Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction

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Apocalyptic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization, through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster.

Post-apocalyptic science fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten or mythologized. Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in an agrarian, non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain.

There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with false utopias or dystopic societies. A work of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction might also be called a ruined Earth story, or dying Earth if the apocalypse is sufficiently dire.

Cultural views on apocalyptic fiction

For the most part, western literature and cinema on the apocalypse or in a post-apocalyptic setting tend to follow American mores, with the exception of British apocalyptic fiction. While American and Western apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction tend to emphasize the fantastic, with the possibility of world-ending meteor collisions, mutants, and jury-rigged vehicles roaming a desolate countryside, British fiction is more pessimistic in tone.

Post-apocalyptic literature was not as widespread in communist countries as the government prohibited depictions of the nations falling apart. However, some depictions of similar-themed science fiction did make it past government censors, such as Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker, made during Russia's Soviet era, which features the bombed-out landscape and survival-based motives of its characters and was inspired in part by the 1957 accident at the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Recently, Wang Lixiong's Yellow Peril was banned in the People's Republic of China because of its depiction of the collapse of the Communist Party of China, but has been widely pirated and distributed in the country.

Due to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in its modern past, Japanese popular culture is rife with apocalyptic themes. Much of Japan's manga and anime is loaded with apocalyptic imagery.Murakami, T.: Little Boy : The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-30-010285-2

Criticism

The use of post-apocalyptic contexts in movies and the typical accompanying imagery, such as endless deserts or damaged cityscapes, clothing made of leather and animal skin, and marauding gangs of bandits, is now common and the subject of frequent parody.

The number of apocalyptic-themed B-movies in the 1980s and 1990s has been attributed to film producers on post-apocalyptic films working around their low production budgets by renting scrapyards, unused factories, and abandoned buildings, saving them the cost of constructing sets. As a result, many films that would have been rejected by major studios on the basis of script or concept ended up being made, while other stories were adapted to a post-apocalyptic setting following the success of the Mad Max series.

Some apocalyptic stories have been criticized as implausible or as scaremongering propaganda..

Examples (listed by nature of the catastrophe)

