History ApocalypseHow / Class0

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': At the end of Volume 8, the Kingdom of Atlas (one of the setting's four primary nations) is destroyed when [[spoiler:Atlas City crashes into Mantle after two volumes' worth of withstanding Grimm attacks, leaving thousands of evacuated former-citizens displaced in the dunes of Vacuo]].

* ''VideoGame/EndlingExtinctionIsForever'' is set in a BadFuture, where the entire city is in a regional scale, societal disruption bordering on [[ApocalypseHow/Class4 planetary scale, multiple species extinction]] due to human-engineered climate change. [[FromBadToWorse And it only gets worse from here...]]

* In ''Fanfic/EverythingIntoDarkness'', the plot is kicked off by a Class 0 being unleashed upon Iwatodai via [[spoiler:Ikutsuki]] setting loose dragons on the city from a gate beneath Tartarus, and inadvertently sending most of SEES to [[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe Elibe]] as a side effect.

* The UsefulNotes/ArmenianGenocide, along with the concurrent Greek and Assyrian genocides, are said to have wiped out 3 million people between 1914 and 1923. Thousands of years of Greek and Armenian civilization in Anatolia was destroyed in less than ten years.

** Eastern Europe suffered a fate between this and a Class 1 in the two world wars (plus the Russian Civil War and the various famines), caught between Imperial Germany/Nazi Germany on one side and Imperial Russia/the Soviet Union on the other. Rebuilding ''still'' hasn't finished in parts of Warsaw, and the 400,000 manuscripts and three million other books and maps burnt by the Nazis can never be recovered. The hardest hit nation in World War II was Belarus, which lost ''25% of its population'' in a little under four years. The hardest hit nation in the interwar period was Kazakhstan, which lost ''30%'' of its population in the early 1930s famines, which were so devastating that Kazakhs were rendered a minority in Kazakhstan until near the end of the 20th century.

%%* The Music/{{Genesis}} song "The Last Domino".

-->''This is station Planet Earth, we're closing down,''
-->''Transmission ends.''

* In the MagicalGirl CrossOver ''Fanfic/ShatteredSkiesTheMorningLights'', both [[Manga/CardcaptorSakura Tomoeda]] and [[Anime/YesPrettyCure5 Cinq Lumieres]] undergo complete destruction, with the titular phenomenon as a sign of just how bad things have gotten.

* In Marvel's ''ComicBook/TheNewUniverse'', the wilder of the ComicBook/StarBrand accidentally obliterates UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} while trying to destroy the Star Brand itself. The crater is 15 miles deep and 50 miles across - and everything within it was utterly annihilated. Beyond that line, there's massive destruction from the blast itself, plus some nasty long-term effects from the Star Brand's unique energy.

* In ''ComicBook/TheNewUniverse'', [[ComicBook/StarBrand Ken Connell]] accidentally obliterates UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} and everything 50 miles across trying to get rid of the Star Brand.

* In ''ComicBook/TheNewUniverse'', Ken Connell accidentally obliterates UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} and everything 50 miles across trying to get rid of the Star Brand.

* At one point in ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'', ThePeteBest of the HorsemenOfTheApocalypse reminisces on how most of the "gigs" they did at the dawn of civilization were of this type, with small villages or tribes being wiped out or forced to relocate.

* ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' ends, canonically, with nuclear bombs falling on Hope County. Later, in ''VideoGame/FarCry6'', we learn that this was caused by whatever person was ruling Kyrat, the setting of ''VideoGame/FarCry4'', and that the nukes were aimed ''only'' at Montana. The rest of the world is perfectly fine.

* From ''Literature/MotelOfTheMysteries'', the complete burial of North America in accumulated junk mail would rank near the top of the Class 0 category. Technically it ''ought'' to be a Class 1, if the rest of the planet was set back so far that they forgot what a "motel" (or, worse, a toilet!) is; because the whole book's just one long RunningGag, however, let's avoid living out ContrivedStupidityTropes, and evaluate it by the direct physical effects of this lame-o disaster.

* The eponymous disaster in Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/SupervolcanoEruption'' which wipes out large chunks of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana as well as smaller pieces of Utah and Colorado. However it's stated that the aftereffects have the potential to become at least a Class 1. There is also a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran that further complicates matters.

