History Main / OverpopulationCrisis

The population of an area, whether it be a small region, a country, a planet, or a GalacticSuperpower has grown so large it is causing problems. The result might be societal instability, war, ecological catastrophe, [[HumanResources cannibalism]]... the specifics do not really matter -- what matters is that there are too many people and it is causing problems. This is often a feature of a {{dystopia}} and CyberPunk, and can be used as a form of GreenAesop about uninhibited growth in a finite area.

This is one of the threats of the ExplosiveBreeder -- even if it's not malicious, the sheer amount of offspring will eventually cause trouble if left unchecked. An EcoTerrorist may resort to a FinalSolution largely out of fear of a Malthusian crisis.

* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': Part of the reason the setting is so crime-ridden is that most of the planet was rendered uninhabitable by nuclear war, forcing people to live in the megacities. The only alternatives consists of trying to live in the Cursed Earth, the radioactive DeathWorld outside, which is basically suicide (though some hardier people and mutants manage to survive out there), or moving to a space colony, which is very difficult and expensive. Exacerbating the problem is the equally high population of {{Job Stealing Robot}}s, which keeps unemployment rates soaring.
* In a '90s ''ComicBook/SilverSurfer'' arc, Death resurrected Comicbook/{{Thanos}} and tasked him with destroying half of the universe's sentient life in order to prevent a massive population crisis. Thanos demonstrated the problem to the Surfer by showing him the effects that overpopulation and a lack of natural resources had on an inhabited planet, and claimed that the rest of the universe would soon meet with a similar fate. This plot eventually led to ''Comicbook/TheInfinityGauntlet'' crossover, where Thanos used the Infinity Gems to accomplish Death's goal.

[[folder: Fan Works ]]
* ''Fanfic/TheGreatAlicornHunt'': The idea of an overpopulation crisis is mocked when Luna and Twilight discuss the pony version of Malthus, whose predictions regarding overpopulation would have had them all starve to death eight hundred years before. Luna says that "he was a buffoon who insisted that we would all starve to death because Celestia and I 'let' Equestria's population grow too fast, and that our numbers would exceed our farmers' ability to feed us all." She then proceeds to point out that Malthus "did not account for our farmers learning new and better ways to grow; he did not account for our ability to get more out of less land, or that we would have more land, period. He certainly did not account for the fact that, as our prosperity grew, our birth rate ''declined''... And even when the blessings of foals were abundant, we had more than a surfeit of food, and room, and love for all of them." However, she also confirms that they have several contingency plans just in case, with their Panacea plan (to create a cure for the process of decay with old age, letting ponies have far longer to create, innovate and generally improve, letting them spread out among the stars) being one of them.
* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'' is a ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' fanfic written InTheStyleOf a 1954 sci-fi magazine pulp, set in the [[IWantMyJetPack far future of 2020]]. Earth is on the verge of famine with a population of over seven billion crammed into megacities. It's implied the Green Revolution never got started due to war and political conflict. The birth control pill has been invented but [[FutureSocietyPresentValues it had little effect on the morals of society]], so there's increasing pressure for the [[TheWarOfEarthlyAggression aggressive colonization of Mars and Venus]] rather than adopt controversial measures of PopulationControl.

* ''Film/{{Elysium}}'': Among the problems that plague the dystopian Earth of the future is overpopulation, along with high crime, poverty, and medicine being restricted to the rich on Elysium. At the end of the film, [[spoiler:all of Earth's people are approved as Elysium citizens and so can receive medicine, but the director admitted afterward that this was an EsotericHappyEnding that would only worsen the overpopulation problem (though it does seem like contraception may also be provided).]]
* ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' famously features the tagline "When There's No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth", which is used by Peter in the film itself, and offers this trope as a possible supernatural explanation for the ZombieApocalypse - Hell has gotten so overcrowded the souls of the damned are flowing back to Earth and rising as undead cannibals. Of course, this is just Peter's personal belief which is never confirmed or denied, and doesn't explain why the zombies die again if you shoot them in the head.

* An overpopulation-induced resource crunch is stated in the introduction of ''Film/Serenity2005'' to have prompted the settlement of the star cluster the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' franchise takes place in, and led to Earth becoming EarthThatWas.

* ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'': This is what the botched memory erasure spell threatens to inflict on the MCU. Since Peter's last-second alterations caused the spell to end up being [[ExactWords "everyone who already knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man should still remember"]], this ends up attracting ''literally everyone'' who knows from the infinite number of timelines in the multiverse towards the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse.

* In ''Literature/Aeon14'', the Sol system's government resorted to extrasolar colonization beginning in the 2100s to try and deal with population-induced resource strains, hence the colony ship ''Intrepid'' around which the series revolves. Even so, it's mentioned once in the early books that the Sol system's population in 4123 is now so high that they're in danger of mining out the entire Sol system within the main characters' (admittedly [[WeWillHavePerfectHealthInTheFuture hundreds of years long]]) lifetimes. [[spoiler:The advent of FasterThanLightTravel in the 5,000 year TimeDilation-induced TimeSkip between books 3 and 4 takes the strain off, but also causes a [[ApocalypseHow partial collapse of civilization]] and [[LostTechnology loss of much knowledge]] because interstellar warfare is now practical and humanity no longer has to be as efficient with its resources.]]
* In "Billennium" by Creator/JGBallard, the world population is over 20 billion, most of the planet is used for agriculture, roads are permanently filled with crowds of pedestrians so that people have to weave through a MobstacleCourse every time they want to cross the street, and each person is limited to four square metres of living space, with plans to reduce the allocation even further.
* Referenced in ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'', when Scrooge says that the poor should die in order to "decrease the surplus population." At the time this was written, overpopulation fears were often cited to justify the mistreatment of the poor.
* ''Literature/DarkLife'': Though the increase demand for land is actually cause by [[FloodedFutureWorld sea levels rising]] rather than a population boom, but the effect is basically the same. Most people live in one or two room apartments crammed into buildings, Space is considered a status symbol (there are even waiting lists to move to apartments that are both more spacious and higher up) and story focus on the small group of people who had [[SettlingTheFrontier colonize the sea floor in an attempt to reclaim the land lost to the sea]].
* ''Literature/EndersGame'': Due to overpopulation, most of Earth's nations have enforced laws stating families are to have no more than two children. However, a few nations such as Poland openly flout the law, with many large families but the consequence being that only the first two children are eligible for public education and benefits. The protagonist, Ender, is a rare example of a state-approved Third, as the International Fleet authorized his parents to have another child because they recognized military potential in their first two. Since Peter and Valentine were examined but rejected for various reasons (Peter for being too aggressive, Valentine as too pacifistic), the military hopes Ender might be a balance of their traits.
* Overpopulation problems are a recurring theme in many of Creator/RobertHeinlein's novels, to which the solution is often FasterThanLightTravel:

* In Daniel Quinn's ''Literature/Ishmael1992'', the title character (an intelligent ape) says that world population will increase as long as food production increases. A crisis like this will inevitably happen unless food production is cut down to a more natural scale, even though it means [[HardTruthAesop people in poorer areas will starve]].

* In ''Literature/StandOnZanzibar'' by Creator/JohnBrunner, the world is so overcrowded that people with minor birth defects can't get permits to breed.
** In ''Literature/TheSheepLookUp'' by the same author, the problem manifests as extreme pollution.

* Three of Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/TufVoyaging'' stories (''Loaves and Fishes", "Second Helpings" and "Manna from Heaven") chronicle Haviland Tuf's encounters with the people of the planet S'uthlam. Their religion has the doctrine that all life is sacred and that humans should, therefore, breed as much as possible.[[note]]And part of that is the belief that every child they have could potentially be the next great genius, and it's their duty to help bring that about.[[/note]] As a result, their planet is dangerously overpopulated. The government repeatedly tries to seize Tuf's LostTechnology bio-warship to use in conquering other planets and relieving population pressure, he tries to appease them by providing new food sources [[spoiler:and the third and last time he adds a SterilityPlague to the new crops.]]

* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' prequel series ''Dawn of the Clans'', the series starts with the Tribe of Rushing Water suffering from overpopulation: the Tribe has grown too big to survive on the amount of prey that their environment can provide, and cats are starving to death. Their leader has a vision of new lands teeming with prey, and half the Tribe leaves, eventually becoming the forest Clans, while the other half remains in their mountain home and is able to support themselves better with fewer mouths to feed.
* The setting for ''Literature/TheWhiteMen'', is a dystopian future version of Denmark, which underwent such a crisis and transformed into a fascist state where the StateSec, the titular "White Men", kills off anyone who they deem unfit to live, which includes the handicapped and chronically-ill, people who commit any sort of crime, [[AllCrimesAreEqual even minor ones]], anyone who reaches the age of 65, and even students who fail to pass their exams with a high enough grade. Throughout the story, it becomes evident that even if these draconian and inhumane policies were at some point necessary to solve the crisis, that is definitely not the case anymore, as the country currently teeters on the edge on of a serious ''under''population crisis, and it is obvious that the fascist government only still upholds them as a means of controlling the leftover population through the fear they instil in them.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote "The Winnowing", where six billion people on the planet has led to widespread famine. While that prediction has shown to be wrong in RealLife, at the time of its writing, it was definitely an example of this trope. Subverted in the same story, since the World Food Organization seems to have the resources on hand to provide adequate food to the world but would rather just kill off the poorest areas (and have coerced a scientist into helping them).
* This was the main theme in many of William R. Catton's writings, including his books ''Literature/{{Overshoot}}'' (1980) and ''Literature/{{Bottleneck}}'' (2009).

* Overpopulation is one of the factors that jumpstarts the plot in ''Series/TerraNova'' (the other one being extreme pollution) - the plot being "send some humans through a wormhole to an alternate Earth resembling the Cretaceous Period."
* The premise of ''Series/TorchwoodMiracleDay'' is that [[DeathTakesAHoliday people have stopped dying]]. Governments do the math and realise that the world population level is going to rise to unsustainable levels within a few years.

* ''Music/PinkFloyd'''s early single [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXsCvlQ37jo "Point Me at the Sky"]] suggests this scenario [[FailedFutureForecast for 2005]].

[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': One infamous Sunday strip had Calvin deliver a report on overpopulation where a pair of deer shoot an office worker to help curb the population and prevent famine, in a ghoulish inversion of a common (and accurate) justification for deer hunting. Unsurprisingly, this results in yet another note from school being sent to Calvins parents.
[[/folder]]

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''
** Of the Imperium of Man's many, many problems, this is surprisingly [[AvertedTrope not one of them]]. Yes, many worlds house billions of people in [[{{Arcology}} Hive cities]], but this is actually encouraged. Most of the [[EasyLogistics logistics and spacing problems]] are handwaved (e.g. many worlds resort to [[SoylentGreen recycling the dead into edible material]]), but it recognizes keeping people suppressed, indoctrinated, and packed like sardines is a very efficient way to manage very large populations. It's something of a joke that the Imperium is short on everything but people, and [[WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture human labor]], press-ganged or volunteered, is a major driver of the Imperium's military and industrial forces.
** Later Edition show that many Hives are supported by other worlds in their system. This is actually played straight on Earth, where the population is so massive that there simply isn't enough food or jobs to go around.

* The Ark in ''Videogame/{{Brink}}'' is a CityOnTheWater which was originally designed to host a population of 5000, but an influx of refugees due to global warming caused its population to swell to 45000. As a result, many of these refugees were forced to live in poorly designed and shoddily constructed shantytowns, and many feel resentment toward The Founders, Ark's original inhabitants who live in safety and luxury.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} V'' every city has an assigned number representing its population. Densely populated cities will produce more research and are able to work more tiles and specialist spots. They also produce more unhappiness which, if left to fester will severely decrease your nations growth and golden age frequency. If your citizens are unhappy enough, civil wars might break out.

