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This is the Plot Trope about evacuating (or trying to evacuate) a large population of animals, people, or people and animals in order to survive an impending disaster, most often a flood.

The Trope Namer and Trope Codifier would be the story of Noah from The Bible, who was told by God to build an ark in order to preserve his family, seven of every "clean" animal (the extra were for sacrifices), and two of every "unclean" animal in order to be protected from the Flood that God planned to use to wipe out the earth as they knew it.

People building arks go to The Ark.

Not to be confused with Noah's Arc.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • In the first season of Dragon Ball GT, Bulma just happens to have one of these tucked away beneath the Capsule Corporation in order to evacuate everyone to the new planet created by Baby with the Blackstar balls.
    • Considering the number of times Earth has been nearly (or actually) destroyed in this franchise, that might be more Justified than it sounds.
  • Queen Millennia: Yayoi has built spaceships called Noah to shelter Earth's population when the calamity from La-Metal's approach comes.
  • In Spriggan, it's depicted to be created by an ancient race as an out-of-place artifact which not only carried dinosaurs and mythical creatures, it's also used as a weather control device that can bring about drastic changes to the Earth's weather, including the threat of global flooding.
  • In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the Arc-Gurren is used to house the population of Kamina City in space when the moon is on a collision course with earth.

    Asian Animation 
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In Joys of Seasons episode 65, the Moving Lake approaches Goat Village and floods it, forcing Mr. Slowy to build an ark and seek shelter in it along with the other goats.

    Comic Books 
  • Nero: In the story "The Ark Of Nero" Nero builds an arc and even has lots of animals imported to bring along with him. Everyone says he's crazy, but as it turns out the tide does come. In the end it was All Just a Dream.
  • Suske en Wiske: The story De Adelijke Ark has the characters search for the Arc of Ut Napistum (a character in Mesopotamian mythology that is the direct inspiration to Noah. Vandersteen probably used this character to prevent angry letters from Christian readers.)

    Comic Strips 
  • Boner's Ark, a gag-a-day strip about Captain Boner and the various animals on his ark. (Noah had it easy - Boner's ark was on the sea for 32 years, only reaching dry land in the final strip.)
  • Just a Pilgrim: the role of the ark is taken by a space shuttle containing genetic sequences of thousands of animals so life can be started elsewhere, as the planet is now under the control of sentient mind-controlling jellyfish.
  • In Jules Feiffer's satirical "The Deluge," an installment of his Feiffer comic strip for the Village Voice, an angel instructs U.S. civil servant Harvey Noah to build an ark. Instead of doing so himself, he takes the matter to his supervisor. This starts a bureaucratic chain of events which culminates in the ark housing only selected members of Congress. As it starts to rain, Harvey attempts to board the vessel, only to be told he's not on the list.

    Fan Works 
  • A New World, A New Way: What Arceus' plan ultimately boils down to.
  • I Shall Endure To The End, a Good Omens fic by A.A. Pessimal, goes back to the Biblical account and, among other things, explains who the dove and the raven on the Ark really were. In passing the Noachic family dynamic is explored, with reference to the repopulation of the world afterwards.
  • The Wrath of Kyogre revolves around Arceus deciding to restart humanity after seeing it wasn't going so great, and counts on Ash and Misty to repopulate the world.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The entire plot of Noah.
  • Evan Almighty, the 2007 sequel to 2003's Bruce Almighty, had the title character from the former assume the role of Noah when God informs him that a flood is coming and tasks him with building an ark.
  • The underground refuge in Deep Impact, designed to ensure continuity of the species in the face of an impending extinction-force impact, is called the Arc.
  • In 2012, there are great disasters all around the world, particularly a giant flood. The small portion of the populace try to escape this fate by building giant arks in the Himalayas. In one shot, some animals are brought in such as giraffes and elephants. One of the protagonists is a young boy named Noah.
  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Dr. Totenkopf believed that Earth was doomed due to the destructive nature of humanity, so he built a rocket ship to carry two of every animal on Earth (and genetically engineered humans) to another planet. He intended them to create a technological utopia there.
  • Moonraker: This is Hugo Drax's plan-take the people he dubs to be worthy of living in his new world and send them into space while his bioengineered spores infect the world, then take them back to Earth to build his utopia.
  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom starts off as this, with a plan to save as much dinosaurs as possible before the volcano destroys Isla Nublar. Turns out the "rescuers" who brought Claire, Owen, Webb and Rodriguez in are mercenaries who just seek to save a few species for an Auction of Evil.
  • In Downsizing, it is discovered that the world will be destroyed in a few centuries and there is nothing anyone can do about it, leading to a bunch of people evacuating to an underground bunker.

