version of this, with the protagonist trapped in a post-apocalyptic underwater base filled with {{KIller Robot}}s and other dangers.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life]]
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFS_Kursk_K-141 K-141 Kursk]] -- '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''
[[/folder]]