* Inverted in ''VideoGame/{{Pharaoh}}'', and ''VideoGame/EmperorRiseOfTheMiddleKingdom'' where underpopulation is a much bigger problem: due to the game mechanics, huge populations are easier to maintain by keeping the population happy in attractive, high-density housing rather than vast slums (the basic hut holds 5-20 people, the best high-density housing holds 80). Yes, the people consume more, but the higher population means more people to produce goods at a ''much'' faster rate than consumed.
* ''VideoGame/EternalEvil'' have the BadEnding depicting humanity's population, as warned by the Vampire Lord, eventually going out of control to beyond 14 billion, and mankind's damage to the environment beyond repair. It leads to a ''massive'' power struggle and depopulation, with 43 million people surviving in the aftermath of the '''[[DistantFinale 2104 war]]'''. You're a human-turned-immortal vampire at this point and you get to witness the downfall of humanity, as predicted.
* [[BigBad Lysandre]] in ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' is a MadScientist, EcoTerrorist, and MisanthropeSupreme who seeks to prevent fighting over resources with a FinalSolution using the Ultimate Weapon to kill everyone but Team Flare.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'': Population can cause no shortage of problems if not handled.
** As the population working your Empire's jobs increases, the demand for consumer goods and amenities increase. Both are produced by specific jobs which means you need to set aside a subset of your population and economy to keep the rest of the population happy as failing to do this will lower the planet's stability, which lowers production on top of the risk that the unhappy population will turn to crime to get what they want.
** Overcrowding (as in, too many people, not enough housing) will eventually also erode the stability of the planet, but unless your entire GalacticSuperpower is bursting to the brim, the people will generally just move to greener, more spacious pastures. Of course, no one says you have to give the people what they want - if you want to maintain the planet's stability through force, that's perfectly doable
** Overcrowding is, however, dwarfed by the damage that having too ''few'' jobs for a population can present. People without a home generally tend to make do with what they can, but if they don't have a job, they will near invariably turn to a life of crime to keep themselves fed. The game warns you when there's a substantial risk of this and prompts you to give special benefits to the unemployed (Increasing the strain on your ressources) or risk the increased crime (reducing the output of the planet). You can avoid this completely by enacting a policy of civil welfare - which increases population happiness as well as preventing the unemployment crime, but welfare does not come cheap either.

* The fear of this -- and the damage it could to the planet -- is the primary motivation of [[EcoTerrorist Malthus]], co-leader of the Light Demons, in ''Webcomic/WhiteDarkLife''. As such, he seeks to kill most of the planet's population to ease the strain on the environment.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' episode "Flea-Bitten Ed", the Eds agree to clean up Rolf's farm animals. Ed suffers a severe allergic reaction to the rabbits and loses track of two rabbits, who start multiplying through rapid reproduction and overwhelm the Cul-de-sac in the end. The Eds got out lucky by managing to escape to the roof (''with'' a [=TV=] and couch) and the episode ends with Eddy screaming at the other kids suffocating from the rabbit flood to [[ItsAllAboutMe shut up so he can watch TV]].

* The ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Goobacks" depicts the world in 3045 as suffering from overpopulation to the point that people are time-travelling back to the present day to find jobs and a better life.

* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': Part of the reason the setting is so crime-ridden is that most of the planet was rendered uninhabitable by nuclear war, forcing people to live in the megacities. The only alternative consists of trying to live in the Cursed Earth, the radioactive DeathWorld outside, which is basically suicide (though some hardier people and mutants manage to survive out there). Exacerbating the problem is the equally high population of {{Job Stealing Robot}}s, which keeps unemployment rates soaring.

* In ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'', it's revealed that overpopulation and the subsequent abuse of natural resources led to the destruction of Titan and the death of all its people... except for [[BigBad Thanos]]. His desire to [[WellIntentionedExtremist save the rest of the universe from suffering the same fate as Titan]] has motivated his actions in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse ever since, and in ''Infinity War'' his plan is to finally gather all the Infinity Stones and use their combined power to simultaneously wipe out half the universe's population. [[spoiler:[[TheBadGuyWins He ultimately succeeds.]]]]

** ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' shows that [[spoiler: it backfired hard. Five years after the Snap, instead of teeming with life, from the brief shots we see of New York and San Francisco, indicate that the Earth left behind has stagnated at best, and is rotting at worst (and the space-based Avengers (Captain Marvel, Rocket Racoon, Nebula), state that the rest of the universe is no better, if not worse, off) - and that's on top of the wave of terror Thanos unleashed on his way to claim the Stones. Whales are returning to the Hudson River, and depopulated areas have been claimed by nature, [[DeconstructedTrope but these small improvements pale in comparison to crumbling societies and despairing and barely-functional populations across the universe]]]].
** ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'': This is what the botched memory erasure spell threatens to inflict on the MCU. Since Peter's last-second alterations caused the spell to end up being [[ExactWords "everyone who already knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man should still remember"]], this ends up attracting ''literally everyone'' who knows from the infinite number of timelines in the multiverse towards the MCU.
* In ''Film/ConquestOfSpace'' this is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7ln7odMiA given as a reason]] for the mission to Mars: to get its resources to prevent an overpopulation crisis on Earth. It depends on ArtisticLicenseAstronomy since in reality, Mars is a cold and barren rock, whereas the Mars in the film has soil that a seed from Earth can sprout in.

