History Main / TheArk

* ''[[Literature/DirkPittAdventures Arctic Drift]]'' has the villains using custom built superships to survive the apocalypse they are causing to TakeOverTheWorld for their MasterRace. The ships are CrazyPrepared, including massive machinery, farm animals and seeds of all kinds, various cultural artifacts, ect.

* Probably one of [[OlderThanDirt the oldest tropes in existence]], since it was referenced in ''Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh''. In the story, Gilgamesh seeks out Utnapishtim, the man who survived the Great Flood by hiding inside a boat.

* In ''VideoGame/SacredGuns'', Mark Leung is an archangel that must defend Noah's ark from the unworthy creatures.
* The Yamato Ark in ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' brought the gods to earth after Yami sacked heaven. (Unfortunately, Yami came along...)
* Ishra's Ark, a large airship of indeterminate origin, serves as one of the most memorable levels of ''VideoGame/{{Klonoa}} 2: Lunatea's Veil.''
* The ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' universe contains a Forerunner megastructure (no points for guessing what its name is) located outside the Milky Way Galaxy, approximately 262,144 lightyears from the galactic center, well out of range of the titular Halo superweapons. It was created to act as a refuge for the Forerunners and the various species they were able to catalogue, so that they could be repopulated on their worlds after the Halos fired and wiped out all life. The ark can also remotely activate the Halo array which is how the Forerunner-Flood war ended.
** It was revealed in the ''Literature/TheForerunnerSaga'' that the ark we know of is actually the Lesser Ark. The original known as the Greater Ark was much larger and was where the forerunners made their last stand against the Flood before it was destroyed. A few managed to survive and sneak their way to the Lesser Ark where they then activated the rings and ended the war.
** ''Halo'' also has the [[http://www.halopedia.org/Shield_world Shield Worlds]]. Hollow mini-Dyson spheres created as a less destructive alternative to the Halos, this includes an immunity to the effect of the Halos. 343 Guilty Spark originally hypothesized that the Ark would be in one but was proven wrong.
** The human [[MileLongShip dreadnought]] ''Infinity'', largest and most advanced starship humanity ever constructed, was originally conceived as an ark that would carry the last remnants of humanity in the event that the war against the Covenant was lost and Earth was burned by the invaders. After the Human-Covenant War instead ended in humanity's survival, the ''Infinity'' was repurposed as a hybrid science-exploration vessel and ([[TheBattlestar very powerful]]) warship.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has both the Exodar and the Oshu'gun.
* The [[SpaceStation Space Colony ARK]] from a handful of ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' titles is apparently a [[GenerationShip long-term habitable structure]], but has remained inactive for the majority of the time we see it, staying in orbit over the planet.
* The planet Ilos in ''Franchise/MassEffect''. [[SubvertedTrope Unfortunately]], the Reaper harvest took much longer than their power supply could keep the Protheans on Ilos in stasis for, and it instead became a [[AncientTomb massive tomb]] for all but a handful.
** Likewise, the ''From The Ashes'' day-one [[DownloadableContent DLC]] for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' reveals Eden Prime to be an ark world, similar to Ilos from the first game. It fares hardly any better but does at least contain ''one'' LastOfHisKind survivor.
** In ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'', [[spoiler: the ''Nexus'' and five other {{Sleeper Starship}}s are designed to get 100,000 colonists to the Andromeda Galaxy in a trip that lasts [[TimeSkip 700 years]]. It later turns out that the mysterious benefactor's goal is to create a ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts situation, in case of the Reaper invasion, which does indeed happen mere months after the Arks' departure. Besides the ''Nexus'', the first wave of the Arks is species-specific to make it easier for life support: ''Hyperion'' (human), ''Leusinia'' (asari), ''Natanus'' (turian), and ''Paarchero'' (salarian). There's also a clan of genophage-resistant krogan aboard the ''Nexus'', who are largely responsible for the actual construction of the ships. The only second wave Ark, ''Keelah Si'yah'', is largely quarian, but also has room for drell, hanar, elcor and volus settlers. The reason the ''Keelah Si'yah'' is part of the second wave is because the diversity of its passengers requires additional modifications to life support.]]
*** [[spoiler: Halfway through the game, it's possible to discover that the kett themselves use Ark ships to get around the vast distances of Andromeda, or at least the parts they don't control. Ryder and squadmate Liam are unnerved by the revelation.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' revolves around one, known as The Mothership.
* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' has Cocoons, [[spoiler: in which the Angels stowed away Tokyo's young to be taken to the Millennial Kingdom they were building to be raised away from the "filth" of the rest of humanity. The Cocoons play different roles in all three parallel universes visited: in Blasted Tokyo, the Cocoons descend upon the death of the Ancient of Days, starting Genesis. In Infernal Tokyo, the Cocoons were destroyed by the still human Kenji and his men with a nuclear catastrophe being averted, but they took too long in cracking them open, resulting in the death of all the infants within. In the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, they succeeded in their mission and left. A new one arrives when the prentices are sent after Yuriko to serve as the Archangels' new Mikado Castle at Shene Duque.]]
* ''VideoGame/Rage2011'''s Arks, similar to the Vaults in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series, were built to protect a small number of humans from the destruction brought on by the asteroid impact, opening after a hundred years underground.
* ''VideoGame/RainbowSix'''s Ark is a complex of biodomes where John Brightling and his eco-terrorist lackeys plan to take shelter after unleashing their SyntheticPlague DepopulationBomb on the world.

