List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
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This is a list of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction works, sorted by the nature of the catastrophe portrayed.
[edit] World War III and other apocalyptic wars (between humans)
[edit] Films
[edit] 1930s
- 1936. Things to Come, in which an extended future second world war leads to a breakdown of civilization in most of the world, with technology returning to medieval levels by 1970.
[edit] 1950s
- 1951. Five by Arch Oboler, the first film to show the aftermath of a nuclear war, centered on a group of five survivors.
- 1952. Captive Women, the first film to imagine a new primitive society emerging long after a nuclear war. Features two tribes, the "Norms" and the "Mutates", fighting in the remains of New York City, and later banding together to fight a third tribe, the "Upriver People", who are invading Manhattan through the Hudson Tunnel in order to steal the other tribes' women.
- 1952. Invasion U.S.A.
- 1955. Day the World Ended
- 1956. World Without End by Edward Bernd, 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.
- 1958. Teenage Cave Man
- 1958. Terror from the Year 5000
- 1959. On the Beach by Stanley Kramer, starring Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and Ava Gardner. The crew of an American submarine finds temporary safety from the fallout in Australia after the nuclear holocaust (from the 1957 novel by Nevil Shute).
- 1959. The World, the Flesh and the Devil, adapted from M.P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud.
[edit] 1960s
- 1960. Atomic War Bride
- The 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine had an atomic war to explain the downfall of civilization.
- 1960. The Final War by Shigeaki Hidaka, a Japanese film about a third world war started when the US accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on South Korea (Japanese title: Dai-sanji sekai taisen: Yonju-ichi jikan no kyofu).
- 1961. The Last War by Shuei Matsubayashi, another Japanese film about WWIII (Japanese title: Sekai daisenso).
- 1962. La Jetée by Chris Marker.
- 1962. Panic in Year Zero!, a 1962 movie about a family that escapes Los Angeles that was devastated by a nuclear attack.
- 1962. This Is Not a Test
- 1964. Fail-Safe, theatrical release based on the novel of the same name. Drama in which a technical failure causes a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union by the United States. Deals with American and Soviet attempts to prevent escalation into a full-scale nuclear war.
- 1964. Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick, adapting the novel Red Alert by Peter George.
- 1964. The Time Travelers
- 1965. The Bedford Incident
- 1967. The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (Czech title: Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon)
- 1967. In the Year 2889, a remake of the 1955 film Day the World Ended
- 1967. Journey to the Center of Time
- 1968. Planet of the Apes, adapted from the novel La planète des singes by Pierre Boulle.
- 1969. The Bed Sitting Room
[edit] 1970s
- 1971. Glen and Randa
- 1971. The Omega Man. An immune survivor of a biological/nuclear war battles plague-altered quasi-vampires bent on erasing all vestiges of science and technology. The movie is based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I Am Legend.
- 1973. Refuge of Fear (Spanish title: El refugio del miedo)
- 1974. The Third Cry (Swiss film, French title: Le Troisième Cri)
- 1974. Zardoz
- 1975. A Boy and His Dog. A young man and his pet dog struggle for survival and encounter strife in a harsh, post-apocalyptic wasteland where food and sex are scarcities.
- 1975. La città dell'ultima paura
- 1976. The People Who Own the Dark by Amando de Ossorio (Spanish title: Último deseo)
- 1977. Wizards by Ralph Bakshi. A good wizard and his evil brother battle some two millennia after Armageddon.
- 1977. Damnation Alley. A surviving American ICBM crew sets out across the United States in an armored vehicle in search of survivors in Albany, New York. Loosely based on the novel by Roger Zelazny.
- 1978. Deathsport
- 1979. Ravagers
[edit] 1980s
- 1981. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
- 1981. John Carpenter's Escape From New York
- 1982. 2020 Texas Gladiators
- 1982. The Aftermath
- 1982. Human Highway
- 1982. Warriors of the Wasteland
- 1982. She, a low-budget B-movie, an extremely loose adaptation of the novel She by H. Rider Haggard, starring Sandahl Bergman as a post-civilization warrior.
- 1983. 2019, After the Fall of New York
- 1983. Barefoot Gen, based on the actual atomic bombing of Hiroshima (not technically post-apocalypse, but rather post-disaster)
- 1983. Endgame
- 1983. Exterminators of the Year 3000
- 1983. Le Dernier Combat by Luc Besson
- 1983. Stryker
- 1983. Testament
- 1983. Warrior of the Lost World
- 1983. Yor, the Hunter from the Future
- 1984. Dark Enemy
- 1984. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
- 1984. Sexmisja. A Polish comedy.
- 1984. Radioactive Dreams. After an atomic war Phillip Hammer and Marlowe Chandler have spent 15 years on their own in a bunker, then they find the keys to the last MX missile.
- 1985. City Limits
- 1985. Def-Con 4
- 1985. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
- 1985. Warriors of the Apocalypse. After civilization is wiped out by nuclear war, an adventurer leads a group of wanderers on a search for the fabled Mountain of Life.
- 1986. Dead Man's Letters
- 1986. Fist of the North Star
- 1986. The Sacrifice
- 1986. When the Wind Blows by Jimmy Murakami, adapting the graphic novel by Raymond Briggs
- 1986. Whoops Apocalypse
- 1987. Cherry 2000
- 1987. Death Run
- 1987. Hell Comes to Frogtown
- 1987. Steel Dawn
- 1987. Survivor
- 1987. Urban Warriors. Three technicians working in an underground laboratory discover that a nuclear war has destroyed most of the aboveground world.
- 1987 The Survivalist. The Soviet Union threatens a retaliatory nuclear attack, amid the chaos, only The Survivalist has a plan.
- 1988. Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
- 1988. Miracle Mile
- 1988. World Gone Wild
- 1988. Empire of Ash
- 1989. Empire of Ash II
- 1989. Empire of Ash III
- 1989. Black Rain, another film about the actual bombing of Hiroshima.
- 1989. Deadly Reactor
- 1989. Cyborg
- 1989. The Blood of Heroes
[edit] 1990s
- 1990. By Dawn's Early Light
- 1990. Hardware
- 1990. Mindwarp
- 1990. Robot Jox
- 1991. Delicatessen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro
- 1993. Cyborg 2
- 1993. Robot Wars (sequel to Robot Jox)
- 1995. Fist of the North Star
- 1996. Star Trek: First Contact. A late-21st century Earth is devastated by nuclear conflict.
- 1997. The Postman, partly based on the David Brin novel
- 1998. Six-String Samurai
[edit] 2000s
- 2000. On the Beach. A remake of the 1959 film.
- 2002. Equilibrium. After barely surviving yet another worldwide conflict, mankind rejects all emotion and outlaws all forms of expression which might encourage emotional response.
- 2003. Time of the Wolf
- 2004. Appleseed
- 2007. The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell
[edit] Television
- 1959. The Offshore Island, a TV adaptation of a play by Marghanita Laski..
- Numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone and its revivals, including "Time Enough at Last" (1959); "The Old Man in the Cave" (1963); "A Little Peace and Quiet" (1985); "Quarantine" (1986); "Shelter Skelter" (1987); and "Voices in the Earth" (1987)
- 1965. The War Game by Peter Watkins.
- 1978. Future Boy Conan, an anime series by Hayao Miyazaki. Supermagnetic WMDs devastate Earth and causes virtually all land to be submerged underwater.
- 1982. Whoops Apocalypse
- 1982. World War III. Miniseries with Rock Hudson.
- 1983. The Day After. The effects of nuclear war on a Kansas town.
- 1984. Threads. BBC Television Docudrama.
- 1984-1987. Fist of the North Star. Post-apocalyptic anime series.
- 1975-1977. Survivors British post-apocalyptic TV series
- 1990. The Girl from Tomorrow, Australian children's drama in which a girl from the 31st century (after the Northern Hemisphere has been destroyed in the Great Disaster, later revealed to be a nuclear holocaust) becomes stranded in the 20th century. In the sequel, Tomorrow's End (1993), she and her friends fight to prevent history from being changed in such a way that the Southern Hemisphere is destroyed as well.
- 1992. Woops!, a very short-lived sitcom about the survivors of a nuclear war.
- 1999. Now and Then, Here and There, an anime series that takes place 10 billion years into the future, where mankind lusts for power, and children are forced into military duty.
- 2000. Fail Safe, televised play based on the novel of the same name directed by Stephen Frears and produced by George Clooney. Drama in which a technical failure causes a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union by the United States. Deals with American and Soviet attempts to prevent escalation into a full-scale nuclear war.
- 2002. Saikano. Anime series.
- 2004-2005. Desert Punk. Anime series.
- 2006. Jericho (CBS), about the residents of a small Kansas town which remains isolated in the aftermath of a series of nuclear attacks on America.
[edit] Novels
[edit] 1880s
- 1885. After London by Richard Jefferies
[edit] 1930s
- 1933. The Shape of Things to Come by H. G. Wells, predicting an extended world war fought with modern scientific weapons, societal upheaval, and the beginning of space travel. Filmed as Things to Come in 1936.
- 1934. Quinzinzinzili by Régis Messac, also predicting a great world war that ends with the vanishing of humanity. Only a group of children survives and forms a strange new mankind.
- 1937. By the Waters of Babylon (Short Story) by Stephen Vincent Benet.
[edit] 1940s
- 1948. Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley. Also screenplay.
[edit] 1950s
- 1950. Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov. (A later book, Robots and Empire, gave a different explanation)
- 1952 Star Man's Son by Andre Norton
- 1954 Tomorrow! by Philip Wylie
- 1955 The Chrysalids (U.S. title: Re-Birth) by John Wyndham, the aftermath of a nuclear war in a rural Canadian community.
- 1955. Few Were Left by Harold Rein
- 1955 The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, in the aftermath of a nuclear war scientific knowledge is feared and restricted.
- 1956 The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick
- 1957 On the Beach by Nevil Shute (also the films based on the book)
- 1958 Red Alert by Peter George. Filmed as Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick.
- 1959 Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, the aftermath of a nuclear war in a rural Florida community.
- 1959. A Canticle for Leibowitz and later its sequel Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, both by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- 1959 Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald.
[edit] 1960s
- 1961. Dark Universe by Daniel F. Galouye.
- 1963. Triumph by Philip Wylie
- 1964. Farnham's Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein
- 1964. The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick
- 1965. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb by Philip K. Dick
- 1967. Ice by Anna Kavan. Nuclear winter is encroaching the entire planet.
- 1968. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, filmed as Blade Runner.
- 1969. Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny (made into a movie 1977).
- 1969. Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter
[edit] 1970s
- 1970. The Incredible Tide by Alexandar Key.
- 1970. The Year Of The Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker.
- 1971. Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy.
- 1971. The Overman Culture by Edmund Cooper.
- 1972. Malevil by Robert Merle.
- 1974. The Last Canadian by William C Heine.
- 1975. Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien.
- 1975. Caravan by Stephen Goldin.
- 1975. The Coming of the Horseclans by Robert Adams, followed by seventeen other books in the horseclans series.
- 1977. Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
- 1976. Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick in collaboration with Roger Zelazny.
- 1979. Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham.
[edit] 1980s
- 1980. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.
- 1980. The Fifth Horseman by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.
- 1982. Survivors by John Nahmlos.
- 1983. The Last Children of Schewenborn (Die Letzten Kinder Von Schewenborn) by Gudrun Pausewang (in German).
- 1983. Pulling Through by Dean Ing
- 1983. Trinity's Child by William Prochnau
- 1983. Hiero's Journey (sequel The Unforsaken Hiero 1985), by Sterling E. Lanier. A "metis" priest/killman quests across post-apocalyptic northeastern North America, seven thousand years in the future.
- 1984. Brother in the Land by Robert Swindells
- 1984. Emergence by David R. Palmer
- 1984. Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka
- 1985. Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence
- 1985. The Postman by David Brin and the 1997 movie of the same name.
- 1985. This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow
- 1987. Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
- 1988. The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
- 1988. The Last Ship by William Brinkley.
[edit] 1990s
- 1990. Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg (extension written by Silverberg of the Asimov story of the same name)
- 1991. Yellow Peril in Chinese by activist Wang Lixiong under the pseudonym Bao Mi, about a nuclear civil war in the People's Republic of China
- 1997. Aftermath by Levar Burton. American civilization crumbles after a civil war pitting blacks against whites and a devastating earthquake.
- 1999. Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois, set 10 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into nuclear war.
[edit] 2000s
- 2001. Project Phoenix: Dead Rising by Darrin Brent Patterson.
- 2003. Apokalipsa wedlug Pana Jana by Robert J. Szmidt
- 2003. The City of Ember and its sequel, The People of Sparks, and prequel, The Prophet of Yonwood, by Jeanne DuPrau
- 2004. Cowl by Neal Asher.
- 2004. Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson
- 2004. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell contains one of six novellas set in a post-apocalyptic future.
- 2005. The Empire of Texas by Rodger Olsen is about a post-apocalyptic United States
- 2005. Deadlands by Scott A. Johnson
- 2006. The Road (novel) by Cormac McCarthy. A father and son's post-apocalyptic tale of survival.
- 2006. The Book of Dave by Will Self. Split between modern London and post-apocalyptic London where a new society and religion is based on the legacy of a cab driver.
