History ApocalypseHow / Class2

* Mass Extinction-level events would certainly count as high-level class 2's; events such as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) event, which among others killed off the dinosaurs. Or the great extinction event ever, which was the Permian-Triassic event, which killed off approximately 90-95% of ''all life on earth''. It's not for nothing that archaeologists, who aren't a profession usually given to mass hyperbole, refer to it as '''''The Great Dying'''''.

* ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' Has this on an interstellar scale: [[spoiler: An ''entire arm of the galaxy'' was cut-off from the main civilization by alien invasion. Cue a utter collapse of infrastructure, and a fall into barbarism and witchcraft, hard enough that Enroth, the world Heroes 1-3 and Might & Magic 6-8 takes place on is overall at a late medieval/early renaissaince level ''more than a thousand years after said Silence'', with Heroes 4's Axeoth apparently ''even less'' developed before the Enrothians arrived.]]. Though the worlds ''Might and Magic I'' to ''V'' takes place on appears to be exceptions (there is evidence to suggest the primitivity of the cultures are intentional on the part of the designers rather than this trope); evidently the Ancients don't let such minor issues as the spoilered part stop them from grandiose planetary-scale experiments.

* ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' is between Stellar/Societal Collapse and Galactic/Societal Collapse.[[spoiler: An ''entire arm of the galaxy'' was cut-off from the main civilization by alien invasion. Cue a utter collapse of infrastructure, and a fall into barbarism and witchcraft, hard enough that Enroth, the world Heroes 1-3 and Might & Magic 6-8 takes place on is overall at a late medieval/early renaissaince level ''more than a thousand years after said Silence'', with Heroes 4's Axeoth apparently ''even less'' developed before the Enrothians arrived.]]. Though the worlds ''Might and Magic I'' to ''V'' takes place on appears to be exceptions (there is evidence to suggest the primitivity of the cultures are intentional on the part of the designers rather than this trope); evidently the Ancients don't let such minor issues as the spoilered part stop them from grandiose planetary-scale experiments.

* Mankind was kicked back to the stone age 3.000 years before the beginning of ''VideoGame/ArcTheLad'', [[spoiler: Arc 2 ends with ''merely'' a class 1 extinction]] [[PlayerPunch you can hate the writters for this]]
* ''PhantomDust'' is a class 2 in many ways. The memory erasing dust on the surface makes long term exposure to environments that aren't pressure sealed a dangerous or even suicidal venture. The remains of humanity exist in underground shelters seemingly stitched together from collapsed subways. You only ever encounter one such lair, though it's suggested that more exist. Their government is comprised of a silent dictator and his interpreter, and their civilians/field agents are nearly all of suspect sanity. Parts of the vault seem to have technology superior to modern day tech, but the inhabitants are mostly ignorant; they have no idea how to grow crops and have to raid the surface for food and supplies. Of course, later on in the game you discover [[spoiler: That humanity has actually already gone extinct, and the protagonist and all the humans he has encountered are constructed figments created from the dust by the last surviving human, who has long since past away, making it a class 5.]]

* {{Halo}}'s ExpandedUniverse has explained that the [[TheBrute Jiralhanae]] have done this to themselves at least ''twice'' before they joined up with the Covenant. Additionally, this was one of [[spoiler: Mendicant Bias]]'s many threats of what he would do to [[spoiler: the Forerunners]] after he went rampant, [[spoiler: which would more or less be DramaticIrony, since [[AbusivePrecursors the Forerunners had also done this a millennium earlier to Humanity]].