* The premise of ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'' is that the player controls one of several factions' ark ships intended to colonize a new planet after Earth was wrecked by an unspecified ecological disaster. In fact, multiple exoplanets are being seeded by humanity in an attempt to improve its chances of survival.
* Ditto in the original ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', where the UNS ''Unity'' is sent out to settle a planet in the titular system not long before the start of a nuclear war.
* Humans attempted to do this in ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' with the Ark Polaris, a spacecraft whose wreckage serves as one of the Salmon Run stages in ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'', with ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' going on to detail how this happened. [[spoiler:In addition to humans, the ark was loaded with several animal species placed in cold sleep. While the ship was able to successfully launch during the final days of humanity, it was damaged on its way out of the solar system, and so the crew attempted to make a return trip back to Earth. It lacked the necessary fuel to land, however, so it simply remained in Earth's orbit for 10,000 years until ultimately crash-landing and killing all of its inhabitants sans Bear #03, who is better known to the player as Mr. Grizz.]]
* The Lemmings in ''[[VideoGame/{{Lemmings}} Lemmings Chronicles]]'' use a [[CoolAirship flying ark]] to flee their doomed homeland.
* The colony ships in ''VideoGame/PandoraFirstContact'' are not initially launched with this purpose in mind, but, by the time they arrive to Gamma Capricorni (where the titular planet is located), Earth is evacuated and isolated by [=AIs=] and some sort of tectonic activity is detected on its surface.
* The ''Odessa''-class seedships in ''VideoGame/AlienLegacy'' are a last-ditch effort by humanity to preserve some part of itself away from the threat represented by the Centaurians, which are close to wiping out Earth. After the final and greatest offensive against the aliens fails (with the fleet destroyed), the nations of the world opt to invest all the remaining resources into defenses. Knowing that a purely defensive strategy is doomed to fail, they also finance the construction of massive SleeperStarships set to fly to any system that has a shot of possessing a habitable planet. Each seedship is sent out with no knowledge of its sister ships' destinations and with instructions to survive at any cost while maintaining strict radio-silence, assuming that they are the last remains of humanity. By the time the UNS ''Calypso'' arrives to the Beta Caeli system (which is assumed to take centuries, if not millennia), the last remaining message sent out from Earth is extremely old and garbled. Additionally, the crew of the ''Calypso'' finds out that another seedship was sent out to the same star a few decades later but, due to a more efficient reactor, it [[LightspeedLeapfrog arrived first]] by 20 or so years.
* The Protoss from ''VideoGame/StarCraft'', at the zenith of their civilization, built three great arkships in case the Protoss ever faced extinction. The ships contain a miniature sun to power it and nourish Protoss, a Protoss Preserver to keep their history from being lost, on-board factories, an army of Templar in stasis -- just about everything necessary to rebuild the Protoss civilization. In ''Videogame/StarcraftIILegacyOfTheVoid'', the situation has become dire enough [[spoiler:with Amon using the Khala to enslave nearly ''the entire Protoss race'']] that the remaining Protoss activate the last of the arkships, the ''Spear of Adun''. The ship serves them well throughout the campaign as their mobile headquarters, granting them a fighting chance.
* The goal of the [[spoiler: Zero Dawn project]] in ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn''. [[spoiler: With the end of humanity imminent, Dr. Elizabeth Sobek gathered the best scientists and historians around her to construct Gaia, an immense artificial intelligence that could terraform and repopulate the earth AfterTheEnd. Unlike most Arcs, Gaia was meant to not only outlive the apocalypse, but halt it, and start anew. For this purpose, she was given sub functions that could take on one challenge each; Apollo, Aether, Hades, Hephaestus, Artemis, Poseidon, Eleuthia, Demeter and Minerva. Apollo fit the role of Arc best, as it was the AI responsible for the combined repository of human knowledge. Unfortunately, Ted Faro destroyed it, convinced that Eleuthia's new humans would be better without the history.]]