• The Japanese manga and 1988 anime film Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
• Alas, Babylon, a 1959 novel about the aftermath of nuclear war
• The Amtrak Wars epic novel series by Patrick Tilley
• Ape and Essence, a screenplay-novel by Aldous Huxley
• Apokalipsa wedlug Pana Jana - Robert J. Szmidt's novel
• The Japanese manga (and subsequent anime adaptations) Appleseed by Masamune Shirow
• Autobahn nach Poznan - Andrzej Ziemianski's short story
• The movie The Blood of Heroes
• A Boy and His Dog - Harlan Ellison's short story and 1975 film
• By the Waters of Babylon (Stephen Vincent Benet)
• A Canticle for Leibowitz and its sequel Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, both by Walter M. Miller, Jr
• The movie Cherry 2000
• The novel Children of The Dust by Louise Lawerence
• The Chrysalids (U.S. title: Re-Birth) and The Outward Urge by John Wyndham
• The movie City Limits
• Both the TV series and film Whoops Apocalypse
• The movies Cyborg and Cyborg 2
• Damnation Alley - Roger Zelazny's novel, and the film made of it
• Dark Universe - Daniel F. Galouye's novel from 1961
• The Day After, a 1983 film about the effects of nuclear war on a Kansas town
• The film Day the World Ended
• Deathlands - by James Axler — A series of books set a hundred years after a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and USSR in 2001 destroys most of the world
• The movie Def-Con 4
• Delicatessen - Marc Caro's black comedy
• The film Le Dernier Combat (aka The Last Combat) - directed by Luc Besson
• The computer game features a possible ending with an apocalypse of sorts - see the end of
• Dear Devil (Eric Frank Russell)
• Deus Irae - Philip K. Dick (in collaboration with Roger Zelazny).
• The German novel [Die Letzten Kinder Von Schewenborn] by Gudrun Pausewang
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
• Down to a Sunless Sea - David Graham's novel of the last plane out of a fall-of-Saigon-like New York City
• Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb - Philip K. Dick
• Emergence - David R. Palmer's novel
• The movie Equilibrium in which, after barely surviving yet another worldwide conflict, mankind rejects all emotion and outlaws all forms of expression which might encourage emotional response.
• Fail-safe - The novel by Eugene Burdick, the movie of the same name, and the television live-action play Fail-Safe.
• Fallout series - The computer role-playing game
• Farnham's Freehold - Robert A. Heinlein
• The anime/manga series Fist of the North Star
• Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson.
• Gamma World - The Role-playing game from TSR, Inc., the makers of Dungeons & Dragons.
• The Gate to Women's Country, a novel by Sheri S. Tepper
• Gibbon's Decline and Fall, a novel by Sheri S. Tepper
• The Greatwinter Trilogy, three novels by Sean McMullen
• The Handmaid's Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood
• The movie Hell Comes to Frogtown
• The Horseclans novel series by Robert Adams
• Neil Young's 1982 film, Human Highway
• Hungry City Chronicles, a science fiction series by Phillip Reeve
• The Judge Dredd comics franchise, first popularized in 1977 by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra and Pat Mills.
• The short film La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker
• The Japanese film Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki.
• The Last Ship, a 1988 novel by William Brinkley
• The 1999 British TV six part drama The Last Train (Cruel Earth in Canada)
• The short story "Let The Ants Try" written by Frederik Pohl under the pseudonym James MacCreigh.
• Level 7 - Mordecai Roshwald's novel
• Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and the film based on it.
• The Mad Max trilogy
• Magic City (Nelson S. Bond)
• The novel Malevil by Robert Merle
• Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.
• Masters of the Fist and The Long Mynd - Edward P. Hughes' novels
• The movie Miracle Mile
• the book, MORTAL ENGINES (Philip reeve) with the 60 second war
• The Morrow Project - The Role-playing game from Timeline Ltd.
• The Japanese film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki.
• Neuroshima - The Polish Role-playing game from Portal Publishing
• On The Beach - Nevil Shute's novel, and the films based on it.
• Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov. (A later book, Robots and Empire, gave a different explanation.)
• The series The Pelbar cycle by Paul O. Williams
• The Penultimate Truth - Philip K. Dick
• The visual novel Planetarian.
• The Planet of the Apes film series (Based on the novel ''Monkey Planet" by Pierre Boule
• The Postman - David Brin's novel and the 1997 movie of the same name.
• Post-Nuke - a dramatic webcomic that takes place in a nuclear winter.
• Pulling Through - Dean Ing
• The film Radioactive Dreams
• Red Alert by Peter George and , the Stanley Kubrick movie made from that novel.
• Red Dawn - John Milius' 1984 movie.
• Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban's novel
• The Japanese anime series Saikano
• Six-String Samurai - action/comedy/musical film.
• Second Variety - a short story by Philip K. Dick.
• Sexmisja - The Polish movie
• The Shannara Series by Terry Brooks, a fantasy book set after WWIII destroys all technology and warps the human race into other species.
• The Shape of Things To Come - predictions of an extended WWII, societal upheaval, & the beginning of space travel, by HG Wells 1933 - - film Things to Come in 1936
• Star Man's Son (Andre Norton)
• The movie Steel Dawn, post-Road Warrior ultra-low budget stuff
• The movie Stryker, derivative of Road Warrior
• The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern (first novel Total War from 1981)
• Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
• The film Testament
• This is the Way the World Ends - James Morrow's novel
• The film Threads BBC docu-drama showing nuclear war
• Time Capsule - Mitch Berman's novel
• The Traveler novel series by D. B. Drumm (first novel First, You Fight from 1984)
• - The role-playing game from Game Designer's Workshop
• Numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone and its revivals, including "The Old Man in the Cave"; "Time Enough at Last"; "A Little Peace and Quiet"; "Voices in the Earth"; "Shelter Skelter"; and Quarantine".
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
• The Vampire Hunter D novels and anime films, set ten thousand years after a nuclear war occurs in 1999.
• Warday (novel) - Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka's novel
• The film The War Game by Peter Watkins
• Wasteland - The computer role-playing game.
• Wizards - Ralph Bakshi's film about a good wizard and his evil brother some two millennia after Armageddon
• The movie World Gone Wild
• The World Jones Made - Philip K. Dick
• ''The World, the Flesh and the Devil - 1959 movie.
• World War III - made for TV, with Rock Hudson, 1982
• World Without End - Edward Bernd's [1956] film starring Hugh Marlowe and the film debut of Rod Taylor. Robust 20th Century men help pale nerds and their beautiful women emerge from underground and retake the post WWIII surface from mutants.
• Yellow Peril, a Chinese novel by activist Wang Lixiong under the pseudonym Bao Mi, about a nuclear civil war in the People's Republic of China.