* In ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'', Emma Russell, the human who frees King Ghidorah, believes that the Earth is overpopulated with humans leading to depletion of resources and pollution, and feels that releasing the monsters will help restore the earth to its natural green state. Of course none of the protagonists support her eco-radical theory about releasing the monsters to restore balance to the ecosystem and environment, as King Ghidorah is even more destructive than the humans.
* The BigBadEnsemble of Creator/SachaBaronCohen[='s=] ''Film/{{Grimsby}}'' justify their plans to create a virus that is fatal to humans in order to curb overpopulation. They also believe the virus can kill off the "stupid" people who are a waste of space as all they ever do is eat and reproduce.

* An overpopulation-induced resource crunch is stated in the introduction of ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' to have prompted the settlement of the star cluster the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' franchise takes place in, and led to Earth becoming EarthThatWas.
* A central theme in ''Film/SoylentGreen''. Earth is so overpopulated that the only way to feed the people (other than the wealthy who can afford normal food) is through a product called Soylent Red and Yellow, which is made from processed plankton, and even that is in short supply. A new product called Soylent Green comes at the market and in the film's climax it turns out that [[spoiler: the oceans are dead, have been for some time and Soylent Green is made of people!]]
* ''Film/{{ZPG}}'' (Zero Population Growth) features a world so overcrowded that having babies is banned for thirty years on pain of death. Its plot involves a couple having a baby in secret and having to flee.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' episode "Flea-Bitten Ed", the Eds agree to clean up Rolf's farm animals but as while Ed is having a severe allergic reaction, he loses track of two bunnies who start multiplying through rapid reproduction and they overwhelm the Cul-de-sac in the end. The Eds got out lucky by managing to escape to the roof (''with'' a [=TV=] and couch) and the episode ends with Eddy screaming at the other kids suffocating from the rabbit flood to [[ItsAllAboutMe shut up so he can watch TV]].

* In Daniel Quinn's ''Ishmael'', the title character (an intelligent ape) says that world population will increase as long as food production increases. A crisis like this will inevitably happen unless food production is cut down to a more natural scale, even though it means [[HardTruthAesop people in poorer areas will starve]].

* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote "The Winnowing", which has six billion people on the planet, and famines are thus widespread. While that prediction has shown to be wrong in RealLife, at the time of its writing, it was definitely an example of this trope.

* The idea of the entire Earth becoming overpopulated has been largely discredited. ''Localized'' overpopulation has still been a common concern; Many cities are struggling under the increased traffic that increased population brings because the original city was built in such a way that roads that formerly allowed for horse-drawn carts now need to support the eighteen-wheeler trucks and the vast numbers of cars needed to support the population. Add in a need to dig up roads to perform sewer/cable/pipeline maintenance and you have the city equivalent of ''growing pains''.

* The idea of the entire Earth becoming overpopulated has been not largely discredited. Worth reading is the Limits to Growth report by the Club of Rome: https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/ ''Localized'' overpopulation has still been a common concern. Many cities are struggling under the increased traffic that increased population brings because the original city was built in such a way that roads that formerly allowed for horse-drawn carts now need to support the eighteen-wheeler trucks and the vast numbers of cars needed to support the population. Add in a need to dig up roads to perform sewer/cable/pipeline maintenance and you have the city equivalent of ''growing pains''.

* Although the idea of the entire Earth becoming overpopulated has been largely discredited, ''localized'' overpopulation has still been a common concern. Many cities are struggling under the increased traffic that increased population brings because the original city was built in such a way that roads that formerly allowed for horse-drawn carts now need to support the eighteen-wheeler trucks and the vast numbers of cars needed to support the population. Add in a need to dig up roads to perform sewer/cable/pipeline maintenance and you have the city equivalent of ''growing pains''.