* In [[Creator/BenCroshaw Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw]]'s ''Literature/{{Jam}}'', a regional Class 5 happens to Australia as the eponymous substance is accidentally unleashed upon the continent, and swallows every organic being that isn't above ground level.



* Allan Steele's ''Jericho Iteration'' takes place about six moths after a massive earthquake leveled much of St. Louis.
* The plot of Will [=McIntosh=]'s ''Hitchers'' is kicked off by a terrorist attack on Atlanta involving anthrax that winds up killing 600,000 people.





* In a unique case of ''literal'' Societal Collapse, virtually the entire population of the Yugoslavian city of Podujevo dies when the giant humanoid figure they've [[BodyOfBodies assembled themselves into]] topples over in Creator/CliveBarker's "In The Hills, The Cities". The fate of their one-time rivals in the city of Popolac is not stated, but given that they too are amassed into a giant humanoid figure that has ''gone insane'' from the horror of Podujevo's fate, it's unlikely that city fared any better.




* ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'': The Early First Men often suffer Urban to Regional and occasionally Continental Extinction events, mostly due to the use of advanced chemical weapons -- nerve gas on steroids, for instance, wipes out most of Europe's population in its war with America, while an engineered plague designed to destroy higher nervous functions later devastates China.


* ''Literature/{{Indexing}}'': The first incident that was solved:
--> we're supposed to get some time off after we stop a fairy tale from rewriting a major metropolitan area into an evil, R-rated version of Disney World. ''"New and improved! Now with extra incest and murder!"''


* The cometary impact at the end of ''Newton's Cannon'' did this to a major chunk of Europe.
* Creator/WilliamRForstchen's ''One Second After'' has the US hit by a massive EMP resulting in a collapse of society and, in the end a DividedStatesOfAmerica. Iran and North Korea are nuked in retaliation although it's implied that they may not have done it.

* Music/KateBush song "Experiment IV" has a military base unleash a "killing sound" which kills everything in the base. Ominously the last line is "''the public is warned to stay off.''", accompanied with the sound of a helicopter passing by. In the music video the killing sound manifests in solid form as a some kind of banshee (played by Kate herself) that kills everyone in the base and its immediate vicinity - and is implied to go on a killing spree on a much larger scale soon after.

* Damien Richter's activities and a brief orbital bombardment with hypervelocity mass drivers destroyed much of the capital planet of Avalon in ''TabletopGame/TechInfantry''. And the first [[BugWar Bug Invasion]] wipes out Rio de Janeiro and the surrounding area of Brazil two centuries before that.
* The main weapon batteries of any ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' cruiser can, in the words of Literature/CiaphasCain, [[note]]'''[[FakeUltimateHero HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!]]'''[[/note]], "level continents." ''40K'' doesn't even need weapons to accomplish this - the debris from a naval engagement can cause catastrophic damage all on its own. Think about it, the average cruiser in that setting is several kilometers long, several hundred meters wide and tall, and weighs in at millions upon millions of tons of armoured hull. If one of these ships breaks up in orbit, even the fragments will be million-ton steel meteors, and if it goes down in one piece, the planet below gets nailed by a meteorite like a large mountain! And that's not even mentioning the even larger heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, grand cruisers and vastly larger battleships.
* The city of TabletopGame/{{Mordheim}} was struck by a comet made of [[GreenRocks Wyrdstone]]. Most of those who weren't killed were driven mad or mutated. What was left of the city [[DisasterScavengers was looted]] by human and non-humans who warred amongst each other in the lawless streets for the best spoils.

* Killing off darklords in the ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' setting has been known to cause entire domains to disappear, their native populations included.

* The continent of Aldea in ''TabletopGame/BlueRose'' suffered a Class 0 when the utopian Old Kingdom was usurped into an Empire, then consumed itself in a magical civil war among the Empress' wizard lieutenants. Between the use of more than one FantasticNuke, undead hordes battling with living warriors, and a major rebellion to establish a post-apocalyptic realm adding more corpses to the piles, only the capital was spared from the war as the lich kings all wanted to inherit it untouched as an eventual trophy for winning the war.