- 2007. The Pesthouse by Jim Crace
- 2007. The Oblivion Society by Marcus Alexander Hart
[edit] Book series and uncertain dates
- Masters of the Fist and The Long Mynd by Edward P. Hughes
- The Goodness Gene by Sonia Levitin
- The King Awakes and The Empty Throne by Janice Elliott, set in a Medieval-style society several generations after a nuclear war. Both novels deal with the return of King Arthur and his friendship with a youth from the post-holocaust world
- The Last War by Kir Bulychev
- The Steel, the Mist and the Blazing Sun by Christopher Anvil
- The World Ends in Hickory Hollow by Ardath Mayhar
- Time Capsule by Mitch Berman
- Series The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley
- Series Deathlands by James Axler
- Series Firebrats by Scott Siegel and Barbera Siegel
- Series Horseclans by Robert Adams
- Series Mortal Engines Quartet by Phillip Reeve
- Series Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody
- Series Shannara Series by Terry Brooks
- Series The Ashes by William W. Johnstone
- Series The Pelbar Cycle by Paul O. Williams
- Series The Survivalist by Jerry Ahern, first novel Total War from 1981
- Series Traveler by D. B. Drumm, first novel First, You Fight from 1984
- Series Wingman by Mack Maloney, follows a former U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds pilot trying to restore a balkanized and largely disarmed United States of America while flying the last remaining F-16 Fighting Falcon in existence
- The Vampire Hunter D novels (and later anime movies), set ten thousand years after a nuclear war occurs in 1999
- Trilogy The Greatwinter Trilogy by Sean McMullen
[edit] Short stories and plays
- 1920. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Capek
- 1937. By the Waters of Babylon by Stephen Vincent Benét.
- 1941. "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov
- 1950. "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles.
- 1954. The Offshore Island (play) by Marghanita Laski.
- "Autobahn nach Poznan" by Andrzej Ziemianski
- "Dear Devil" by Eric Frank Russell
- "Let the Ants Try" by Frederik Pohl under the pseudonym James MacCreigh
- "Magic City" by Nelson S. Bond
- "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick
- "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison. Filmed in 1975.
- "Enta Geweorc" by Nicholas Waller (Interzone 198, 2004).
- "Time to Rest" and sequel "No Place Like Earth" by John Wyndham
- "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison
- "Extinction is Forever" by Louise Lawrence. A scientist uses a time machine to travel to the future and film the results of a nuclear war in a bid to prevent it from happening. However, his actions could have serious repercussions for the mutated descendants of the human race.
[edit] Games
- Auto Assault While seemingly caused by aliens, it is in fact human mistakes, breakdown and war that forges Auto Assault's apocalyptic world. Similar to the Command & Conquer series where an alien event is the catalyst needed to start decline.
- KKnD series
- Gamma World from TSR, Inc., the makers of Dungeons & Dragons
- Fallout series
- Land of Devastation (a BBS Door)
- Operation Overkill (a BBS Door)
- Wasteland
- Neuroshima from Portal Publishing
- The Morrow Project from Timeline Ltd
- Twilight: 2000 from Game Designer's Workshop, set in a world where a Sino-Russian war degenerates into a limited nuclear conflict that eventually drags in Europe and America.
- Rifts, in which a nuclear exchange triggers the return of Ley Lines and Interdimensional Rifts or portals. These Ley Lines and Portals subsequently cause several natural and supernatural disasters.
- Warzone 2100
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
- Aftermath! from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
- Half-Life
- The computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri tells of a ship leaving Earth on the eve of WWIII to found a new colony orbiting Alpha Centauri
- The Command & Conquer series of games features several worldwide conflicts in the Tiberian (GDI vs. Brotherhood of Nod), Red Alert (Soviets vs. Allies), and Generals (USA vs. GLA vs. China) series. The Tiberian series in particular is noted for the continuing decay of Earth by the alien "Tiberium" crystals which spread across the surface and render much of the planet uninhabitable; a setting which, thus far, has become more serious with each subsequent game of the timeline.
- World in Conflict takes place in an alternate history in which the Soviet Union mounts a land invasion of the United States.
- Post Apocalyptic Hero a genre book for Hero System 5th Edition Revised.
- Darwin's World a d20 role-playing game from Impressions
- Crystalis from SNK
[edit] Comics and manga
- Kamandi comic books, featuring the last boy on earth, first published in 1972.
- Comics franchise Judge Dredd, first popularized in 1977 by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra and Pat Mills.
- Webcomic Post-Nuke, taking place during a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter
- The comic book Ex-Mutants is set in a post-nuclear world.
- Japanese manga (and subsequent anime adaptations) Appleseed by Masamune Shirow
- Manga series Fist of the North Star
- Manga series Desert Punk. (Later adapted into an anime)
- Manga series Saikano
- Comic series 'The Last American, originally from Marvel in 1990/1991, re-released by Com.X
- Manga series Battle Angel Alita contains post-apocalyptic elements, and takes place in a highly futuristic dystopian world.
- Manga series X/1999 by renowned authors CLAMP.
[edit] Other
- Visual novel Planetarian: Chiisana Hoshi no Yume
- "April 2031" a song by the band Warrant on the "Dog Eat Dog" album depicts an earth devastated by war where life lives on only by artificial means.
- Your Attention Please, poem by Peter Porter, written in the style of a radio broadcast warning of an impending nuclear attack
- "Your Attention Please", a song adaptation of the above Porter poem written and recorded by the Scottish post-punk group the Scars
- see here for a list of other songs related to WWIII and nuclear war
- The Horses, poem by Edwin Muir. Deals with society's regression to pre Industrial Revolution conditions in the wake of a nuclear war
- The Ayreon series of concept albums depicts the end of life on Earth in 2084 due to, among other factors, a catastrophic nuclear war.
[edit] Pandemic (Plague)
[edit] Films
- The 1964 film The Last Man on Earth
- The 1969 film The Seed of Man by Marco Ferreri (Italian title: Il Seme dell'uomo)
- The 1971 film The Omega Man
- The 1975 film The Ultimate Warrior
- The 1978 film Plague, also known as Induced Syndrome (UK), M-3: The Gemini Strain (USA), or Mutation.
- The 1980 Japanese film Fukkatsu no hi also known as Virus, directed by Kinji Fukasaku
- The 1985 film City Limits
- The 1986 film Dead Man's Letters by Konstantin Lopushanskij
- The 1988 film Dead Man Walking
- The 1995 film Twelve Monkeys directed by Terry Gilliam
- The 2001 film Ever Since the World Ended
- The 2002 film 28 Days Later, and its 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later
- The 2006 film Children of Men
- The 2007 film Resident Evil: Extinction
- The 2007 film I Am Legend
[edit] Television
- The 1975-1977 BBC television series Survivors by Terry Nation
- The 1989 ITV show Not with a Bang, about 3 people who lived after everyone else in England was turned to dust by a chemical that caused rapid aging.
- The 1994 miniseries Stephen King's The Stand
- The 1999-2003 New-Zealand TV series The Tribe, that takes place in a near-future in which all the adults have been killed by a man-made Virus and the children have to survive on their own.
- The 2002 TV movie Smallpox
- The 2002-2004 Showtime cable television series Jeremiah, based on the comic of the same name. In the year 2021, 15 years after a virus kills everyone over the age of puberty, the child survivors have grown up, living on the scraps of the old world.