* In ''VideoGame/SurvivingMars'', [[spoiler:failing the Wildfire or The Last War Mysteries results in human civilisation on Earth being destroyed by a viral plague or a nuclear war, leaving your Martian colony the last vestiges of humanity.]]
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'': The people of Earth are caught in the crossfire between two warring alien races, which leaves them no choice but to escape the conflict and [[EarthShatteringKaboom the planet's ensuing destruction]] aboard large interplanetary vessels called "Arks", [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L8OZswWXkw each intended to colonize a new planet.]] One such Ark, the White Whale, is shot down above the planet Mira, whereupon its crashed residential unit forms the game's main city, New Los Angeles.
* The ''Endwalker'' story in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has the world [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt facing the Final Days]] and there's nothing anyone can do to stall it or push it back. [[spoiler: The Sharlayan colony were given advanced notice by Hydaelyn of the upcoming doom, which prompted them to construct the ''Ragnarok'' space ship so that they could transport fauna, animals, food, knowledge, and the people of the world to the moon and use said moon's technology (maintained by a race of moon rabbits) to fly through space and find a new planet to live on. The Sharlayans kept their plans extremely tight lipped until the time was right because they feared revealing the truth too soon would cause a mass panic. The intervention of the [[PlayerCharacter Warrior of Light]] and the Scions helped nip the plan in the bud when they defeat [[BigBad Meteion]] and prevent the Final Days from occurring.]]
* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'', [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 Melia]] and [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2 Nia]] collaborated to construct Origin (the Ark allegory) as a means of protecting the knowledge, culture, and souls of the inhabitants of their respective worlds from being destroyed in the process of their imminent merging back into the original world that Klaus had originally sundered with the Conduit]]. It's no coincidence that one of the main protagonists of the story is named 'Noah', though [[spoiler:he isn't the one building the Ark; rather, he is one of the souls from Melia's world who has been preserved within it for countless years, just like everyone else in the Kevesi colonies, and likewise for those from the Agnus colonies being from Nia's world of Alrest. His task would ultimately be to overthrow the rogue AI that had hijacked Origin and split Aionios back into two worlds]].
* In the backstory of the gacha game ''VideoGame/{{Eversoul}}'', a female scientist named [[Myth/{{Faust}} Dr. Faust]] foresaw the end of the world as mankind kept using their newly-obtained powers and control over the titular Souls to wage war against each other. She had nine arks built in case a cataclysm happens, which did happen with the summoning of a Soul that couldn't be controlled by even the most powerful humans: the [[RedBaron Soul of the End]], Apollyon, prompting humanity to flee to the stars. One such ark was the "{{Metatron}}", piloted by an artificial Soul and AI named {{Mephistopheles}}. Said ark can be seen in-game as something Mephistopheles uses both during the main story and in gameplay, used in her Ultimate Skill [[WaveMotionGun "Spear of the Ark"]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Ixion}}'' the Tiqqun ends up becoming this by accident. After accidentally traveling forward in time and surviving the destruction of Earth the crew start collecting [[HumanPopsicle cryopods]] from the wreackage of various ships and bases in order to build up thier population and eventually establish a new colony in anothe system. One mission requiring you to defrost a certain number of cryo pods is actually called "The Ark of Humanity".
** The Etemenaki also qualified being a giant ship constructed by the UN to transport the suvivors of Earth. Unlike the Tiqqun they were unseuccessful and the Tiqqun ends up rescuing the cryogenically frozen survivors folling it's destruction.