• The 2002 film 28 Days Later
• The novel Blood Music (1985) (and the 1983 novelette of the same name) by Greg Bear
• The short story The City by Ray Bradbury
• The short story The Visitor by Ray Bradbury
• The novel The Children of Men (1992) by P.D. James
• The novel The City of Ember (2003) by Jeanne DuPrau
• The 2004 film version of Dawn of the Dead
• The novel Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart
• The manga by Hiroki Endo
• The novel Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
• The novel Plague 99 by Jean Ure
• The Fire-Us Trilogy of novels
• The 1980 Japanese film Fukkatsu no Hi also known as Virus, directed by Kinji Fukasaku
• The novel A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren
• The novel I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson, filmed as The Last Man On Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971)
• The novel ''Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood
• The 2002-2004 Showtime cable television series Jeremiah, based on the comic of the same name
• The novel The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley
• The comic series Marvel Zombies
• The novel A Planet for the President by Alistair Beaton
• The novella The Scarlet Plague (1912) by Jack London
• The 2002 TV movie Smallpox
• The novel Some Will Not Die (1954) by Algis Budrys
• The novel The Stand (1978) by Stephen King, and 1994 miniseries (filmed as Stephen King's The Stand)
• The 1975-1977 BBC television series Survivors by Terry Nation
• The 1999-2003 New Zealand television series The Tribe
• The 1995 film Twelve Monkeys directed by Terry Gilliam
• The webcomic "Wandering Ones" by Clint Hollingsworth
• The novel The White Plague (1982) by Frank Herbert
• The comic series features a lone man & his monkey in a world populated only by women, series written by Brian K. Vaughan and published by Vertigo
• The novel Idlewild (2003) by Nick Sagan
• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
• The television series Jeremiah in which a mysterious virus has wiped out every human being past the age of puberty.

• The 2005 book It's Only Temporary
• The 1998 film Armageddon
• The 1997 TV movie Asteroid
• The 1998 film Deep Impact
• Lucifer's Hammer (1977) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• The 1979 film Meteor
• The 1979-80 anime series Mobile Suit Gundam talks of the impact of a massive meteor-sized space colony on Earth. A 1996 spinoff, After War Gundam X, is written around the idea of a war being ended by a mass colony drop destroying 70% of the habitable surface of the Earth and over 90% of the Earth's population.
• Remnants, a book series by K.A. Applegate
• The movie Tank Girl (based on the comic by Jamie Hewlett, but considerably different from the original form)
• The 1980-84 animated series Thundarr the Barbarian
• The Visitor (2002) by Sheri S. Tepper
• When Worlds Collide (1932) by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer, and the 1951 and 2006 films of the same name.