[edit] Novels
- The 1826 novel The Last Man by Mary Shelley
- The 1912 novella The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
- The 1949 novel Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
- The 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
- The 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, filmed as The Last Man on Earth (1964); The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007)
- The 1954 novel Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys
- The 1975 novel The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson
- The 1977 novel The Last Canadian (book by William C. Heine. The planet is decimated by a virus, as told through the eyes of one survivor.
- The 1977 novel Empty World (book by John Christopher. A virus wipes out the weak and the old, until the planet is populated by young teenagers only.
- The 1978 novel The Stand by Stephen King
- The 1982 novel The White Plague by Frank Herbert
- The 1984 novel Clay's Ark by Octavia Butler
- The 1985 novel Blood Music and the 1983 novelette of the same name by Greg Bear
- The 1989 novel Plague 99 by Jean Ure and its sequels Come Lucky April and Watchers at the Shrine
- The 1990 novel The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy. In the wake of a devastating worldwide plague, a handful of artists transform the City of San Francisco, and fend off marauders with a touch of magic.
- The 1990 novel A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren
- The 1992 novel The Children of Men by P.D. James
- The 1993 novel Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
- The 1998 novel Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt. Set 1000 years after a civilization-destroying plague.
- The 1999 novel The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen
- The 2001 novel The Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark (sequel to The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham)
- The 2001 novel Hole in the Sky by Pete Hautman
- The 2002 novel Year Zero by Jeff Long
- The 2003 novel Idlewild by Nick Sagan
- The 2003 novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- The 2003 novel Full Circle By Michael Boyle
- The 2003 novel trilogy Fire-Us
- The 2004 novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- The 2004 novel Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne
- The 2004 novel A Planet for the President by Alistair Beaton
- The 2004 novel White Devils by Paul McAuley
- The 2004-2007 series The Uglies Trilogy: Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and the companion novel, Extras by Scott Westerfeld, which takes place in a future civilization that arose after our current civilization collapsed because of an engineered bacterium that attacked not people, but oil, changing its chemical composition so that it exploded on contact with oxygen (first explained on p. 345 of Uglies)
- The 2006 novel Burning Stones by Steven Mills
- The 2007 novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
- The 2007 novel Quentel by Deric R Budendorf
- The 2007 novel Dead Sea by Brian Keene
- The 2007 novel Plague Year by Jeff Carlson (slated to be a trilogy)
- The Trilogy including Monster Island (2006), Monster Nation (2006), and Monster Planet (2007), by David Wellington
- The novelization of Resident Evil Extinction
[edit] Other
- The 1950 short story The City by Ray Bradbury
- The 1951 short story The Visitor (The Illustrated Man) by Ray Bradbury
- The 1998-present manga Eden: It's an Endless World by Hiroki Endo
- The 1999 video game Abomination: The Nemesis Project
- The 2000 game Deus Ex (in relation to the Gray Death)
- The 2001 role-play game After The Bomb
- The 2001-present webcomic Wandering Ones by Clint Hollingsworth
- The 2002-2008 comic series Y: The Last Man features a lone man & his monkey in a world populated only by women, series written by Brian K. Vaughan and published by Vertigo Comics
- The 2003-present comic series The Walking Dead follows a small group of people attempting to survive a zombie outbreak, series written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics
- The 2004 game Trauma Center: Under the Knife. An organization called Delphi uses man-made viruses to destroy the human race and especially doctors.
- The 2005-2006 comic series Marvel Zombies
[edit] Astronomic impact (meteorites)
[edit] Films
- The 1962 film The Day of the Triffids, based on the novel of the same name. In the film, the Triffids were aliens that arrived as spores in an earlier meteor shower.
- The 1979 film Meteor
- The 1984 film Night of the Comet. When a comet passes too close to earth, two girls are left amid mutants.
- The 1995 film Tank Girl. Loosely based on the comic by Jamie Hewlett
- The 1998 film Armageddon
- The 1998 film Deep Impact
[edit] Television
- The 1997 TV movie Asteroid
- The 1999 TV drama The Last Train (Cruel Earth in Canada) British TV six part drama.
- The 2006 TV series Three Moons Over Milford
[edit] Novels
- The 13th century novel Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis
- The 1932 novel When Worlds Collide by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer, and the 1951 and 2008 films of the same name.
- The 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham on what is initially thought to be a blinding meteor strike, but later suggested to be a manmade satellite based weapon accidentally discharged and the (bioengineered?) Triffid plants.
- The 1977 novel Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
- The 1997 novel Titan, by Stephen Baxter
- The 1998 novel Moonfall, by Jack McDevitt
- The 2001-present book series Remnants, by K.A. Applegate
- The 2002 novel The Visitor by Sheri S. Tepper
- The 2004 novel Earth, the New Frontier by Adam Celaya
- The 2004 novel Singularity by Bill DeSmedt, in which it turns out that a presumed meteor that struck the earth is in fact a microscopic black hole that entered the earth's crust, and never exited.
- The 2005 novel It's Only Temporary by Eric Shapiro
[edit] Other
- The 1956 short story "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber. A small family struggles to survive at near-zero temperatures after Earth is ripped from its solar orbit.
- The 1979-1980 anime series Mobile Suit Gundam, talks of the impact of a massive space colony on Earth.
- The 1980-1984 animated series Thundarr the Barbarian
- The 1996-1997 anime series After War Gundam X, sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam
- The 2000 console game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, a Nintendo 64 game where the main character, Link, has three days to save the world of Temrina from its moon that has broken from orbit.
- The 2001 console game Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, for PlayStation 2
- The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, which includes video games, short stories, and animated features, revolves largely around the fate of a planet which is ravaged by the impact a giant meteor/asteroid, summoned by magic.
- iD Software's new project, Rage, is set after a meteor collision with the Earth.
- Godzilla: Unleashed from Pipeworks, set in the post-apocalyptic earth in which earth has been destroyed by crystals.
- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin - With virtually all of humanity wiped out by a meteor strike, the game follows the exploits of an army of survivors, fighting bandit raiders and hostile armies across the planet's desolate remains.
[edit] Alien invasion
[edit] Films
- The 1953 film The War of the Worlds, based on the novel of the same name.
- The 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, based on the novel by Jack Finney
- The 1962 film The Day of the Triffids, based on a John Wyndham novel of the same name (in the novel, the Triffids seem to have been bioengineered on Earth, while in the film they were aliens who arrived as spores in a meteor shower).
- The 1988 film They Live
- The 1990 film I Come in Peace (also known as Dark Angel, directed by Craig R. Baxley
- The 1996 film Independence Day
- The 1996 film Mars Attacks!, based on the trading card series Mars Attacks (1962)
- The 2000 animated film Titan A.E.
- The 2001 CGI animated film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
- The 2005 film War of the Worlds directed by Steven Spielberg, along with the independent 2005 productions H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, all based on the H. G. Wells novel.