* Thanks to constant war, Societal Collapse and Disruption are so common in ''Videogame/LostTechnology'' that no society has persisted for more than fifty years.
* The Catastrophe in ''VisualNovel/{{Snatcher}}'' rendered most of Eurasia uninhabitable, prompting mass immigration to new islands built in Japan.
* The Zone in ''[[VideoGame/{{STALKER}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl]]''
** Interestingly, while civilization inside the Zone is pretty much gone, the rest of the world is actually ''better off''. The chance to observe the laws of physics and biology change first-hand has resulted in the creation of several advances in metallurgy and antibiotics, and nobody lived in the Zone beforehand who wasn't trying to perfect {{mind control}} anyway.
** Though this may become a higher class, as it is suggested the Zone is expanding, and it has been established that the Zone is independent, and if the Zone expands...well, a world full of Bloodsuckers won't be so much fun.
* ''VideoGame/KillingFloor'''s mutant outbreak is effectively limited to Great Britain, which seems lucky as the only survivors are either former military or CrazyPrepared.
* ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' has a post-apocalyptic Dubai thanks to the sandstorm. [[spoiler:However, it's [[BloodKnight Walker]] who lands the finishing blow when he kills every remaining survivor [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness in a fit of insanity]]]].

* ''VideoGame/TalesOfMonkeyIsland'': [[spoiler:The entire Gulf of Melange in Chapter 5, right between this class and Class 1, and bordering on Class 3A. And it seems that the Caribbean just isn't pretty much the same since [[BigBad LeChuck]] regained his voodoo powers and [[HeroKiller killed Guybrush]].]]
* In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', [[spoiler:the outside world (according to the BigBad), is shown to be in ruins, with giant Monokumas destroying buildings and the citizens wearing Monokuma masks and smashing cars and shops like skinheads -- all thanks to the Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Moment in the History of Mankind.]] It's shown in further installments that [[spoiler: she was telling the truth]].
* The BigBad of ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}'' aims to cause this to the Nowhere Islands [[spoiler: by awakening the massive dragon sleeping beneath them. Though he's stopped, the destruction ends up happening anyways, because the dragon's help was needed by the heroes. [[GainaxEnding Whether or not anyone actually survived is left up to the player.]] Also technically counts as global destruction, as said islands are the only part of the world that's habitable anymore.]]
* ''VideoGame/YakuzaDeadSouls'' takes place in the midst of a ZombieApocalypse. Said apocalypse, however, never spreads beyond the Tokyo district of Kamurocho.
* ''VideoGame/DyingLight'' has a mutated strain of rabies break out in the fictional city of Harran, resulting in two of the city's districts being quarantined off. Humanitarian aid (including a drug that suppresses the symptoms of the infection) is dropped in [[spoiler: until the GRE and the Ministry decide to pretend that there are no survivors left]].

* ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'' opens up with this being inflicted on Tokyo due to a combination of a demon invasion and a JSDF lockdown. Its sequel ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor2'' also starts like this, but on a worldwide scale.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'''s bad ending ''starts'' with you [[spoiler:exterminating the entire monster population of the underground, ''by hand''.]] If you actually go all the way with it, it gets much, much worse.
* ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'': The Ultimate Weapon ended the ancient war in Kalos by virtue of sapping the life of everyone and everything in the country, save the guy who activated it (it made him immortal). [[spoiler:Team Flare wishes to fire the thing up again, but this time aiming for a global holocaust that would leave only themselves alive.]]
* The third act of ''VideoGame/Portal2'' revolves around stopping the labyrinthine underground science facility the game's set in (which is at least the size of a city, and goes down for miles) from being completely destroyed in a nuclear meltdown, killing everyone inside.
* ''VideoGame/DragonBallXenoverse2'' reveals through NPC encounters what happened to the HubWorld of ''VideoGame/DragonBallXenoverse'', Toki-Toki City: [[spoiler:A rumor flew around that the Kais were weaker than gods like Beerus and Whis and even mortals like Goku and the hero of the first game. The Supreme Kai of Time was so incensed over this that she made the large dragon statue come to life as a show of power... and the stupid thing went berserk. By the time the statue was contained, the city was ravaged and was later rebuilt as Conton City.]]
* The year 2031 starts off as this in ''VideoGame/AMindForeverVoyaging'': The economy of the United States of North America (USNA) is failing. Great numbers of youths are turning to "Joybooths" (a device which directly stimulates the sensory input of the brain) and committing suicide by over-stimulation. A new arms race involving nuclear weapons no larger than the size of a common pack of cigarettes threatens to turn the USNA into a police state. Senator Richard Ryder has imposed the Plan for Renewed National Purpose to set the society back on its feet again. As the world's first sentient computer called PRISM, you are to go into future simulations in decades to see how the Plan fares. In the 2041 simulation that you investigate, this class is averted, as society is becoming normal... at first. But in the 2051 sim afterwards, your town of Rockvil is getting some societal disruption. By 2061, this is becoming Regional Societal Collapse, as the USNA is slowly turning into a polluted, religious police state and becoming the OppressiveStatesOfAmerica. [[FromBadToWorse It goes even further than that in the 2071 and 2081 sims, as the USNA will eventually turn into the]] FallenStatesOfAmerica.