* The Great Rain of Fire, a planetary cataclysm that devastated the D&D setting of ''{{Mystara}} 3000''-odd years ago, knocked human and elven civilization from scifi-grade technology back to savagery. The exact nature of the weapons Evergrun's elves and Blackmoor's humans threw at each other is unknown, but nukes were probably the ''least'' of them, as their conflict was so violent that it ''changed Mystara's axial tilt''. Note that this same event rates as a Class 3a for some of the other races that were around back then, and that still others only subverted a Class 3a ApocalypseHow because the Immortals preserved some of them in the Hollow World.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'' has [[spoiler:the Vorlon planet killers]]. These planet killers are more likely to be around class 2-3--one episode has Ivanova requesting atmospheric shuttles to evacuate survivors from the surface of a world devastated by the planet killer. It doesn't destroy the planet, but once it strikes, it's curtains for most of the population, and the few who remain will probably slowly die of starvation, disease, radiation poisoning, or the like unless they are rescued.
* In ''{{Primeval}}'' the not too distant future appears to be populated entirely by giant mutant bat things that we unleashed upon ourselves. The series is non-specific if this has wiped out humanity entirely in a full Class 3a, or just mostly, but given the ferocity of the future predators and the abandoned state of cities it is at least a 2. The BigBad does state we've wiped ourselves out, but [[GenreSavvy we're not about to take a villain's word for it just yet]] and the series does fall on the idealistic side of the [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism Sliding Scale]] so there may yet be hope. Given the geologic time-scales with which this series usually plays around, the Future Predators may not have originally played any direct role in humanity's downfall. It's just as plausible that they evolved naturally, long after we'd gone extinct, and that they would never have met humans if the Anomalies hadn't brought some into the present.

** The Reapers in "Father's Day" erased almost all traces of human life to fix a paradox in time, if left unchecked reaching a Class 3b.

** In "Day of the Moon", [[spoiler:we learn that the Silence have occupied the Earth since the age of fire and the wheel. Canton Delaware and the Doctor trick the Silence into post-hypnotically ordering their own destruction through a message in the 1969 moon landing. As there are probably remote corners of the Earth where people haven't seen the moon landing videos, it's unlikely to be a Class 3a.]]
* New Zealand production ''Series/TheTribe'' had the worlds' adult population dead from an accidentally-engineered virus, and the surviving children living in a class 1 catastrophe, with mostly successful attempts to restore technology. However, in the sequel series, ''TheNewTomorrow'', set possibly some centuries later, the children's society has regressed to the point of basic small-scale agriculture, and tribes of hunter-gatherers, as well as worship of the Ancestors, and technology has all but become forgotten (some machines, still working on their own, are thought to be "monsters"), making this a pretty firm class 2.

* ''{{A Boy and His Dog}}'' by Harlan Ellison in which the unnamed city is divided among scavenger gangs underneath which lies a CrapsacharrineWorld that maintains a decent level of technology but which in dying out from inbreeding.

** Additionally, later on in the series, it is stated that the Choeden Kal have the power to ''crack the world like an egg'', a potential class X disaster.
** With the [[spoiler: female half of the Choeden Kal melted]] the chance of a class X disaster is averted. Granted, Rand with [[spoiler: the male half]] can still do ''plenty'' of damage alone.

* Current conditions are like this in ''Cthulhu's Reign'', an anthology of Creator/HPLovecraft-inspired AfterTheEnd tales. In most stories it's a temporary condition, as events are rapidly progressing towards a Class 3a or Class 4.

* ''{{A Boy and His Dog}}'' by Harlan Ellison in which the unnamed city is divided among scavenger gangs underneath which lies a CrapSacharrineWorld that maintains a decent level of technology but which in dying out from inbreeding.
* {{The Fire-us Trilogy}} features one of these, although it's very close to being a 3a.

* ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' has, as noted above, [[spoiler:the Vorlon planet killers]]. These planet killers are more likely to be around class 2-3--one episode has Ivanova requesting atmospheric shuttles to evacuate survivors from the surface of a world devastated by the planet killer. It doesn't destroy the planet, but once it strikes, it's curtains for most of the population, and the few who remain will probably slowly die of starvation, disease, radiation poisoning, or the like unless they are rescued.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' TV series implies this has occurred, at best. At worse, it's a Class 3a in the making.

* ''TheWalkingDead'' TV series implies this has occurred, at best. At worse, it's a Class 3a in the making.

