The scariest apocalypse is one that could really happen. A supervolcano in the heart of the North American continent that can blow up at any time and plunge the world into a dark, cold hellhole.
Ashfall
- This series does not shy away from invoking Humans Are Bastards. In chapter 7, we are treated to a scene where three criminals attempt to break into Joe and Darren's house while Alex is staying with them. The idea of being in a home invasion is terrifying enough, but what's really terrifying is the reaction that Darren has to it: He pulls a Desert Eagle out of his parent's bedroom and shoots them all dead, even as one of them is fleeing. What is so terrifying is the fact that Darren apparently isn't satisfied with scaring them away: He wants them dead. Alex is so traumatized he decides to retreat to his ruined home to rest, resolving to set out to find his parents.
- Mrs Edmund's rape and murder. If you don't have enough proof of what bastards Ferret and Target both are, this is it. Good thing she was avenged soon afterward.
- Alex and Darla coming across a half eaten corpse eaten by his own pigs. And then they are so desperate, they kill those pigs, not even worrying too much about eating something that had eaten human flesh. Ugg.
- The pair later comes across a woman with her young children, realizing that she has no supplies, and so they try to help. She starts screaming at them like a maniac, calling them "satanic cannibals". As they calm her down and give her assistance, water, and food to her and her children, she later reveals why she was so paranoid: a gang of cannibals murdered and cooked her husband.
- The FEMA refugee camp. Imagine an organization that is supposedly there to help you; instead choosing to restrict your eastward movement, shoving you into camps where your supplies are forcefully confiscated, giving you a starvation diet even when compared to how much you've had when struggling to survive the ashen wasteland, and/or executed by slow, painful starvation in doghouse-like prisons if you are non-compliant. Let that sink in: the organization that claims to want to help you is perhaps one of the worst monsters you will ever have to face if you come from an area they deem to be a disaster zone.