• The novel The Alien Years (1998) by Robert Silverberg
• The novel Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard and the Razzie award winning movie based on the novel
• The film and original television series Battlestar Galactica
• The SNES/PS1 video game Chrono Trigger, where modern civilization is at risk of being destroyed by an alien parasite in 1999 AD.
• The computer and video game Destroy All Humans!
• The novel Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• The Forge of God by Greg Bear
• The anime Genesis Climber Mospeada
• The computer and video game Half-Life 2
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (in several media)
• The film I Come In Peace, directed by Craig R. Baxley
• Independence Day (film), a 1996 film
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers, based on the novel by Jack Finney
• John Wyndham's novel The Kraken Wakes
• The computer and video game Manhunter
• Tim Burton's film Mars Attacks! (1996), based on the trading card series ''Mars Attacks (1962)
• Stephen King's novella, The Mist
• The Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach, and the rest of the Eight Worlds series, by John Varley
• Outlanders series by Mark Ellis aka James Axler
• Outlanders, a Japanese manga by Johji Manabe.
• Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters
• The film Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan
• The anime The Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its sequels
• John Carpenter's films The Thing and They Live
• Don Bluth's animated film Titan A.E..
• John Christopher's The Tripods
• The TV-series V
• The novel The Visitors (1980) by Clifford D. Simak
• H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (in several media)
• TV Series (1966) "The Invaders" -Created by Quin Martin and Larry Cohen US
• TV Series (1970) "UFO" - Gerry Anderson Production UK
• The novel The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski - aliens conduct a preemptive strike against humanity with relativistic missiles
• Quake series - The computer and video game
• Halo - The computer and video game

• The novel Aftermath by Charles Sheffield, in which Alpha Centauri goes supernova and causes cataclysmic climate change
• The 1976-1979 TV series Ark II - pollution devastates humanity
• The upcoming PC game, Battlefield 2142, in which a new ice age renders most of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable. Wars are fought over the remaining habitable land.
• Film Beyond the Time Barrier - X-plane arrives in future after solar radiation catastrophe - 1960
• The made-for-TV Movie "" where the City of Chicago is suffering from a series of tonadoes from numerous changes occurring in the climate
• The novel Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, in which all the water on Earth freezes
• The novels Clade and Crache by Mark Budz
• The anime Cowboy Bebop in which a manmade disaster has caused earth's moon to fragment, resulting in a constant rain of meteor strikes on the planet and forcing humanity to move out into the solar system.
• The novel "The Crystal World" by J.G. Ballard - Jungle in Africa starts to crystallize all life and expands outward
• The film The Day After Tomorrow written, directed and produced by Roland Emmerich. Based in part on the novel The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell & Whitley Strieber
• The film "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" (1964) - Earth starts hurtling toward sun as a result of man's nuclear testing
• The novel The Death Of Grass by John Christopher, which was made into the film No Blade Of Grass, in which a virus that destroys plants causes massive famine and the breakdown of society
• The novel Deus X by Norman Spinrad, the results of global warming
• The novel The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard - Climate change causes flooding.
• The novel "The Drought'' by J.G. Ballard- a super drought evaporates all water on earth.
• The novel Dust by Charles Pellegrino, in which all the insect species on Earth die out, and the ecology crashes as a result
• The short story "The End of the Whole Mess" by Stephen King in which a distillate of a Texas aquifer--originally harvested and distributed worldwide to reduce human propensity for violence--curses humanity with premature Alzheimer's disease and senility.
• The novel Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn, in which space-based civilization exists despite the government's wishes during an ice age.
• The novel The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
• The collection of stories Flight of the Horse by Larry Niven
• The novel Greybeard by Brian Aldiss, in which the human race becomes sterile
• The novel Hothouse by Brian Aldiss, which presents a dying Earth where vegetation dominates and animal life is all but extinct. Originally published in the United States in abridged form as “The Long, Hot Afternoon of Earth.”
• The novel The Ice Schooner by Michael Moorcock which is set in a new ice age on earth
• The novel Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason in which a microbe consumes all materials based on petroleum.
• The novel In the Drift by Michael Swanwick (also an alternate history story), in which the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor incident resulted in a very large release of radioactivity, devastating the Northeastern U.S.
• The film It's All About Love written, directed and produced by Thomas Vinterberg
• The novel The Last Gasp (1983) by Trevor Hoyle
• The video game , in which a flood has decimated the fictonal world of Hyrule.
• The novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, which was made into a 1973 film Soylent Green directed by Richard Fleischer
• The novel Nature's End by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka.
• The manga and film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
• The novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
• The anime Overman King Gainer, which depicts humanity living in domes after an ecological disaster.
• The novel The Quiet Earth written by Craig Harrison
• The film Quintet directed by Robert Altman
• The novel "The Ragged Edge(US)/A Winkle in the Skin (UK)" -John Christopher - Civilization destroyed by massive world-wide earthquakes
• The film Serenity and television show Firefly by Joss Whedon, in which the Earth's resources and biosphere get used up prompting mass exodus for the stars.
• The novel The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, in which the United States is overwhelmed by environmental irresponsibility and authoritarianism.
• The film Silent Running directed by Douglas Trumbull
• The novel The Snow by Adam Roberts, in which the world is buried under kilometres of unnatural snow.
• The novel trilogy Snowfall by Mitchell Smith (Snowfall, Kingdom River, and Moonrise) in which North America has retreated into hunter-gatherer societies and military kingdoms some 500 years after an apocalyptic ice age.
• Film Them ! - desert nuclear tests create mutated gigantic ants - 1954
• The film Ultimate Warrior - (1975) starring Yul Brynner
• The film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where the Van Allen belt catches on fire.
• The film Waterworld starring Kevin Costner
• The novel "The Wind From Nowhere" by J.G. Ballard - First published novelWorld destroyed by increasingly powerful winds
• The novel The World in Winter (UK)/The Long Winter (US) by John Christopher in which a decrease in radiation from the sun causes a new ice age.
• The anime where an earthquake triggers a series of worldwide natural disasters that devastate Planet Zi.