--->'''Shepard:''' Why was your race going extinct?
--->'''Thane:''' Overpopulation. That must sound trite to you. Humans developed [[FasterThanLightTravel mass effect drive]] before the problem became acute. Our homeworld, Rakhana, had few resources. We hadn't even developed fusion power when the soil began to fail from overuse and pollution. The hanar found us a century ago. They send hundreds of ships. Evacuated thousands of us. Billions more had to be left behind.
--->'''Shepard:''' What's the state of Rakhana now?
--->'''Thane:''' Do you read your philosophers? A man named Thomas Hobbes? ''"When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death."'' As Rakhana died around them my people slaughtered each other for mouthfuls of water. Crumbs of food.

* In ''Literature/TheVazulaChronicles'', the [[UnderwaterCity triple kingdoms]] are becoming increasingly overcrowded, and Tilssted is starting to encroach into the kelp farms to the north, even though much of the merpeople's technology depends on kelp leaves. Merletta wonders if dry land holds knowledge or resources that could help with the crisis.

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* {{Hell}} itself is suffering from overpopulation in ''WebAnimation/HazbinHotel''. The current solution to the problem is an annual "cleanse" where angels from Heaven massacre as many demons as they can in a set amount of time. Charlie, the Princess of Hell, wants to create a humane alternative to the problem by opening a hotel to [[AscendedDemon rehabilitate sinners so their redeemed souls can go to Heaven]].
[[/folder]]

* In Fred Hoyle's ''October the First Is Too Late'', a time-traveller from the future explains that civilisations have risen and collapsed half a dozen times since the present day; each time, the civilisation was brought down by overpopulation leading to war.

* This was the main theme in many of William R. Catton's writings, including his books ''Overshoot'' (1980) and ''Bottleneck'' (2009).

* Three of Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/TufVoyaging'' stories (''Loaves and Fishes", "Second Helpings" and "Manna from Heaven") chronicle Haviland Tuf's encounters with the people of the planet S'uthlam. Their religion has the doctrine that all life is sacred and that humans should, therefore, breed as much as possible. As a result, their planet is dangerously overpopulated. The government repeatedly tries to seize Tuf's LostTechnology bio-warship to use in conquering other planets and relieving population pressure, he tries to appease them by providing new food sources [[spoiler:and the third and last time he adds a SterilityPlague to the new crops.]]

* The idea of the entire Earth becoming overpopulated has NOT been largely discredited. ''Localized'' overpopulation is a common concern. Many cities are struggling under the increased traffic that increased population brings because the original city was built in such a way that roads that formerly allowed for horse-drawn carts now need to support the eighteen-wheeler trucks and the vast numbers of cars needed to support the population. Add in a need to dig up roads to perform sewer/cable/pipeline maintenance and you have the city equivalent of ''growing pains''.

* In "Billennium" by J. G. Ballard, the world population is over 20 billion, most of the planet is used for agriculture, roads are permanently filled with crowds of pedestrians so that people have to weave through a MobstacleCourse every time they want to cross the street, and each person is limited to four square metres of living space, with plans to reduce the allocation even further.

* In Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'' books, Earth is so crowded that picking pockets isn't illegal — how could it be enforced?
* ''Literature/MakeRoomMakeRoom'' by Creator/HarryHarrison is set on an overcrowded future Earth. American ports are swamped by shiploads of starving Asian refugees; a wealthy man's mistress is allowed to pour the juices from his steak on her oatmeal as a special treat. Set in 1999 when the world population is an unmanageable 7 billion.
* Creator/CyrilMKornbluth's ''The Marching Morons'': Barlow, a real-estate salesman and conman from 1988 (the story itself was written in 1951) is awoken from accidental suspended animation centuries into the future, and discovers an overpopulated world of 5 billion "morons", where the average IQ is 45. A small population (3 million) of intellectuals are forced to work around the clock to keep society from collapsing, while also trying desperately to keep the "morons" from having enormous families, which is essentially impossible, as every basic human drive is based around procreation. Barlow, using his experiences in selling worthless properties to suckers, ends up proposing a FinalSolution by tricking the majority of humanity into killing themselves through a phony planetary colonization scheme, but doesn't realize until it's too late that instead of rewarding him, the elite intends to send him to his death right alongside his victims, since they blame him for the dismal future as a representative of the past.

* In ''Literature/StandOnZanzibar'' by Creator/JohnBrunner the world is so overcrowded that people with minor birth defects can't get permits to breed.