* Russel Hoban's ''Literature/RiddleyWalker''. It's two thousand years - we think - after a nuclear war blasted everyone back to Iron Age technology. In the two millennia since the war, mankind has been getting by in a sort of neo-tribal existance, by digging up old rusting metal out of the earth to salvage the scrap metal. All history is orally related via Punch-and-Judy puppet shows and half-remembered accounts of the war are woven together with scraps of the legend of St. Eustace. And the English language is mind-blowingly different.

* {{Halo}}'s ExpandedUniverse has explained that the [[TheBrute Jiralhanae]] have done this to themselves at least ''twice'' before they joined up with the Covenant. Additionally, this was one of [[spoiler: Mendicant Bias]]'s many threats of what he would do to [[spoiler: the Forerunners]] after he went rampant.

* In the ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'' episode "Deconstruction of Falling Stars", its shown that humanity all but wiped itself out in a massive civil war. It takes quite a while and the aid of the Rangers to fix that mess.

* In ''HeatGuyJ'', after humans appropriated the technology of the [[SuperiorSpecies Celestials]] in [[HumansAreBastards their conquest for power]], there were apparently large-scale wars. The result? Earth's human population is reduced to ''seven'' city-states (with some small towns and SpaceAmish villages surrounding them), who are mistrustful of one another and do not trade, communicate, etc. with one another.

* Russel Hoban's "RiddleyWalker". It's two thousand years - we think - after a nuclear war blasted everyone back to Iron Age technology. In the two millennia since the war, mankind has been getting by in a sort of neo-tribal existance, by digging up old rusting metal out of the earth to salvage the scrap metal. All history is orally related via Punch-and-Judy puppet shows and half-remembered accounts of the war are woven together with scraps of the legend of St. Eustace. And the English language is mind-blowingly different.

* "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison in which the unnamed city is divided among scavenger gangs underneath which lies a CrapSacharrineWorld that maintains a decent level of technology but which in dying out from inbreeding.
* {{The Fire-us Triology}} features one of these, although it's very close to being a 3a.

* With 40 missile tubes each capable of delivering eight 20-megaton kinetic kill missiles a second, the [[Series/{{Andromeda}} Andromeda Ascendant]] can destroy every population center of a Tarn Vedra (read: Earth like) class planet in under six minutes.

* ''{{Cell}}'', by StephenKing. We see only [=US=] residents, and the book doesn't really address other places, but there's really no reason to think any place with cell phones was spared.

* Current conditions are like this in ''Cthulhu's Reign'', an anthology of HPLovecraft-inspired AfterTheEnd tales. In most stories it's a temporary condition, as events are rapidly progressing towards a Class 3a or Class 4.

* {{Halo}}'s ExpandedUniverse has explained that the [[TheBrute Jiralhanae]] have done this to themselves at least ''twice'' before they joined up with the Covenant. Additionally, this was one of [[spoiler: Mendicant Bias's]] many threats of what he would do to [[spoiler: the Forerunners]] after he went rampant.

* ''MightAndMagic''.[[spoiler: An ''entire arm of the galaxy'' was cut-off from the main civilization by alien invasion. Cue a utter collapse of infrastructure, and a fall into barbarism and witchcraft, hard enough that the world Heroes 1-3 and Might & Magic 6-8 takes place are overall at a late medieval/early renaissaince level ''more than a thousand years after the Silence''.]].

** After that. In {{NOiSE}}. [[CultColony Religious fanatics]] are trying to [[ForTheEvulz bring out the chaos of the Netsphere]] and are doing so by doing [[NightmareFuel less than humane things to people]]. Against them.....is a single police women who ends up not being able to stop them, and thus the {{Bizarrchitecture}} (built around the earth) begins to expand rapidly and increase the chaos. DownerEnding.

* In ''{{The Wheel of Time}}'' series, an event occurs three thousand or so years previously known as the Breaking of the World. Caused by all male channelers going berserk, Human society is set back from near utopia to feudalism.