[edit] Novels
- The 1898 novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (also in several other media)
- The 1951 novel The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein
- The 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
- The 1956 novel The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch. Alien flora is seeded on Earth, and quickly comes to dominate all landmasses, threatening Human extinction.
- The 1979-1992 book series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (also in several other media)
- The 1980 novel Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard and the Razzie award winning film based on the novel
- The 1980 novella The Mist, by Stephen King
- The 1980 novel The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak
- The 1985 novel Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
- The 1987 novel The Forge of God by Greg Bear
- The 1996 novel The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski - aliens conduct a preemptive strike against humanity with relativistic missiles
- The 1997 novel Shade's Children by Garth Nix. "Overlords" destroy all human life over the age of 14.
- The 1998 novel The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg
- The Eight Worlds series, by John Varley
- The Outlanders series by Mark Ellis aka James Axler
- The Tripods series by John Christopher
- The Legacy Trilogy trilogy by Ian Douglas
[edit] Television
- The 1966 television series "The Invaders" Created by Quin Martin and Larry Cohen
- The 1970 television series "UFO" Gerry Anderson Production
- The 1978 television film and original television series Battlestar Galactica
- The 1983-1985 television series V
- The 1984-1985 series The Tripods, an adaptation of the first two books in the trilogy by John Christopher
- The 2006 Doctor Who episodes "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords"
[edit] Other
- The 1982-1983 anime series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its sequels
- The 1983-1984 anime series Genesis Climber Mospeada
- The 1986-1989 manga Outlanders, by Johji Manabe.
- The 1988 computer game Manhunter
- The 1995 console game Chrono Trigger, where modern civilization is at risk of being destroyed by an alien parasite in 1999 AD.
- The 1998 computer game Half-Life and its sequel
- The 1999 console game Chrono Cross, where in alternate time lines modern civilization was destroyed by an alien parasite in 1999 AD.
- The 2005 console game Destroy All Humans!, in which the player controls a Furon alien in an attempt to overthrow mankind.
- 2005-2006 Anime series Eureka Seven and its video games are set 10,000 years after humans had to leave the earth due to a Coralian appearing in Africa. In the current timeline, the remnants of humanity are now settled on a planet they refer to as the "Promised Land".
- The 2006 video game Gears of War, which portrays humans fighting a losing war against alien monsters that have emerged from underground.
- The 2007 computer game Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. In the midst of the Third Tiberium War, an alien faction known as the Scrin lands on Earth seeking the alien mineral Tiberium for themselves. The prequels suggest the apocalypse was actually caused by humans, though.
- The Halo video game series - An alien alliance called the Covenant begin attacking human colonies in 2525. By 2552, almost all of the human colonies are destroyed and the Covenant are attacking Earth.
- In Resistance: Fall of Man an alien species known as the chimera have almost wiped out the human race. The game focuses on taking a last stand in Britain.
[edit] Ecological catastrophe
[edit] Films
- The 1960 film The Last Woman on Earth by Roger Corman, where the Earth's oxygen levels drop suddenly, suffocating most life–survivors in an oxygen-producing jungle speculate that this happened because of "a bigger and better bomb" but the reasons are not made clear.
- The 1960 film Beyond the Time Barrier X-plane arrives in future after solar radiation catastrophe
- The 1961 film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where the Van Allen belt catches on fire.
- The 1964 film The Day the Earth Caught Fire Earth starts hurtling toward sun as a result of man's nuclear testing
- The 1972 film Silent Running directed by Douglas Trumbull
- The 1974 film Where Have All The People Gone? A solar flare destroys virtually all of the human population. One family has survived, and endeavours to travel across America to their family home.
- The 1975 film Logan's Run, in which a society chased into domes by an ecological disaster holds a ceremonial death ritual for all citizens who reach the age of 30 to control the population. A man who formerly helped control the population flees the domed city to avoid his own ceremony.
- The 1979 film Quintet directed by Robert Altman
- The 1986 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki based on the manga of the same name
- The 1989 film Slipstream, by Steven Lisberger
- The 1990 film Omega Cop After an environmental holocaust a lone cop battles a gang of rampaging marauders.
- The 1993 film The last border - viimeisellä rajalla by Mika Kaurismäki. One man's quest for revenge in a world where toxic waste has driven the remains of civilization into the Arctic Circle.
- The 1995 film Waterworld starring Kevin Costner
- The 2003 film It's All About Love written, directed and produced by Thomas Vinterberg
- The 2004 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 2005 film Serenity and 2002-2003 television show Firefly by Joss Whedon, in which the Earth's resources and biosphere get used up prompting mass exodus for the stars.
- The 2006 film The World Sinks Except Japan, a parody of Japan Sinks. All the land on earth sinks into the ocean, with Japan being the last to go. The sinking has something to do with tectonic plates.
- The 2008 film The Happening by M. Night Shyamalan depicts an unknown deadly neurotoxin.
[edit] Novels
- The 13th century novel Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis
- The 1901 novel The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel, in which a volcanic eruption flood the world with cyanide gas.
- The 1946 novel Mr. Adam by Pat Frank depicts a world in which a nuclear power plant explosion renders the entire male population infertile.
- The 1956 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 1961 novel The Wind From Nowhere by J.G. Ballard - First published novel. World destroyed by increasingly powerful winds
- The 1962 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 1962 novel The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard Climate change causes flooding.
- The 1962 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 1963 novel Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, in which all the water on Earth freezes
- The 1964 novel The Drought by J.G. Ballard A super drought evaporates all water on earth.
- The 1964 novel Greybeard by Brian Aldiss, in which the human race becomes sterile
- The 1965 novel A Wrinkle in the Skin (The Ragged Edge(US)) -John Christopher - Civilization destroyed by massive world-wide earthquakes
- The 1966 novel The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard Jungle in Africa starts to crystallize all life and expands outward
- The 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, which was made into a 1973 film Soylent Green directed by Richard Fleischer, showing a world where humanity had become massively overpopulated.
- The 1969 novel The Ice Schooner by Michael Moorcock which is set in a new ice age on earth
- The 1972 novel The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, in which the United States is overwhelmed by environmental irresponsibility and authoritarianism.
- The 1976 novel The HAB Theory by Allan W. Eckert, in which the stability of the Earth comes into question.
- The 1981 novel The Quiet Earth written by Craig Harrison and the film adaption by the same name
- The 1983 novel The Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle
- The 1984 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 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, in which the dystopia is fueled by rampant infertility caused by pollution.
- The 1986 novel Nature's End by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka.
- The 1991 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 1993 novel The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
- The 1993 novel Deus X by Norman Spinrad, the results of global warming
- The 1993 novel This Other Eden by Ben Elton in which the earths population is forced to live in Biodomes for 50 years while the environment recovers from mankind's actions.
- The 1995 novel Mother of Storms by John Barnes - where a tactical nuclear strike in the North Pacific releases massive amounts of methane, spawning world-wide super hurricanes.