    Literature 
  • The Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt Adventures novel Arctic Drift features the villains attempt to cause the End of the World as We Know It and survive in four megaships to found a Master Race.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Early in The Deep End, Greg discusses the story of Noah's Ark. He says that if he were Noah, he would've left off animals like scorpions and kept more puppies and pandas. The climax of the book sees Greg and his family trying to escape (and eventually save) people from a flood.
  • In Discworld, there's an Urban Legend about the founding of Ankh-Morpork that tells how a wise man foretold a Great Flood, gathered his family and hundreds of animals into a big ship, and rode it out. After a few weeks' sailing, the accumulated wastes from all the animals were filling up the vessel, so they tipped all the manure over the side, and built a city on the resulting dung-island.
  • Utnapishtim from The Epic of Gilgamesh is the Ur-Example and Trope Maker, pre-dating Noah's story from The Bible. Similarly to his biblical counterpart, he built a giant ship called The Preserver of Life to save his family, friends and all the animals from a flood. He was granted immortality afterwards.
  • Parodied in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The main characters are teleported to Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B. Which seems like a Ark, but is actually a trick to get its inhabitants off the planet, as they were judged to basically be the useless third of the population, as they just cleaned phones and other minor tasks.
  • Joked about in Holes. The kids see a cloud in the sky, the first they've ever seen in this arid desert, and start joking about how they need to start building an ark. It's all just to get their hopes up, as Camp Green Lake hasn't had rain for a hundred years. It rains at the end just as the attorney general closes the camp.
  • When Worlds Collide (Literature and Film versions): a pair of rogue planets are on a direct path to hit Earth. Scientists and governments rush to make a pair of rocket ships to hold the best of the best (and supplies) to send to another planet so humanity won't be extinguished.
  • The 1899 novel A Dweller On Two Planets features a Crossover Cosmology with elements from the Bible and the Atlantis myth. So, in this version, Nepth and his family survive the sinking of Atlantis by building an ark and loading it with animals.
  • In the seventh Animorphs book, the Ellimist makes his first appearance by telling the main characters that they have no real chance to defeat the Yeerks. While he's not allowed to interfere with the war, he offers to preserve Earth's life by transporting a portion of humanity, along with animals, to another planet. He even shows them a Bad Future of how things will go if they don't take his offer. Said Bad Future actually helps them realize how to strike a major blow against the Yeerks, which was the Ellimist's plan all along.
  • The Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel City at World's End looks at the last surviving city of the planet Sarath as it attempts to construct a vast spaceship to take its population to the neighbouring planet Mirath before Sarath's moon crashes into the planet and destroys it. In the end, construction issues and internal conflicts mean that only just over a thousand survivors can make it to Mirath out of a population of over eighty thousand.
  • The Last Days of Krypton: Jor-El gives No-Ton and the other councilors who believe his warnings about a cataclysm plans for a space ark. Despite their best efforts, building a fleet of evacuation ships from scratch in just three days is impossible, so they focus all of their efforts on finishing just one ship in the last seven hours. They don't finish it in time.
  • The series Remnants is centered around eighty humans who blast off in an experimental rocket ship to escape the destruction of the Earth by an asteroid.

    Live-Action TV 
  • A scammer-slash-crazy guy used this and built an ark in CSI: NY's "The Ride In." He offered rides, made off with the victims' money, and was found dead inside his house while the people he'd scammed were waiting on the ark with his animals.
  • In the Doctor Who episode "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", the spaceship in question is an ark fleeing the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

    Music 
  • Queen of the Wave (Pepe DeluxĂ©'s rock opera based on A Dweller On Two Planets) ends with "Riders on the First Ark", describing Nepth and his family escaping Atlantis' destruction by boat, and taking a variety of animals with them. According to the song, unicorns are extinct because Nepth forgot to bring them.

    Radio 
  • In the BBC Radio science fiction series Earthsearch II the crew of a starship abandon it, and its evil computers, to colonise an Earthlike planet which turns out to be Earth All Along. In an attempt to get the crew back the computers use its terraforming devices to melt the polar icecaps. The crew have to use their large shuttle (which is airtight so it can fly in outer space) as a floating ark to save some of the local flora and breeding pairs of the fauna.

    Theatre 
  • In one of the episodes in the play The Green Pastures, which retold The Bible from the perspective of a poor African-American child.
    First Man: What you think of it, Flatfoot?
    Flatfoot: I must say! Look like a house wit' a warpin' cellar.
    Noah: Dis yere vessel is a boat.
    Flatfoot: When I was a little boy dey used to build boats down near de ribber, where de water was. [the others laugh]
    Noah: Dis time it's been arranged to have de water come up to de boat.
  • A retelling of the story is featured in the 1987 edition of Cortylandia, where Noah travels thought time alongside his niece to tell the story of how he saved every animal from dying, with the sole exception of the Dinosaurs who were too big for the arc.