* ''{{The Day of the Triffids}}'' by John Wyndham. The light from a meteor shower renders most of the human race blind, leaving them vulnerable to carnivorous walking plants that sting you to death and eat your corpse, and reproduce rapidly. Don't bother watching the 1962 film which conveniently has a HappyEnding when they suddenly discover that the Triffids [[spoiler: can be killed with sea water]].

* With 40 missile tubes each capable of delivering eight 20-megaton kinetic kill missiles a second, the [[{{Andromeda}} Andromeda Ascendant]] can destroy every population center of a Tarn Vedra (read: Earth like) class planet in under six minutes.

* ''{{DeGenesis}}'', a German roleplaying game set AfterTheEnd sees presumably all of civilization completely destroyed. Humanity got back to their feet, making the initial apocalypse only a Class 1 case. However, since the asteroids left some alien material that constantly expands its turf, the survival of the human race is all but probable.
* The Great Rain of Fire, a planetary cataclysm that devastated the D&D setting of ''{{Mystara}}'' 3000-odd years ago, knocked human and elven civilization from scifi-grade technology back to savagery. The exact nature of the weapons Evergrun's elves and Blackmoor's humans threw at each other is unknown, but nukes were probably the ''least'' of them, as their conflict was so violent that it ''changed Mystara's axial tilt''. Note that this same event rates as a Class 3a for some of the other races that were around back then, and that still others only subverted a Class 3a ApocalypseHow because the Immortals preserved some of them in the Hollow World.

* ''VideoGame/{{I Am Alive}}'' The entire world is massively FUBAR by some unknown cataclysm. The player must navigate the shattered, devastated ruins of what was once New York in order to find his daughter and girlfriend.

* In VernorVinge's ''Literature/ADeepnessInTheSky'', every planet-bound human civilization goes through this at some point due to the limits of technology, and has been doing this for thousands of years. The Emergents manage to stave this off through MindControl, but the true answer as of ''Literature/AFireUponTheDeep'' seems to be to move to the parts of the galaxy where FasterThanLightTravel is possible. In the case of ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', this is the answer for poor weak sophonts of human-level intelligence. [[spoiler:The ultimate answer of beings beyond the Powers is to move the zones of space where singularity can occur closer to you.]]

* The Great War in the {{Fallout}} series caused one of these. Sure, it was worse in some places than in others, but humanity's pretty much been busted back to the Stone Age. Social organization is tribal in most cases and only the New California Republic even approaches [[GunsGermsAndSteel Jared Diamond's]] definition of a "state".

* Creator/JohnVarley's ''[[strike:Eight]] Nine Worlds'' stories, where an invasion of aliens had come to Earth and literally plowed human civilization out of existence, supposedly to benefit Earth's true higher life forms: dolphins, sperm whales and other cetaceans. At that time, humanity had one single developed colony on the moon. They were warned - once - never to land on Earth again. Four hundred years later, humanity had settled all the other 'junk' planets in the solar system. What continues to happen on Earth is a sweet mystery.

* JohnVarley's ''[[strike:Eight]] Nine Worlds'' stories, where an invasion of aliens had come to Earth and literally plowed human civilization out of existence, supposedly to benefit Earth's true higher life forms: dolphins, sperm whales and other cetaceans. At that time, humanity had one single developed colony on the moon. They were warned - once - never to land on Earth again. Four hundred years later, humanity had settled all the other 'junk' planets in the solar system. What continues to happen on Earth is a sweet mystery.

* In the ''StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "A Taste of Armageddon", Kirk threatens to use "General Order 24" which is this caused by [[DeathFromAbove Orbital]] [[NukeEm Bombardment]].
* ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'' has, as noted above, [[spoiler:the Vorlon planet killers]]. These planet killers are more likely to be around class 2-3--one episode has Ivanova requesting atmospheric shuttles to evacuate survivors from the surface of a world devastated by the planet killer. It doesn't destroy the planet, but once it strikes, it's curtains for most of the population, and the few who remain will probably slowly die of starvation, disease, radiation poisoning, or the like unless they are rescued.