* WesternAnimation/YogiBear and his pals manned a flying version in ''WesternAnimation/YogisArkLark'', the PilotMovie for ''WesternAnimation/YogisGang'', a cartoon that premiered on Creator/{{ABC}} in 1972 and led into UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation.
* The Autobots in ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' traditionally come to Earth in a ship called the Ark, usually relating to how the planet becomes their second home for some time for one reason or another.
** The ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' equivalent was the Maximal ship ''Axalon'', which carried a number of Maximal protoforms in stasis, with the intent of having them adapt to the new worlds Optimus Primal's crew would explore. [[spoiler: The Ark would play a significant role in the series as well]].
** The ''Nemesis'' in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' fits this trope for the Decepticons.
* Shows up in a [[JustForFun/RecycledInSpace space]] variant in ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'', with the alien who has a ship that's a refuge for animals extinct in their homelands. It's referred to as 'The Ark' at times.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'': In "Blue Eyes Returns", the Smurfs build arks for themselves and their animal friends when Gargamel uses magic beans to create a flood that covers the entire Smurf Forest.

* WesternAnimation/TheHairBearBunch convince zookeeper Peevly to have an ark built so a re-creation of the story of Noah can be staged (episode "Ark Lark"). The bears actually use it to escape from the zoo with all the other animals.

* In ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse'', Ford and Arthur visit such a ship, one of three sent out from a doomed planet to colonize someplace else (which turns out, naturally, to be Earth). Subverted in that the ship turns out to be just a ruse to rid the original planet of the third of its population considered most useless (namely, middlemen). The narration then proceeds to mention that their homeworld shortly after was [[DeathByIrony wiped out by a global pandemic that could have been prevented by said middlemen.]]
* In ''Literature/{{Flood}}'', great ships (of the floating and spaceborne variety) are built to escape the global flood. They are, of course, called "Arks".
* The spaceship in the books composing the ''Literature/DeepWaterBlack'' trilogy turns out to contain the genetic structure of pretty much every animal on Earth, at which point the characters point out themselves they're on an ark. Then it turns out there were actually two arks -- the other one contains all of humanity's genes.
* In the YA novel ''Devil on My Back'' by Monica Hughes, the hero's DomedHometown is called Arc One, generally assumed to be due to the curve of its roof, but the hero eventually discovers that it was originally ''Ark'' One, built so that the population could survive TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
* Timothy Findley takes a rather cynical view of the Ark in ''Not Wanted On The Voyage'', with Dr. Noah Noyes as a despot tyrannizing his family during the Flood. The story muses on a despondent Yahweh, on the long-suffering Mrs. Noyes, on the lady devil Lucy who marries one of Noah's sons, on the innocence of the animals, and the general follies of being human amid the affairs of the gods.

* A variation in the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers' novel ''Literature/SpaceMowgli'' has a planet which the humans call Ark. The humans plan to relocate there a primitive race from a dying world. However, in order to preserve the delicate balance of the race's ecosystem, they find a habitable world with no native lifeforms, not even bacteria, so that the entire biosphere can be recreated there. Then things get weird, when the humans find out that Ark is home to strange and powerful beings who don't want humans there.
%%* ''Literature/TheLastDragonChronicles'': In ''Fire World'', [[spoiler:the Librarium becomes one during the flood, complete with animals and plants.]]
* ArticDrift has the villains using custom built superships to survive the apocalypse they are causing to TakeOverTheWorld for their MasterRace. The ships are CrazyPrepared, including massive machinery, farm animals and seeds of all kinds, various cultural artifacts, ect.
* On the Literature/{{Discworld}}, there's an UrbanLegend about the founding of Ankh-Morpork that tells how a wise man foretold a Great Flood, gathered his family and hundreds of animals into a big ship, and rode it out. After a few weeks' sailing, the accumulated wastes from all the animals were filling up the vessel, so they tipped all the manure over the side, and built a city on the resulting dung-island.

* A unique take on the theme is Francis Carsac's ''Literature/TerreEnFuite'' (''Fleeing Earth''). When the Second Civilization (the one to come after ours is destroyed by another Ice Age) discovers that the Sun is about to go nova, they turn Earth into a PlanetSpaceship. Instead of evacuating the terraformed and colonized Venus, they decide that it's easier to turn it into another PlanetSpaceship. Massive underground shelters are constructed to hold people (it helps that the majority of people already live in [[{{Arcology}} arcologies]]), water, and air, as well as whatever plant and animal species they can save. Massive "space magnet" engines are constructed at planetary poles (except for Earth's North Pole, which lacks land, which is substituted with a dozen smaller ones along the Arctic Circle) to move the planets. Initially, the plan is to move the two planets into the Outer Solar System to wait out the nova. However, later studies reveal that, afterwards, the Sun will turn into a black dwarf incapable of sustaining life, necessitating the full use of the trope.
** As a side note, the Moon stays with Earth without any engines, since it's still gravitationally tied to it.
* ''Literature/TheLastDaysOfKrypton:'' Jor-El gives No-Ton and the other councilors who believe his warnings about a cataclysm plans for a space ark. Despite their best efforts, building a fleet of evacuation ships from scratch in just three days is impossible, so they focus all of their efforts on finishing just one ship in the last seven hours. [[spoiler:They don't finish it in time.]]