- The 1995 novel Ill Wind (novel) by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason in which a microbe consumes all materials based on petroleum.
- The 1998 novel Aftermath by Charles Sheffield, in which Alpha Centauri goes supernova and causes cataclysmic climate change
- The 1998 novel Dust by Charles Pellegrino, in which all the insect species on Earth die out, and the ecology crashes as a result
- The 1999 novel The Rift by Walter Jon Williams.
- The 2003 novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- The 2003 novel Clade by Mark Budz
- The 2003 novel The Secret Under My Skin by Janet Mcnaughton, set in a period following a technocaust, when scientists were blamed for environmental disasters and taken to concentration camps.
- The 2004 novel Crache by Mark Budz
- The 2004 novel The Snow by Adam Roberts, in which the world is buried under kilometres of unnatural snow.
- The 2006 novel Small-Minded Giants by Oisín McGann
- The novels Children of Morrow and Treasures of Morrow by H. M. Hoover, set in California several centuries after pollution all but wiped out the human race
- 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.
- The novels Mara and Dann, Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog: A Novel by Doris Lessing Set in a future ice age. Other Lessing novels like Memoirs of a Survivor and Shikasta deal with apocalyptic themes.
[edit] Television
- The 1976-1979 TV series Ark II - pollution devastates humanity
- The 2003 television movie Encrypt
- The 2004 television movie Category 6: Day of Destruction where Chicago is suffering from a series of tornadoes from numerous changes occurring in the climate
- The Captain Planet two-parter Two Futures, in which the character Wheeler gets a glimpse of what could happen if damage to the environment was allowed to continue unchecked
[edit] Other
- The 1952 short story The Birds by Daphne du Maurier, made into the 1963 film The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock - in which birds begin launching spontaneous mass attacks against mankind
- The 1973 collection of short stories Flight of the Horse by Larry Niven
- The 1977 short story The Screwfly Solution tells the tale of a virus which turns males into female-hating psychopaths when sexually aroused.
- The 1986 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 1993 console game Secret of Mana takes place long after a time of environmental collapse that destroyed the world's older advanced civilizations.
- The 1994 console game Final Fantasy VI (named Final Fantasy III during initial American launch of the game) features a plot twist in where villain Kefka moves magical statues out of their intended alignment, which in turn causes the balanced fictional world to fall into ruin (and for Kefka to become its new god while protected by the powers of the same statues).
- The 1994-2006 Japanese manga series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō, set in a peaceful post-cataclysmic Japan, after an untold environmental disaster.
- The 1998-1999 anime series Cowboy Bebop in which a man made 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 2002 video game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, in which a flood has decimated the fictional world of Hyrule.
- The 2002-2003 anime series Overman King Gainer, which depicts humanity living in domes after an ecological disaster.
- The 2005 short story The Garden Where My Rains Grows by Brian Keene, set in a post-apocalyptic world where it started raining one day and never stopped.
- The 2005-2006 anime series Zoids: Genesis where an earthquake triggers a series of worldwide natural disasters that devastate Planet Zi.
- The 2005-present radio drama Nebulous by Graham Duff, in which much of the world was destroyed by an event known as "the Withering".
- The 2006 anime series Ergo Proxy by the Japanese production company Manglobe, in which an undefined global ecological disaster has decimated the surface of the Earth, and the small remaining human population lives in isolated, city-state dome complexes.
- The 2006 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.
- The Command & Conquer: Tiberian series of games in which a radioactive, self-replicating alien crystal known as Tiberium has rendered most of the Earth's surface uninhabitable.
- The game Dark Sun from TSR, Inc.
[edit] Cybernetic revolt
- See also: Cybernetic revolt
[edit] Literature
- The 1872 novel Erewhon's section 'The Book of Machines'
- The 1909 short story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster (emphasizing machinery instead of computers)
- The 1921 play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek
- The 1931 short story The War of the Giants by Fletcher Pratt
- the 1934 short story Rex by Harl Vincent
- the 1935 short story Nightmare Number Three by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The 1947 short story With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson
- The 1948 short story The Brain by Alexander Blade
- The 1951 The Last Revolution short story by Lord Dunsany
- The 1954 short story Slaves To The Metal Horde by Milton Lesser
- The 1954 short story Answer by Fredric Brown
- The 1963 comic books series Magnus, Robot Fighter by Gold Key Comics
- The 1966 novel Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones
- The 1967-2005 Berserker series by Fred Saberhagen
- The 1967 short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
- The 1967 The Cyberiad is a series of short stories by Stanisław Lem
- The 1968 novel The God Machine by Martin Caidin
- The 1969 novel Plan for Conquest by A.A. Glynn
- The 1971 Moderan series by David R. Bunch
- The 1972 novel Night of the Robots (aka Regiments of Night) by Brian N. Ball
- The 1985 novel The Adolescence of P-1 by Thomas J. Ryan
- The 1989 short story La Rebelión de los Robots in Spanish by Alberto I. Balcells
- The 1994 novel The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams
- The 1995 Comics Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith Great Droid Revolution
- The 1996 short story from Star Wars saga Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88 by Kevin Anderson
- The 1977-1996 Galaxy Express 999 manga series
- The 2003 Robota an illustrated book by Doug Chiang and Orson Scott Card
- The 2003-2004 Legends Of Dune trilogy (part of the Dune universe)
- The 2003 The Matrix comic books
- The 2004 manga Deus Vitaea series created by Takuya Fujima
- The 2005 book How to Survive a Robot Uprising a semi-satirical book by Daniel Wilson
- The 2005-2007 Lego Exo-Force comics and books
[edit] Cinema & TV
- The film Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution by Jean-Luc Godard
- The film I, Robot starring Will Smith. Title and some details taken from short stories by Isaac Asimov
- The film Colossus: The Forbin Project from the novel by Dennis Feltham Jones
- The Matrix series of films, especially "The Second Renaissance".
- The Terminator series of films
- Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, a television series that ran for one season.
- Cybermen, a cyber race in the British television series Doctor Who
- Omega Doom a 1996 film
- American Cyborg: Steel Warrior a 1992 film
- Screamers a 1995 film
- Gunhed or Ganheddo a 1989 film
- The Replicators from Stargate SG-1
- Lego Exo-Force a 2006 Television series
- The D-Reaper from Digimon Tamers
- Casshan, a 1973 anime series and 1993 OVA revision.
- a 2001 3D-CG Chinese animated TV series called Zentrix
- Galaxy Express 999 anime series, ovas and movie
- The Human Operators an episode of the new The Outer Limits TV series
- Resurrection an episode of the new The Outer Limits TV series
- Meet the Robinsons, the 'Helping Hats'
- Battlestar Galactica
- Starchaser: The Legend of Orin a 1985 animated movie
- Android Apocalypse a 2006 scifi tv film
- WOTAN the controlling computer in the Doctor Who 1966 series episode The War Machines
- Galerians: Rion a 2003 computer animated movie based on the PlayStation video game Galerians
- Moontrap a 1989 science fiction film
[edit] Gaming
- Earthsiege and sequels, from Sierra Entertainment.