* About 3/4ths of the way through ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'', the conflicting powers of [[TheFederation Osea]] and [[HegemonicEmpire Erusea]] both attempt to disadvantage the other by [[spoiler:launching separate but simulatneous attacks on each other's sattelites. The debris from these causes an ablation cascade, resulting in the collapse of most forms of global communication. As a result, Erusea falls into civil war, Osean forces are scattered without a way to contact the mainland, and territories within Erusea attempt to use the chaos to sieze independence.]] To make matters worse, [[spoiler:Erusea's semi-autonomous drone fleet [[RobotWar goes rogue without a way to recieve new orders, attacking everything not identified as an ally.]]]] By the end, it is shown that [[spoiler:local communications are slowly being restored, and the ending states at least one other nation is lending humanitarian aid, so the world isn't in a total state of anarchy.]]
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' has players attempting to avert this near the end of the game's first act: [[spoiler:Zorah Magdaros was supposed to go to the Rotten Vale to die, thus allowing its body to nourish the New World. Unfortunately, it's headed towards the Everstream, a network of geothermal energy conduits that run through the whole region. If it dies in the Everstream, the bioenergy it releases upon death will result in a chain reaction that would reduce the entire New World to scorched earth.]]
* ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' ends, canonically, with nuclear bombs falling on Hope County. Later, in ''VideoGame/FarCry6'', we learn that this was caused by whatever person was ruling Kyrat, the setting of ''VideoGame/FarCry4'', and that the nukes were aimed ''only'' at Montana. The rest of the world is perfectly fine.

* ''Webcomic/{{Magellan}}'': The Q'Arth invasion of 1972 - an incursion of soul sucking, NighInvulnerable demons from another dimension that killed more than 10 million people in less than a day - all but destroyed the Soviet Union, politically[[note]]It still exists as a remnant in the strip's current continuity, but nowhere near the power it once was.[[/note]], destroyed Moscow and its' surrounding area [[NukeEm literally]] and basically altered the social nad political landscape of the Magellanverse's Earth forever.

** The Sino-Soviet War, which begins on February 19, 1973. China launches a series of bombings on every major siberian urban center south of the 60th parallel and manages to drop a 3-megaton device onto Moscow. These attacks kill roughly 100 million in total. In response, the Soviets utterly decimate China, wiping out every city east of the 100th meridian with a population of 1 million or more, along with the destruction of all major agricultural, industrial, and military complexes. This, coupled with an invasion through the spring and summer that sees the use of chemical and biological weapons, wipes out roughly 80% of China's population.

* In the series ''WesternAnimation/GeneratorRex'', millions die worldwide after The Nanite Event. And thanks to the nature of the nanites, it could escalate all the way up to a Class 4 - maybe even Class 6 - at any moment.
* One happened offscreen and in the past in the original ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePony''. The kingdom of Grundleland was wiped out the last time the Smooze was unleashed, leaving only a tiny handful of survivors.

* Obake's attempted plan from ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6TheSeries'' Season 1 was to destroy San Fransokyo and remake into a city without limits, using the energy amplifier Hiro made for his final project. Luckily, the team was able to stop the plan, [[spoiler: even with the plan seemingly succeeding when said amplifier was not removed from the lighthouse in time]].
* Springfield in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' gets threatened with annihilation fairly often (and it does happen for real in some of the ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror'' episodes). Sometimes it's due to a villain or some outside force ("Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", "Bart's Comet"), sometimes it's due to Homer's incompetence ("Homer Defined", "King-Size Homer") and in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsonsMovie'', it was a combination of the two.