See main article: Cybernetic revolt

• The novel The Adolescence of P-1 by Thomas J. Ryan
• The film Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution by Jean-Luc Godard
• The TV miniseries and subsequent television show Battlestar Galactica (2003)
• The novel Colossus (1966) by Dennis Feltham Jones, and the film adaptation titled (not exactly an apocalypse, however)
• The anime and manga DragonBall Z, throughout the second of its major story arcs.
• The short story and computer game I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
• The novella It Happened Tomorrow by Robert Bloch
• The "Legends of Dune" series by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert, consisting of the novels , , and .
• The 1909 short story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster (more machinery than computers)
• The Matrix trilogy (The Second Renaissance)
• The novel The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams
• Neuroshima, the Polish role-playing game from Portal Publishing.
• The future depicted in the Terminator film series

The decline and fall of the human race

• The novel At Winter's End (1988) by Robert Silverberg
• The poem Bedtime Story from Collected Poems 1958 – 1970 by George Macbeth
• Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series
• The novel The Bridge (1973) by D. Keith Mano
• Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End
• The novel City (1952) by Clifford D. Simak
• Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut...After an ambiguous eradication of the human species, several people on a cruise to the Galapagos Islands get stranded there. Much to the dismay of the only male left, the women of the island continue the human species for thousands of years where they evolve into seal-like creatures.
• The films Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and ''Land of the Dead by George Romero.
• Planet of the Apes
• The latter part of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
• The novel Titan by Stephen Baxter - A divided Earth sends a one-way manned mission to find life on Saturn's moon. The Chinese try to control an asteroid, and the Titan crew learn the asteroid has struck Earth, wiping out humanity.
• The short stories A Toy For Juliette (1967) by Robert Bloch and The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World (1967) by Harlan Ellison
• The 1974 John Boorman film Zardoz
• The Japanese mangas Biomega, NOiSE, Blame! and Net Sphere Engineer by Tsutomu Nihei
• The Japanese manga and anime Big O, where humans apparently suffered mass amnesia and are afraid to leave their city, paragon. It is a sort of mecha/apocalypse subclass of its own, the protagonist has to battle mechanical beings and other robots who are trying to destroy the remnants of the human race.(See Neon Genesis Evangelion)
• The Cartoon Network/Adult Swim animated parody of the barbarian/post-apocalyptic genres, Korgoth of Barbaria