* In Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/TufVoyaging'' the ''Ark'' is the last remaining seedship built by the ancient Terran Ecological Engineers Corps. It's 30 km long, filled with the cells of lifeforms from countless worlds and has cloning vats with time acceleration fields that can grow cloned animals to maturity in mere weeks. Its' present owner uses it to save planets from ecological disasters, about half the time. But it was originally built for [[HostileTerraforming ecological warfare]].

* Music/PeterSchilling's "The Noah Plan" implies such a vessel was created for the purpose of evacuating Earth when its orbit decays and is now drifting towards the sun.
* Music/NeilYoung's [[Music/AfterTheGoldRush "After the Gold Rush"]] has the narrator dreaming of "the chosen ones" being loaded into spaceships bound for "a new home in the Sun", presumably after a nuclear war or ecological catastrophe on Earth.
* Music/JonathanYoung's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtS1vXPkRzQ Final Frontier]]" tells the story of humanity building a massive starship to escape from Earth after rendering it uninhabitable after years of pollution and devastation.

* Several of 'em can be seen in ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve''. They manage to be some of the least ridiculous things in the movie (which isn't to say they aren't utterly ridiculous).
* ''Film/SkyCaptainAndTheWorldOfTomorrow''. The BigBad Dr. Totenkopf planned for a rocket ship to take a cargo of animals to another planet. As for the cataclysm, the rocket would have ''caused that'' on the way up.
-->'''Polly:''' My God, Joe. It's an ark.

-->'''Film/JamesBond:''' The animals went in two by two.
-->'''Holly Goodhead:''' What do you mean by that?
-->'''James Bond:''' Noah's Ark. This operation.
* This was also the bad guy's plot in the B-movie ''Film/TheodoreRex''.
* Is one of the episodes in the 1936 Creator/WarnerBros film ''Film/TheGreenPastures'', which retold ''Literature/TheBible'' from the perspective of a poor African-American child.
* In ''Film/TheLastFlightOfNoahsArk'', the eponymous plane is not an ark per se, but borrows some themes due to transporting a lot of animals and becoming a boat.

* In ''Film/AfterEarth'' leaving earth in space arks forms part of the backstory.
* Potiphar Femm in ''Film/TheOldDarkHouse1963'' is convinced that another biblical flood is imminent, and has built an ark, complete with animals, in the backyard of his ancestral home.

* The premise behind the independent film ''Film/{{Chariot}}''. Operation Chariot is meant to save 191 people in event of a massive attack on the United States, either important government officials or because they are potentially useful in responding to the attack. However something has gone wrong in the chaos of the attack, and the movie begins with only seven passengers [[YouWakeUpInARoom waking up on the airplane]] [[OntologicalMystery with no idea how they got there or why they have been selected]].
* ''Film/IAmMother''. An unspecified worldwide catastrophe has wiped out all of humanity, except for about sixty thousand frozen embryos in a special storage and learning facility, which is maintained by an A.I. robot, "Mother", who is tasked with raising them. [[spoiler:At least, so it seems. There are in fact human survivors, being hunted by Mother, who decided to KillAllHumans and raise new humans with superior ethics under her control.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/Fantasia2000'' contains a retelling of the Biblical story set to ''Pomp and Circumstance'' by Sir Edward Elgar, with WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck as Noah's assistant. And some of the animals in the ark are [[FurryConfusion non-anthro ducks.]]
* An example occurs in ''WesternAnimation/BattleForTerra'' after Earth and its colonies are rendered uninhabitable in an interplanetary war.. No points for guessing what is the name of the gigantic ship housing the humanity. Taking the form of a GenerationShip, by the time it reaches the Terra system it is succumbing to [[UsedFuture routine, lethal malfunctions]], and its air scrubbers are predicted to fail within a few months of entering Terra orbit.