* The decline of [[UsefulNotes/PreColumbianCivilizations Mayan civilization]] during the 8th and 9th centuries AD probably count as this - not enough to wipe out the Mayan population entirely (indeed, Mayan city-states still existed when the Spanish arrived and there are still Mayans living there to this day) but it's not near what it once was based on archeological evidence. Some archeologists believe that the decline of the Maya happened quietly over several generations being compelled to move away from the cities, or to never marry and have children, for economic reasons, rather than a single dramatic event.

* UsefulNotes/TheSpanishFlu epidemic of 1918 - 50-100 million dead (about 3-5% of the world's population).

** The [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki two atomic bombs]] that were dropped in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, though this actually comes in second to the other bombing campaigns over Japan during WWII; the firebombing of Tokyo alone killed about as many as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima did. Firebombing operations happened far, far more often than atomic bombings, obviously. Then add in mass occasions of conventional bombing operations, and US aircraft shooting down poorly trained Japanese pilots in droves by that time period, and...well, Japan lost a massive amount of people.

* Though it — obviously — hasn't happened to densely populated modern states (yet), certain potential natural disasters could reach this level: an unfortunately-placed flood-basalt release, a volcanic eruption nearing the lower margin of "supervolcano", or a megaflood on the scale of the Missoula Floods at the end of the last Ice Age. More fanciful concepts include a limnic eruption in which dissolved [=CO2=] is released from a large lake (e.g. Lake Victoria or Lake Kivu), or a hypothetical release of dissolved hydrogen sulphide from the deeper waters of the Black Sea.

* In the manga version of ''Manga/ViolenceJack'', the Kanto area of Japan was destroyed by an earthquake [[spoiler: that was caused by the battle between Satan and Devilman]] and had been separated from the mainland.
* In most arcs of ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', [[spoiler: the Great Hinamizawa Disaster]] causes the [[spoiler:entire village]] to be wiped off the map, with additional fallout as former residents go crazy across Japan.
* Cell in ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' absorbed the life force of entire towns' residents and while searching for Android 18, and blew up dozens of islands. He also wipes out an entire military fleet. Nappa does the same earlier on, and he and Vegeta also blow up part of an Earth city shortly after arriving.
* The Overdrive disaster in ''Manga/RaveMaster'' destroyed what was thought to be one-tenth of the world. They later found out the world was bigger than they thought, but it still wiped a decent sized country off of the map.
* Several characters in LightNovel/{{Slayers}} are capable of Class 0 apocalypses. Lina Inverse routinely uses her Dragon Slave, a spell that is capable of reducing cities to rubble (she also has access to [[ApocalypseHow/ClassX4 more powerful magic]]). Rezo the Red Priest was also able to destroy the Holy City of Sairaag with a Mega Brand spell (the most powerful use of that spell by any character).
* In ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', this is what happens [[spoiler:in the aftermath of most of Homura's timelines as a result of Walpurgis Night's rampage through Mitakihara Town before being defeated. It's implied that were Walpurgis not stopped, she would eventually score higher on this scale]].
* On the Blue Night in ''Manga/BlueExorcist'', many high-level exorcists suddenly combust into bright blue flames. This changes the exorcist population and hierarchy significantly.
* Z in the 3rd ''Anime/TenchiMuyo!'' [=OVA=] series does this, firing the Chobimaru at Earth with Tenchi failing to stop it. When the timeline's reset and Noike does it again to set things right, a much stronger Tenchi is able to stop it... though he ends up "dying" again, much to his displeasure.

** In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', Zeon's "Operation British" - the ColonyDrop to take out Jaburo - ends up being diverted and half of the colony lands on Sydney, Australia, wiping out 16% of the colony. As well, the narration mentions that the first week of fighting saw both sides losing half their respective population.
** In ''Anime/{{Mobile Suit Gundam 0083|Stardust Memory}}'', the Delaz Fleet performs a ColonyDrop on North America, intending on wiping out its food supply. Didn't really work - they were back on their feet by the time of ''[[Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam Zeta Gundam]]''.