After the fall of space-based civilization

• Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke
• Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda series
• Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita
• The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Dragon Masters (Jack Vance)
• The final two novels in Frank Herbert's Dune series, set after the disintegration of the Padishah Empire into many smaller factions.
• Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II
• Dan Simmons's Endymion & The Rise of Endymion
• ''The Mote in God's Eye by Niven & Pournelle
• Yasuhiro Nightow's Trigun
• The PlayStation video game Xenogears
• Red Dwarf, the British Science-Fiction Sitcom
• Star Man's Son 2250 A.D. by Andre Norton
• Transfusion by Chad Oliver

The Sun's expansion

• The episode "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars," of J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5
• The episode "The End of the World," of the television series Doctor Who
• The novel Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke in which the last survivors of Earth arrive at a distant colony unexpectedly.
• Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven

Religious and supernatural apocalypse (Eschatological fiction)

• The evangelical Christian film series 1972 A Thief In The Night, sometimes referred to as the Mark IV films.
• The young adult book series Countdown by Daniel Parker, in which a demon wipes out the entire human population save for teenagers.
• The role-playing game, in which the Earth is reduced to a haunted, radioactive wasteland as a result of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ravaging the planet shortly after an eldritch nuclear war.
• The End of the Age, by Pat Robertson
• The book and film series Left Behind, concerning the Rapture.
• The anime and manga Neon Genesis Evangelion in which over half of the human population is killed and the survivors are subsequently attacked by beings of apparently mystical nature named "Angels."
• The film Prince of Darkness, directed by John Carpenter, in which all Hell breaks loose.
• The film The Rapture (1991)
• The zombie novels The Rising and its sequel City of the Dead by Brian Keene. Rather than the zombies being an infection, as in most zombie fiction; these zombies are reanimated by demonic entities, the sisquisim, from the Old Testament. Keene has also written Conqueror Worms which is a very Lovecraftian tale of one of the last survivors on earth.
• The novel Shade's Children by Garth Nix, in which a group of extradimensional beings invade earth and cause all human adults to vanish.
• The novel The Taking, by Dean Koontz in which a malevolent demonic force kills off the majority of the human race.
• The Third Millennium (1995) and The Fourth Mellennium (1996), by Paul Meier
• The Tribe 8 role-playing game, in which sadistic demons invade (and conquer) the Earth.
• The CLAMP anime X/1999 in which the seven Dragons of Heaven battle the Dragons of Earth to save the world.
• The Hellgate: London computer game to be released in 2007, where demons and humans are in constant struggle on earth.
• The computer and video game - Doom series especially Doom II and Final Doom

Various

• After London by Richard Jefferies; the nature of the catastrophe is never stated, except that apparently most of the human race quickly dies out, leaving England to revert to nature.
• Much of the work of J. G. Ballard, in which the current era is sometimes described as the pre-Third, referring to World War III.
• [Destructomundo], Podcast covering numerous genres and sub-genres of apocalyptic/post apocalyptic science-fiction, the show often takes an irreverent view of many world ending scenarios.
• The film Crack in the World
• The Novels Dies the Fire and The Protector's War by S. M. Stirling, in which a disaster of indeterminate cause (most speculation within the novels concerns an all-powerful outside force ie. aliens or an act of god/gods) causes electricity, combustion engines, and modern explosives to cease functioning.
• The manga and movie Dragon Head, by Mochizuki Minetaro
• The machinima Red vs Blue, the main characters are sent to the future in what they believe is a post-apocalyptic world.
• Jules Verne's The Eternal Adam, in one night all the emerged land submerges and some island emerge. The survivors start a new mankind.
• The movie The Last Woman on Earth, directed by Roger Corman, in which all the Earth's oxygen temporarily vanishes - leaving only three survivors.
• The Nintendo 64 Game where the Moon is about to crash into Termina.
• The novel The Lost Continent (1916) by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which an isolated and feuding Europe has retreated into barbarism
• The novel by Stephen Baxter has the deliberate creation of a new vacuum state in the universe, incidentally annihilating all existing matter in the Universe - including the Earth.
• Nightfall by Isaac Asimov; A rare cosmological event causes an Earth-like society inhabiting a multistar system to collapse as they experience their first nightfall
• The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel; An unknown event floods the earth with a poisonous gas, leaving only two survivors
• The Revenants by Sheri S. Tepper; the nature of the catastrophe is never stated but technology has been displaced and a bizarre religion is dividing society into ever-smaller, racially-divided units.
• Although not generally recognized as such, the Star Trek franchise falls into this category as it takes place in the decades and centuries following World War III on Earth, which nearly led to the collapse of human civilization. The ' episode "Encounter at Farpoint" depicts one aspect of the "post-atomic horror"; the film ' takes place about a decade after the war and depicts one pocket of civilization living in a camp in Montana, and the episodes "Demons" and "Terra Prime" refer to the rise of military rule and an act of genocide perpetrated on radiation-scarred survivors of the war a century earlier.
• The novel Taronga, by Victor Kelleher; after an unknown disaster simply described as "Last Days" a boy ventures throughout his surroundings, finding refuge in Tarronga Zoo and befriending a tiger.
• The film Titan A.E., in which the Drej destroy Earth to stop the advancement of humankind.
• The video game Final Fantasy VI where the villain destroys and takes over the world, creating the World of Ruin.
• The anime OVA series Giant Robo, in which a scientific experiment causes all power generation to stop worldwide, resulting in the death of 1/3 of the Earth's population in a week.
• The novel Présence de la mort (1922) by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz where the Earth falls into the Sun.
• The film "The Omen" (6-6-06)