%% * ''WesternAnimation/ElArca''
* The ''Animation/PleasantGoatAndBigBigWolf'' film ''Animation/TheMythicalArkAdventuresInLoveAndHappiness'' does the "characters ride out a flood using an ark" plot, using an ancient spaceship called the Ark. To get the ship running, you have to have at least one of each kind of animal in it... except the gang hits a snag there when one of the required animals is a snake, which they believe to be an extinct species.

* ''ComicStrip/BonersArk'', a gag-a-day strip about Captain Boner and the various animals on his ark. (Noah had it easy - Boner's ark was on the sea for 32 years, only reaching dry land in the final strip.)

* The ship that originally brought ComicBook/{{Superman}} to earth, along with a database containing the history and culture of Krypton. His father Jor-El wanted to make ships big enough to save all of Krypton's people, but Krypton's xenophobic policies banning space travel got in his way. He only had enough time and resources to build one little ship.

* Crops up in ''ComicBook/XXXenophile'', of all places. In "Family Reunion", salvalger Otis discovers the U.N.S.S. Rojong, the first colonization slowship from Old Terra, presumed lost in space. The bio-pods are intact and should contain all of the 'lost' animals: elephants, fireflies, anteaters, unicorns...

* ''ComicBook/{{Earth 2}}'' has the Space Ark, which was funded by the most powerful and wealthy individuals of Earth so that they could escape in case of a planetary emergency such as a second Apokolips invasion. Too bad for them that Superman's clone stopped the ship and ripped it apart before they went too far.
* In ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfWonderWoman2016'' Themyscira is a movable pocket dimension to which all the magic tied to Greek mythology has retreated and which the gods have lied to the Amazons is the only place left with human life as well after the attack of the [[OurTitansAreDifferent Titan]] right before the Amazons were cut off from the rest of humanity by the gods moving the island.

* ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'': Nobita sees the vision of a flood via one of Doraemon's "peek into the future" devices, and builds an ark accordingly; [[spoiler: turns out that was a bedwetting dream Nobita had]].
* Fishman Island in ''Manga/OnePiece'' has a gigantic ark named 'Noah' in the slums.
* The seed ships from ''Manga/KnightsOfSidonia'' were intended to ensure humanity's survival when Earth was destroyed by the Gauna.

* In ''Anime/GunBuster'', the Eltreum (a massive 70km starship) was originally designed to evacuate Earth if the war with the Space Monsters proved impossible to win, but once their defeat was deemed as feasible, the ship was refitted with weapons and played a key role during humanity's final battle [[spoiler: at the center of the galaxy]].
* ''Manga/QueenMillennia'': To preserve mankind, Yayoi has managed to rebuild terrain behind major cities into "caveships", so they'd detach from Earth, turning Tokyo, New-York, Moscow and other major cities into space colonies and to [[spoiler:immigrate to La-Metal. When first shown, it turns out to me bass hypnosis to see how humans would react before launching for real.]]

* Shows up in a [[InSpace space]] variant in ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'', with the alien who has a ship that's a refuge for animals extinct in their homelands. It's referred to as 'The Ark' at times.

* WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs build arks for themselves and their animal friends in "Blue Eyes Returns" when Gargamel uses magic beans to create a flood that covers the entire Smurf Forest.

* The goal of the [[spoiler: Zero Dawn project]] in Horizon: Zero Dawn. [[spoiler: With the end of humanity imminent, Dr. Elizabeth Sobek gathered the best scientists and historians around her to construct Gaia, an immense artificial intelligence that could terraform and repopulate the earth AfterTheEnd. Unlike most Arcs, Gaia was meant to not only outlive the apocalypse, but halt it, and start anew. For this purpose, she was given sub functions that could take on one challenge each; Apollo, Aether, Hades, Hephaestus, Artemis, Poseidon, Eleuthia, Demeter and Minerva. Apollo fit the role of Arc best, as it was the AI responsible for the combined repository of human knowledge. Unfortunately, Ted Faro destroyed it, convinced that Eleuthia's new humans would be better without the history.]]

* The [[SpaceStation Space Colony ARK]] from a handful of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' titles is apparently a [[GenerationShip long-term habitable structure]], but has remained inactive for the majority of the time we see it, staying in orbit over the planet.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 2'': After the demon hordes of Hell invade Earth, the remaining human population is loaded onto space ships that will carry them to safety.

* WesternAnimation/TheHairBearBunch convince zookeeper Peevly to have an ark built so a re-creation of the story of Noah can be staged (episode "Ark Lark"). The bears actually use it tovescape from the zoo with all the other animals.