* In the manga of ''Manga/SandsOfDestruction'', [[PersonOfMassDestruction Kyrie]] accidentally causes a couple of these. He isn't happy about it at all. The [[Anime/SandsOfDestruction anime]] has him keep better control of his powers and averts this trope [[spoiler:until the final episode, when he nearly causes a Class 6 before Morte asks him to stop; it's unclear how much damage he did, whether he just killed Aquilla Rex and a few mooks or if there's a larger area of destruction.]]

* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', the advent of Quirks caused massive societal upheaval across the world, completely redefining what it meant to be human as conflicts rose everywhere. Eventually, the chaos died down and society stabilized, but the resulting destruction stagnated technological development to the point that humanity could have been going on interstellar vacations if resources weren't allocated to restoring society.
** There's the implication that several countries were outright ''destroyed'' by the Quirks going wild, and the ones still thriving in the modern times are due to strict regulations being enforced early on.

* During ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'', the city of [[WretchedHive Bludhaven]] is completely destroyed when the Secret Society of Super Villains drops Chemo on it. In a later story, the place is so toxic that both Batman and Robin need Hazmat suits to enter; it is likely beyond saving.
* The small island nation of Genosia was destroyed completely during ''ComicBook/HouseOfM'', and as of now, is unpopulated and in ruins.
* In Peter Bagge's ''ComicBook/ApocalypseNerd'', Seattle is nuked by North Korea, and centers around two friends as [[ApocalypseAnarchy they try to survive in the wilds of the Cascade Mountains.]] Background information provided by other characters states that the government has quarantined the area, and the rest of the country has gone unaffected.

* ''Film/RiotGirls'': Due to a viral pandemic, all the adults were killed, with society having collapsed at least in the area where the film's set. Only the town is mentioned, so we don't learn of how far this extended.

* ''Literature/TheThirdWorldWar'' might be a Class 0, as Birmingham and Minsk are destroyed by nuclear weapons.
* The cometary impact at the end of ''Newton's Cannon'' did this to a major chunk of Europe.
* From ''Literature/MotelOfTheMysteries'', the complete burial of North America in accumulated junk mail would rank near the top of the Class 0 category. Technically it ''ought'' to be a Class 1, if the rest of the planet was set back so far that they forgot what a "motel" (or, worse, a toilet!) is; because the whole book's just one long RunningGag, however, let's avoid living out ContrivedStupidityTropes, and evaluate it by the direct physical effects of this lame-o disaster.
* ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' has the destruction of Númenor by [[{{God}} Eru]]. Morgoth's triumph just before the end of the First Age may also count, and the destruction of Beleriand in the War of Wrath definitely does.

* The disaster preceding the events in Margaret Atwood's ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'' is a Class 0 or a Class 1, leading to a dystopia in the United States, but there are hints the rest of the world isn't as dramatically affected.
* Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Линия Грёз'', as set in the VideoGame/MasterOfOrion universe, features several varieties of planet-scale destruction. As most races in the conflict span over multiple systems, those attacks are Class 0. This might of course instantly move up to class 5 or 6 if the species in question has been reduced to inhabiting only one planet (usually their native one) or the attacks are directed against all planets inhabited by the fraction simultaneously. Luk'yanenko avoids the topic of pre-space age species; in the games it's possible to find native sentient life on generally life-friendly planets. Wiping those aborigines out is discouraged, though, as they turn into an agricultural boon for the race to settle on the planet. Examples of destruction:
** Massive biological weapon bombardments employed by the human Empire during the last great interspecies war on Bul-Rathi planets.
** Human ''free hunters'' carry a small antimatter payload, which they are supposed to drop if they happen to get close enough to any hostile inhabited planet.
** The human Empire goes for planet-wide meson bombardment on planets that are about to be conquered by an alien race and indefensible at the current tactical situation. Several decades later a refugee remarks that there is hope for her homeworld - the oceans are about to stop boiling.
** A large bomber spaceship is sacrificed during an orbital battle above a planet for tactical reasons. As the battle itself ends, the ship is damaged beyond salvaging and is left to drop to the surface without disarming the payload. This results in boiling the oceans, melting the crust to glass-like results and irradiating the entire planet. The scattered and partly exploded bombs embedded in the glassed crust make the planet completely uninhabitable.
* Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Веллесберг / Лорд с планеты Земля'' shared universe features a quark fission bomb which slowly turns a planet into fine dust. While the planet in question is Earth, [[spoiler: humanity has already settled all over the galaxy, using time travel to found colonies in the past]], placing this example here in Class 0.
* In John Birmingham's ''Without Warning'', a strange energy bubble spreads over North America, annihilating all primates and a seemingly random selection of other chordate species (for instance pigs get wiped out, deer do fine) on the continent save for Alaska a small portion of the Pacific Northwest and about the southern third of Mexico. Another Class 0 happens later when Israel is forced to [[spoiler: use its nuclear arsenal to fend off an Arab invasion]].
** In the sequel ''After America'' the ripple effect has brought this to the verge of a Class 1 four years later. Mexico is a failed state, the after effects of [[spoiler: the Second Holocaust, Israel's nuking of it's neighbors]] has resulted in the [[BalkanizeMe balkanization of France and Germany]], pirates roam both the Pacific and Atlantic at will as well as [[spoiler: serving as foot soldiers for an Islamic invasion of Manhattan]], While no one is starving in Britain, [[UnfortunateImplications which has avoided it's own Islamic problems by deporting most Muslims and interning the rest]] food and fuel are both rationed and bicycles and horsedrawn carts are more common on the road than cars.
* Literature/TimeScout's backstory includes a mysterious The Accident, somehow involving a space station, that devastated the globe's coastal communities and caused random {{Time Portal}}s to open up.