- Neuroshima, the Polish role-playing game from Portal Publishing.
- I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream from Cyberdreams
- GURPS Reign of Steel a setting for the GURPS role playing system.
- Mega Man X series, a video game series created by Capcom and Keiji Inafune.
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun's expansion pack Firestorm from Westwood Studios.
- Deus Ex, which features, as part of its plot, a conflict between a Friendly AI and a non-friendly one
- System Shock by Looking Glass Technologies and its sequel System Shock 2, which also incorporates elements from Alien invasion theory.
- Galerians a PlayStation video game developed by Polygon Magic
- Descent 3 a PC game developed by Outrage Entertainment, which explains that mostly mining robots attacked by an unknown virus and now attacking people.
- the Choose Your Own Adventure book The Computer Takeover by Edward Packard
- The Mechanoid Invasion (and its source books, supplements and sequels) was the first role-playing game from Palladium Books, conceived and written by Kevin Siembieda.
- Splicers a role-playing game set in the midst of a war between humans and a world-wide computer intelligence.
- Gunlok is a squad based action adventure computer game developed by Rebellion.
- Planetarian: Chiisana Hoshi no Yume is a Japanese post-apocalyptic visual novel and video game.
- KKND2: Krossfire is the sequel to KKnD, as part of its plot, Series 9 are advanced farming robots that have taken it unto themselves to destroy all life.
- Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel as part of its plot, the AI Calculator a fusion of computers and human brains sent army of robots to attack the world.
- Too Human a video game currently under development by Canadian developer Silicon Knights.
- Red Alarm a game for the Nintendo Virtual Boy video game console.
- Vertical Force a vertical shoot-em-up scroller game, with two layers for Nintendo's Virtual Boy video game system.
[edit] Music
- The Flight of the Conchords song "Humans Are Dead"
- the Hazel O'Connor song The Eighth Day
[edit] 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 Camp of the Saints (1973) by Jean Raspail.
- The novel The Bridge (1973) by D. Keith Mano
- Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End
- The novel City (1952) by Clifford D. Simak
- Friday (novel) by Robert A. Heinlein, which portrays human society on a future Earth as slipping into a gradual, but inevitable, collapse.
- 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.
- Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
- The latter part of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
- The 1974 John Boorman film Zardoz
- The Japanese manga Biomega, NOiSE, Blame! and Net Sphere Engineer by Tsutomu Nihei
- The Japanese manga and anime The Big O, where humans apparently suffered mass amnesia 40 years prior and are afraid to leave their city, Paradigm. 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.
- The Cartoon Network/Adult Swim animated parody of the barbarian/post-apocalyptic genres, Korgoth of Barbaria
- The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King
- The 1979 Australian movie Mad Max depicts a declining civilization. The sequel suggests that peak oil is the cause.
- Michael Haneke's film Le Temps du Loup (The Time of the Wolf), following a family through the (French?) country side after an undefined catastrophic collapse of civilization.
- The movie A.I. depicts human extinction after 2000 years.
- The manga/anime series Wolf's Rain takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where constant conflicts between nobles leaves whole parts of the earth uninhabited, cities in ruins, and technology rare. Only the nobles possess futuristic ships, and the richest have domed cities where the debilitated earth can still support life. A second apocalypse ends the series, with a presumable renewing of the planet.
- The song In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans, which describes, stage by stage, the decline of the human race. Covers the 26th, 36th, 46th, 56th, 66th, 76th, 86th and 96th centuries.
- The television series The Future Is Wild, which uses computer animation to simulate the sort of creatures that may evolve from present-day animals. In the world depicted in the series, the human race either has become extinct or has left Earth. The reason is not given.
- The short story "To Serve The Master" By Philip K. Dick
- The 2006 film Children of Men, where the human race has become infertile.
- The 1984 film 1990:The Bronx Warriors In 1990 the Bronx is declared a No Mans Land after a catastrophic uprising.
- The 1997 film The End of Evangelion, in which all humankind are reverted to a "primordial soup" and merged into a single consummate being.
- The The House of the Dead series of video games. Scientist Dr. Curien finds a way to reanimate the dead, though not without disastrous results. Later in the series' timeline, Caleb Goldman uses the undead in his mission to destroy the human race and protect the Earth from further destruction by humans.
[edit] Monsters and biologically altered humans
- The 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham's, on a blinding meteor strike and the (bioengineered?) Triffid plants.
- Film Them! - desert nuclear tests create mutated gigantic ants - 1954
- The last two novels of James Herberts Rats Quadrilogy show how after a nuclear war, humanity is overthrown by mutated Giant Black Rats.
- The 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, filmed as The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007)
- The films Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), and Diary of the Dead (2008) by George Romero.
- "The Mist" by Stephen King, 1980
- The comic series Marvel Zombies
- The Walking Dead is a comic chronicling the story of survivors in a world overrun by zombies.
- The 2002 film 28 Days Later, and its 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later
- The 2002 film Reign of Fire, in which dragons take over
- The 2004 film version of Dawn of the Dead
- The 2005 anime series Trinity Blood involving a war between humans and vampires.
- The 2006 novel Cell by Stephen King
- The 2006 film Pulse, in which the world is overruned by Humanoid Ghosts, and everything is destroyed by them.
- The 2006 book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
- The Trilogy including Monster Island (2006), Monster Nation (2006), and Monster Planet (2007), by David Wellington
- The 2007 film Resident Evil: Extinction. In this third chapter of the game-based movie, a virus infects most of the Earth's population, turning them into zombies. The few survivors move away in armored groups, or hide underground.
- The 2007 anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, in which cloned "Beastmen" fight an apocalyptic battle with humanity.
[edit] 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, by Jack Vance
- The final two novels in Frank Herbert's Dune series, set after the disintegration of the Padishah Empire into many smaller factions.
- Dan Simmons's Endymion & The Rise of Endymion
- Few stories of Ray Bradbury Martian Chronicles mention catastrophe on earth
- 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
- Warhammer 40,000 tabletop, card and computer games are set in a far future after the fall of the Eldar, where mankind wars amongst many other races.
- Larry Niven's Ringworld, an expedition from earth to find a futuristic planet, a ring surrounding a star, results in the members finding that a meteor puncture in the ring's floor and power failure caused the cities to break apart and civilization to collapse.
- The Last Legionary series by Douglas Hill, in which a lone soldier fights to bring down the organisation which unleashed a deadly radiation against his planet, killing all his people and rendering the planet uninhabitable.
- The computer game Supreme Commander is set at the end of a thousand year long war, called the infinite war, between two separate factions of humans and a race of cyborgs.