To be categorized

• Aftermath by Gregory Benford
• Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
• Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time stories, which are set in the days of the final collapse and end of the Universe itself
• The Final Programme, movie based on Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories
• Many (perhaps most) Godzilla movies - notably Monster Zero, Destroy All Monsters and , in these films, space aliens use mind-controlled giant monsters to destroy Earth's capitals
• The novel In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
• Nosutoradamusu no daiyogen (Translated as: Nostradamus's Great Prophecy) also known as The Last Days of Planet Earth, a 1974 Japanese film.
• The novels The Peace War (1984) and Marooned in Realtime (1986) (together also know as Across Realtime, 1991) by Vernor Vinge
• Reign of Fire, in which a race of terrifically powerful dragons awakes from sleep and decimates the world.
• The Swedish role playing game Mutant.
• The role playing game Rifts, in which a massive release of psychic energy triggers several disasters, as well as various magic-based anomalies.
• Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker
• The role playing game Torg, in which several alternate realities invade earth simultaneously, some primitive, some technological, and some supernatural.
• The role playing game Wasteworld[link].
• The Japanese anime/manga series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō, set in a peaceful post-cataclysmic Japan.
• The Japanese anime series Wolf's Rain takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Presumably it is after the decline of society and the petty wars of nobles who own domed cities where human life is bearable.
• The novel The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin contains apocalyptic science fiction elements.
• The manga Japan, written by Eiji Otsuka and illustrated by Mami Ito.
• The film The Dark Crystal chronicles the Great Conjuction of the planet Thra's three suns. Aughra, a character in the movie, claims that the Great Conjunction will mean "the end of the world...or the beginning." The cracking of the Dark Crystal also placed the world of Thra into a semi-apocalyptic state.

References

See also

• Timeline of fictional future events
• Apocalyptic literature
• Cosy catastrophe
• Doomsday event
• Doomsday film

External links

• [Revelation] The magazine of apocalyptic art and literature
• [Empty World - a website dedicated to apocalyptic fiction]
• [Duck and Cover - A post-apocalyptic theme fan site]
• [Post Apocalyptic Media - A website detailing all mediums involving post-apocalyptic fiction]
• [Sub-Genre Spotlight: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction - an overview of the sub-genre]
• [Post-Apocalyptic Movie Mania - tongue-in-cheek after-the-fall film reviews]
• [Quiet Earth - a website dedicated to post apocalyptic media]
• [Destructomundo Podcast] - Podcast about the various scenarios for the end of the world
• [The Post Apocalyptic Forge] - Website supporting the apocalyptic genre in table top gaming and general literature.

 

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