* Creator/WilliamRForstchen's ''One Second After'' has the US hit by a massive EMP resulting in a collapse of society and, in the end a DividedStatesOfAmerica. Iran and North Korea are nuked in retaliation although it's implied that they may not have done it.
* Subverted in ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'', as the [[spoiler:Darke Domaine that overruns the Castle in ''Darke'' eventually is contained with few victims.]]
* In John Barnes ''Mother of Storms'' there is a background incident caled "The Flash" that happened ten years previous to the beginning of the book that refers to a terrorist nuking of Washington DC.
* The eponymous disaster in Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/SupervolcanoEruption'' which wipes out large chunks of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana as well as smaller pieces of Utah and Colorado. However it's stated that the aftereffects have the potential to become at least a Class 1. There is also a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran that further complicates matters.

* ''Literature/UnderTheDome'' by Creator/StephenKing is a very small example of this as only one small town in Maine is affected.
* In ''Literature/ThePassage'' and it's sequels the vampire plague only affected North America. A quarantine kept it from spreading further.
* At the end of ''Literature/CiaphasCain: Caves of Ice'', the Valhallans detonate an impromptu fuel-air bomb composed of several million liters of refined promethium poured into mine shafts, with the intent of destroying a Necron tomb. This results in a gigaton-range blast that buffets their orbiting troopship. Meets the minimum requirements by dint of obliterating the only civilization on the planet (the refinery).
* ''Literature/TheYearsOfRiceAndSalt''. The Black Death was 90+ % fatal between the Volga and the Atlantic, depopulating Europe in the 1300s. The book covers the next 6 centuries of how the other civilizations go on without Western civilization's interventions and contributions.
* In [[Creator/BenCroshaw Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw]]'s ''Literature/{{Jam}}'', a regional Class 5 happens to Australia as the eponymous substance is accidentally unleashed upon the continent, and swallows every organic being that isn't above ground level.
* In Robert Ferrigno's ''Assassin Trilogy'' New York and Washington DC have been nuked by terrorists fifteen years before the first book as well as Mecca being radiated by a dirty bomb. When it's revealed that elements of Israel's government were behind this Israel is destroyed in the backlash and a civil war results in a DividedStatesOfAmerica.
* In Adam Sternbergh's ''Shovel Ready'' a dirty nuke was set off in Times Square ten years previous to the books beginning rendering about half the city uninhabitable.
* At one point in ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'', ThePeteBest of the HorsemenOfTheApocalypse reminisces on how most of the "gigs" they did at the dawn of civilization were of this type, with small villages or tribes being wiped out or forced to relocate.
* Allan Steele's ''Jericho Iteration'' takes place about six moths after a massive earthquake leveled much of St. Louis.
* The plot of Will [=McIntosh=]'s ''Hitchers'' is kicked off by a terrorist attack on Atlanta involving anthrax that winds up killing 600,000 people.