- Homeworld- a small human civilization on the desert planet of Kharak on the far side of the Milky Way Galaxy is brought to the brink of extinction for violating a forgotten 5000-year old treaty forbidding them from developing hyperspace technology. The survivors, however, are fortunate to have the use of the recently-completed Mothership- a large colony vessel meant to take them back to their ancient and forgotten homeworld near the center of the galaxy, Hiigara. The game was succeeded by sequels Homeworld: Cataclysm and Homeworld 2.
[edit] The Sun's expansion
- The 1912 novel The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, in which the Sun burns out and the last of humanity is sheltered in an arcology from the hostile environment and the creatures adapted for it.
- The 1971 short story Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven.
- The 1976 novel A World Out of Time by Larry Niven
- 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.
- The comic series Just a Pilgrim by Garth Ennis
- The video game "Tetris Worlds"
- The poem "Darkness (poem)" by Lord Byron describes the end of life on earth after the sun's extinction.
- The movie "Last Night (film)" by Don McKellar, which follows the lives of several individuals as they cope with their final six hours on Earth before the apparent incineration of the Earth by the sun (the cause of the apocalypse is never directly stated).
- The short story "Finis" by Frank Lillie Pollock where a second sun's light incinerates the Earth.
- The 2007 movie, Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle. The film follows a spaceship crew in the year 2057 who are tasked with reigniting Earth's dying sun.
[edit] Religious and supernatural apocalypse (Eschatological fiction)
- The 1908 novel Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson.
- 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 Deadlands: Hell on Earth 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 novels Black Easter and The Day After Judgment by James Blish, in which a black magician brings about the end of the world by releasing all the demons from Hell.
- The Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz
- 1995. The sci-fi anime Neon Genesis Evangelion in which mankind's unearthing of a being known as Adam brings about Second Impact, a catastrophic shockwave which destroys Antarctica and subsequently leads to the extinction of thousands of organisms, the destruction of much of the civilized world, and the deaths of billions. Millions more die from the social and economic troubles which follow this impact and the ensuing wars.
- 2007-2008 . Rebuild of Evangelion- remake of the anime series. The first of the four films, Evangelion: 1.0- You are [Not] Alone, debuted in this year, with the second part, 2.0- Division, debuting in 2008.
- The film Prince of Darkness, directed by John Carpenter, in which all Hell breaks loose.
- The film The Rapture (1991)
- The 1989 novel The Dead, by Mark E. Rogers. Combines themes of the rapture and zombies.
- 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 manga and subsequent anime movies and TV series Silent Möbius by Kia Asamiya. The story is set in a Blade Runner-style world which has been invaded by demonic beings.
- 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.
- Hellgate: London – computer game released in 2007, where demons and humans are in constant struggle on earth.
- The Doom series of computer games, in which demons invade a human base on Phobos (changed to Mars in Doom 3) and then move on to Earth.
- Pulse – 2006 American film
- The Shadow of Yesterday role-playing game, in which the unification of all people in a fantasy world under a single, supernatural language results in the destruction of a world by what is presumed to be an asteroid that becomes that world's new moon, one that eclipses the sun for a week out of each month.
[edit] Social or economic collapse
- The 1954 short story The Last of the Masters by Philip K. Dick. 200 years after a global anarchist revolution, society has stagnated due to the loss of scientific knowledge during the revolt. Elsewhere, the last government, a highly centralized and efficient society, is in hiding from The Anarchist League, a global militia preventing the recreation of any government.
- The 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. American society slowly collapses after the country's leading industrialists mysteriously disappear.
- The 1990 novel Wolf and Iron by Gordon R. Dickson. A man and a wolf band together to survive in an America devastated by financial collapse.
- The video game Deus Ex: Invisible War. After total global economic collapse (an event known simply as 'The Collapse'), all religion is collected into one, which is in conflict with the new world order. Throughout the game, the player can choose to be on either side, affecting the game's outcome.
- The 1998 novel Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles (1998) is an apocalyptic survivalist novel about a total socio-economic collapse.
- The 2008 novel World Made By Hand by James Kunstler explores life in an agrarian village in upstate New York after America collapses under the combined trauma of plague, peak oil, global warming, and nuclear terrorism.
[edit] Unspecified phenomena
- The 1885 novel 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.
- The 1914 novel Darkness and Dawn by George Allan England, in which two characters wake from suspended animation and find that some great disaster has torn an enormous chasm in the Earth and created a second moon.
- The Starlost is a Canadian-produced science fiction television series devised by writer Harlan Ellison and broadcast in 1973 on CTV in Canada and on NBC in the United States.
- The 1975 novel Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany.
- The 1987 novel In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster.
- The BBC sitcom Red Dwarf (1988-1999), in which Dave Lister is the last human alive after being left in suspended animation for 3 million years. His only company is a member (presumably the last) of a race of Cat People which evolved from a housecat inside the titular Ship, a hologram of his former bunkmate and immediate superior Arnold Rimmer, the ship's senile computer Holly and later an android named Kryten. The setting implies mankind have gone extinct, though this is never proven, it is simply concluded by the characters that the human race must have gone extinct and/or evolved into a life form beyond humans during the 3 million years Dave was in suspended animation.
- The 1994 novel Vanishing Point by Michaela Roessner. Life in Silicon Valley 30 years after the mysterious and spontaneous disappearance of 90% of the world's population. The Winchester Mystery House ("The House") serves as a focal point for parallel universes and inexplicable energies that are changing the world and its post-Vanishing children.
- The novels Island in the Sea of Time (1998), Against the Tide of Years (1999), and On the Oceans of Eternity (2000) by S. M. Stirling, in which a cosmic disturbance of indeterminate cause transports the island of Nantucket and its surrounding waters backwards in time 3,000 years to the Bronze Age.
- The novels Dies the Fire (2004), The Protector's War (2005), The Meeting at Corvallis (2006), and The Sunrise Lands (2007) by S. M. Stirling, in which a disaster of indeterminate cause (most speculation within the novels concerns an all-powerful outside force, often facetiously referred to as "Alien Space Bats") causes electricity, combustion engines, and modern explosives to cease functioning.
- The 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
- The series of novels set in the world of Wraeththu by Storm Constantine, in which humanity is replaced as the planet's dominant species by a race of mystic hermaphrodites. War and plague ravage the human population, but no single cause is specified.
- The 1988 novel Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan, set in a cyberpunk world following a vaguely described natural cataclysm.
- Ongoing comic series 'Wasteland', takes place roughly 100 years in the future where North America is a dustbowl and lacking modern technology.
[edit] See also
- Apocalypse
- Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
- List of nuclear holocaust fiction
- Nuclear holocaust
- Nuclear weapons in popular culture
- World War III
- World War III in popular culture
- Zombie apocalypse
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Dodson, Eric (2003). Post-apocalyptic film and the post-modern apocalypse. State University of West Georgia.
- Quiet Earth - A website dedicated to post apocalyptic media
- Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction - online book by Paul Brians, Professor of English at Washington State University.
- Empty World: Apocalyptic and End of the World Fiction, Film and TV
- Surviving Armageddon: Beyond the Imagination of Disaster - article by Mick Broderick in Science Fiction Studies.