    Video Games 
  • In Early Heroes of the Bible (1984), an educational Apple ][ game in The Baker Street Kids series based on The Bible, the titular kids enact the story of Noah's Ark, with Jamie and Amy in the role of Noah and his wife. Of course, a bird and a cat are in a cardboard prop of an ark, while some hands pull out a hose to reenact the rain, which is pretty silly and cute.
  • This is Johannes von Schicksal's plan in God Eater Burst.
    Basically, The Aegis Project was just a front for a secret Ark Project which involved a certain MacGuffin Super-Person being some sort of key that will give Johaness the power of God, where a select few population were to be shipped to the moon while the rest of the world are to be nuked to oblivion along with the aragami. it should be noted though that the one who planned all this had no intention of being with the ones to repopulate the earth though, knowing well how extreme his actions are.
  • Persona 5: The Ark Palace is a large cruiser ship that swims across the sunken Japan, with only the chosen kept aboard, representing Shido prefering to sacrifice the entire nation for the convinience of himself and his close allies.
  • The Soldier from Team Fortress 2 is under the impression that Sun Tzu once gathered two of every animal onto a boat, and then beat them all up with his awesome fighting skills, and that's why a place where a bunch of different animals are all gathered together became known as a "Tzu". note 
  • The main character in Terranigma is named Ark. Why? He's The Chosen One who has the power to revive the dead surface of the earth and all its inhabitants.

    Webcomics 
  • Deep Rise: A subculture of Mi-go conquer the human race, pollute the entire world for the sake of gathering materials, then build a city-sized Ark to flee from the Royals, a race of mountain-sized Omnicidal Maniac supergeniuses with more doomsday weapons than a Second-World dictatorship. Each. It gets worse as Royals are revealed to have colonized the entire galaxy, responding to human-sized life forms with ion beams and nukes, so they disassemble all secondary functions and flee further in a dinghy-Ark.

    Web Original 
  • Zero Punctuation: During his story of the "Corrupted Blood" incident in World of Warcraft, Yahtzee imagines this scenario in which "Blizzard had no option but to contact one of the figureheads of the quarantine effort and have him construct a giant wooden boat in which he was directed to place two of every monster so that they could send a rainstorm for forty days and forty nights" before fessing up with a "Nah, I'm fucking with you; they just hard-reset the servers. Bit anticlimactic, really."

    Western Animation 
  • American Dad! episodes "Daeson Heavy Industries, Parts 1 & 2": Stan has a crisis of faith when Steve shows him how unbelievable the Noah story is — but when Stan learns that a ship big enough to house every animal has been constructed in Korea, he suddenly believes that he's being called to be the new Noah. Naturally his family tries to make him see reason, but the boat already has hundreds of animals on board. (They were being transferred from one zoo to another, but Stan had stopped listening by that point).
  • There was at least one Animaniacs sketch called "Noah's Lark" that followed the Hip Hippos getting on Noah's Ark and nerves. It featured a Crossover Cameo of Buster and Babs Bunny, who walked up and stated they were not related, so Noah let them on the Ark.
    Babs and Buster: Babs and Buster Bunny. No relation.
    Noah: (to the audience) Let's hope not, this is a kids show.
  • CatDog had an episode where they see a bad omen in the sky that signals the world is gonna flood. They and a couple other characters try to build an ark, but end up failing. To top it all off, the "omen" they saw was actually a peanut shell stuck in the telescope.
  • Futurama: In "Crimes of the Hot", global warming has gotten so severe that Randy decides to gather two of every animal onto his boat. But as his boyfriend points out, the animals he chose were all male.
    Randy: Hey, there are parts of the Bible I like and parts I don't like.
  • Noah's Animals and Other Stories tells the story through a Perspective Flip, we see the events of the story through the eyes of the animals, primarily the main trio Crocodile, Elephant and Lion.
  • The 1959 Disney short Noah's Ark tells the story of the Trope Namer. It is a rare example of a stop-motion Disney short film.
  • Disney also adapted the story in the 1933 Silly Symphony "Father Noah's Ark".
  • The Rugrats had one of these as an adventure. Being babies, they were unaware of the actual purpose of there being two of every animal, thinking it was so they wouldn't be scared during the flood.
  • Schoolhouse Rock! had a segment called "Elementary, My Dear" on the subject of multiplying by 2, which partially retells the story of Noah at the beginning and has its' plot spawned from one of Noah's kids asking how many animals are on board the ark.
  • The Simpsons:

 
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Video Example(s):

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Entering Noah's Ark

Colonel McDougal is pleased after entering Noah's Ark. He explained that the Pentagon had an operation where they recovered a Hebrew-based message plate.



The colonel revealed that the Ark is actually an ancient weather control device, which can bring about global warming while using the animals/mythological creatures it has aboard in order to repopulate Earth again should it be the case.

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