* Happens in both timelines in Wolfgang Jeshke's ''The Cusanus Game''. In the main timeline a nuclear disaster in France's Cattenom reactor renders much of Germany uninhabitable. In the offshoot the same thing happens in California due to the 1906 California earthquake.
* In "Literature/TheStonesAreHatching", British civilisation is shown to have mostly collapsed, with people reverting to Pagan practices out of fear, due to being attacked by hundreds, perhaps thousands of supernatural monsters. Because of the size of the Stoor Worm, it can be reasonably assumed that the same is occurring in mainland Europe.
* ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'': The first apocalypse happened long ago, when the Inchoroi created the No-God in an attempt to kill all but 144,000 souls in Earwa and thereby sever its connection to the afterlife. Although the No-God was destroyed, the resulting catastrophe obliterated the Great North and caused all births to be stillborn for 13 years afterward. Since then, the backwater Three Seas region has risen to become the center of human civilization, while the North is a wasteland still swarming with the Inchoroi's Sranc.
* This is the subject of many of the "eco-horror" novels of the '70s and '80s, which dealt with swarms of poisonous insects and arachnids, rats, amphibians, reptiles and just about every creepy creature that exists. A good example of one of these novels is ''The Spiders'' by Richard Lewis (a pseudonym for novelist Alan Radnor). Briefly: a new, highly destructive species of spider emerges in the English countryside; larger than any kind of spider ever seen, it has macerating jaws designed for eating flesh, is deadly poisonous and a pack hunter. The horde of arachnids begins to spread out and eventually takes over London, causing unprecedented loss of life, chaos, riots and, ultimately, abandonment of the city and most of the southern part of the English isle (including Wales). By the time researchers figure out a way to destroy the species, the damage is done and it will presumably take the region decades to recover. Most eco-horror novels had a similar plot to ''The Spiders.''

* "Literature/TheTamariskHunter": The unending drought "Big Daddy Drought" along with the loss of water rights have destroyed much of the Southwestern US.
* ''Literature/SurvivorDogs'' begins with the Big Growl. It's a huge earthquake that caused most of the local humans to evacuate. To dogs, this is an apocalyptic-level disaster. It doesn't help that they see it as a sign that the gods are mad and the next big international (dog) war will occur.
* The apocalypse in ''Literature/TailchasersSong'' doesn't seem to be worldwide, but it's hard to tell because the world is scaled down to a cats POV. It affects a few regions and that's all.
* Jakob van Hoddis' expressionist poem [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltende_(Jakob_van_Hoddis) Worlds End]] is hard to classify, mainly because it is an Apocalypse Lol. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Floods, train wrecks and sneeze]].

* ''Literature/PrincessPonies'': a Regional one will occur if the [[CosmicKeystone eight golden horseshoes]] maintaining Chevalia aren't returned to the Whispering Wall by Midsummer's Day. The entire island will sink into the sea and be destroyed.
* ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'': It's probably this level at least, with the US having been destroyed in the past, New York City left a ruin and tribal humans living nearby who view it as a forbidden place where gods lived. This may well be more widespread, though John in the story only knows of his region.

* ''Literature/GodsAndWarriors'': At the end of ''The Burning Shadow'', the island of Thalakrea is destroyed when its volcano erupts. The next book, which takes place seven months later, reveals that a great cloud of ash has blotted out the Sun for the entire winter and plunged Mediterranean into perpetual twilight. The island of Keftiu (Crete) to the south of Thalakrea was hit by a tidal wave and is ravaged by a plague. It's also acknowledged that if the spring goes by without the Sun, the crops will die and cause even more famine. Fortunately, the Sun starts shining again by the end of the book.

* Music/KateBush song "Experiment IV" has a military base unleash a "killing sound" which kills everything in the base. Ominously the last line is "''the public is warned to stay off.''", accompanied with the sound of a helicopter passing by. In the music video the killing sound manifests in solid form as a some kind of banshee (played by Kate herself) that kills everyone in the base and is implied to go on a killing spree on a much larger scale soon after.

* One happened offscreen and in the past in the original ''MyLittlePony''. The kingdom of Grundleland was wiped out the last time the Smooze was unleashed, leaving only a tiny handful of survivors.