* In ''Literature/TheStarchildTrilogy'' by Creator/FrederikPohl and Creator/JackWilliamson, the population of Earth has reached the thirteen billion mark, and the only thing which has prevented chaos and a massive die-off is the dictatorial control of the powerful computer known as "The Plan of Man".
* In ''Literature/TheThreeStigmataOfPalmerEldritch'' by Creator/PhilipKDick, all the planets of the solar system have been colonized, but Earth is still so overpopulated that the government has had to institute a draft to get people moving to the colonies fast enough. Life on the colonies isn't terrible, but it's harsh enough that volunteers don't begin to keep up with Earth's needs. Deferments are available for those with sufficiently important jobs, but this just adds an extra fear to the fear of losing your job.

* The setting for ''Literature/TheWhiteMen'', is a dystopian future version of Denmark, which underwent such a crisis and transformed into a fascist state where the StateSec, the titular "White Men", kills off anyone who they deem unfit to live, which includes the handicapped and chronically-ill, people who commit any sort of crime, [[AllCrimesAreEqual even minor ones]], anyone who reaches the age of 65, and even students who fail to pass their exams with a high enough grade. Throughout the story, it becomes evident that even if these draconian and inhumane policies were at some point necessary to solve the crisis, that is definitely not the case any more, as the country currently teeters on the edge on of a serious ''under''population crisis, and it is obvious that the fascist government only still upholds them as a means of controlling the leftover population through the fear they instil in them.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote ''The Winnowing'' which has six billion people on the planet, and famines are thus widespread. While that prediction has shown to be wrong in RealLife, at the time of its writing it was definitely an example of this trope.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* The fear of this — and the damage it could to the planet — is the primary motivation of [[EcoTerrorist Malthus]], co-leader of the Light Demons, in ''Webcomic/WhiteDarkLife''. As such, he seeks to kill most of the planet's population to ease the strain on the environment.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", a wildlife preserve of penguins on Pluto gets covered in [[OurDarkMatterIsMysterious liquid dark matter]] that drastically increases their egg production ([[EggLayingMale and the males started laying eggs]], too), leading to them overpopulating and an AnimalWrongsGroup deciding to give them a MercyKill to save them from a slower, more excruciating death when they exhaust their food supply.

The Earth-centric version of this trope is largely [[TropeBreaker broken]] in contemporary and TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture stories due to [[TechnologyMarchesOn technological]] and societal advancements in our real world: for example, if anything our industrialized farming and agricultural technologies lead us to ''over''-produce food, and problems with starvation are more about political and economic questions of distribution (aka "who is permitted access to the food?") rather than "we do not have enough to feed everyone". Many nations have also started to project a population ''decline'' (and all the problems ''that'' brings) due to undergoing a demographic transition. However, this hasn't stopped people from using the idea of overpopulation as a bad faith argument for their own agendas (such as anti-immigration).

* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': Part of the reason the setting is so crime-ridden is that most of the planet was rendered uninhabitable by nuclear war, forcing people to live in the megacities. Exacerbating the problem is the equally high population of {{Job Stealing Robot}}s, which keeps unemployment rates soaring.

* In ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'', it's revealed that overpopulation and the subsequent abuse of natural resources led to the destruction of Titan and the death of all its people... except for [[BigBad Thanos]]. His desire to [[WellIntentionedExtremist save the rest of the universe from suffering the same fate as Titan]] has motivated his actions in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse ever since, and in ''Infinity War'' his plan is to finally gather all the Infinity Stones and use their combined power to simultaneously wipe out half the universe's population. [[spoiler:[[TheBadGuyWins He ultimately succeeds.]]]] However, when on Titan, Star-Lord notes that something seems off about the planet's axial tilt, which could have been responsible for the actual devastation.

** In "Manifest Destiny", Earth is severely overpopulated and other planets are being terraformed and colonized as a result.
** In "Stasis", Earth's severe overpopulation results in its resources being significantly depleted.

* In "The Mark of Gideon", an {{Anvilicious}} episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', the crew visit a planet which is so overpopulated that even the president's office has a crowd of people milling around in the background. The people of the planet believe "all life is sacred" and reject birth control. They also have medicine so advanced that people never get sick and live to a very old age.

-->-- '''ComicBook/{{Thanos}}''', ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar''

* The premise of ''Series/TorchwoodMiracleDay'' is that people have stopped dying. Governments do the math and realise that the world population level is going to rise to unsustainable levels within a few years.