Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
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.
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] It has, however, also been claimed that disaster - and post-disaster scenarios have a longer tradition in Japanese culture, and are related to the
earthquakes that repeatedly have devastated Japanese cities.
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..
* The comics franchise
Judge Dredd, first popularized in 1977 by
John Wagner,
Carlos Ezquerra and
Pat Mills* The 1933 novel
The Shape of Things to Come by
HG Wells, predicting an extended WWII, societal upheaval, and the beginning of space travel. Filmed as
Things to Come in 1936
* The 1956 film
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
* The 1959 movie
The World, the Flesh and the Devil
* The 1959 novel Alas, Babylon about the aftermath of nuclear war
* The 1961 novel Dark Universe by Daniel F. Galouye
* The 1962 short film La Jetée by Chris Marker
* The 1978 anime series Future Boy Conan by Hayao Miyazaki. Supermagnetic WMDs devastate Earth and causes virtually all land to be sumberged underwater.
* The 1982 TV miniseries World War III with Rock Hudson
* The 1982 film Human Highway
* The 1983 film The Day After about the effects of nuclear war on a Kansas town
* The 1984 movie Red Dawn
* The 1988 novel The Last Ship by William Brinkley
* The German novel Die Letzten Kinder Von Schewenborn by Gudrun Pausewang
* The Japanese manga (and subsequent anime adaptations) Appleseed by Masamune Shirow
* The Japanese manga and 1988 anime film Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
* The Japanese anime series Saikano
* The Japanese film Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki
* The Japanese film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
* The TV series and film Whoops Apocalypse
* The Role-playing game Gamma World from TSR, Inc., the makers of Dungeons & Dragons
* The computer game Deus Ex: Invisible War features a possible ending with an apocalypse of sorts - see the end of this paragraph
* The computer role-playing game Fallout series
* The computer role-playing game Land of Devastation (a BBS Door)
* The visual novel Planetarian
* The anime/manga series Fist of the North Star
* The book By the Waters of Babylon
by Stephen Vincent Benet
* The book Mortal Engines
by Philip Reeve, with the 60 second war
* The book series Deathlands by James Axler, set a hundred years after a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and USSR in 2001 destroys most of the world
* The book series Shannara Series by Terry Brooks, set after WWIII destroys all technology and warps the human race into other species
* The comic book series V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
* The computer role-playing game Wasteland
* The film Day the World Ended
* The film Le Dernier Combat (aka The Last Combat), directed by Luc Besson
* The film Radioactive Dreams
* The film Sexmisja, a Polish comedy
* The film Six-String Samurai
* The film Testament
* The film The War Game by Peter Watkins
* The film Threads BBC docu-drama showing nuclear war
* The film Wizards by Ralph Bakshi about a good wizard and his evil brother some two millennia after Armageddon
* The film series Planet of the Apes, based on the novel Monkey Planet by Pierre Boule
* The film trilogy Mad Max
* The movie Cherry 2000
* The movie City Limits
* The movie Def-Con 4
* The movie Delicatessen
* 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
* The movie Hell Comes to Frogtown
* The movie Miracle Mile
* The movie Steel Dawn, post-Road Warrior ultra-low budget film
* The movie Stryker, derivative of Road Warrior
* The movie The Blood of Heroes
* The movie World Gone Wild
* The movies Cyborg and Cyborg 2
* The novel Gibbon's Decline and Fall
by Sheri S. Tepper
* The novel Star Man's Son
by Andre Norton
* The novel 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
* The novel A Canticle for Leibowitz and its sequel Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
, both by Walter M. Miller, Jr
* The novel Apokalipsa wedlug Pana Jana by Robert J. Szmidt
* The novel Children of The Dust by Louise Lawerence
* The novel Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny, and a movie made from it
* The novel Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick in collaboration with Roger Zelazny
* The novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, filmed as Blade Runner
* The novel Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham of the last plane out of a fall-of-Saigon-like New York City
* The novel Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb by Philip K. Dick
* The novel Emergence by David R. Palmer
* The novel Fail-safe by Eugene Burdick, the movie of the same name, and the television live-action play Fail-Safe
* The novel Farnham's Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein
* The novel Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson
* The novel Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald
* The novel Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and the film based on it
* The novel Malevil by Robert Merle
* The novel On The Beach by Nevil Shute and the films based on it
* The novel Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov. (A later book, Robots and Empire, gave a different explanation)
* The novel Pulling Through by Dean Ing
* The novel Red Alert by Peter George and Dr. Strangelove, the Stanley Kubrick movie made from that novel
* The novel Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
* The novel Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
* The novel The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
* The novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
* The novel The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
* The novel The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick
* The novel The Postman by David Brin and the 1997 movie of the same name
* The novel The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick
* The novel This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow
* The novel Time Capsule (novel) by Mitch Berman
* The novel Warday (novel) by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka
* The novel series The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley
* The novel series The Horseclans by Robert Adams
* The novel series The Survivalist by Jerry Ahern, first novel Total War
from 1981
* The novel series The Traveler by D. B. Drumm, first novel First, You Fight
from 1984
* The novel series and anime films Vampire Hunter D, set ten thousand years after a nuclear war occurs in 1999
* The novel trilogy The
Greatwinter Trilogy by Sean McMullen
* The novels Masters of the Fist and The Long Mynd by Edward P. Hughes
* The novels The Chrysalids (U.S. title: Re-Birth
) and The Outward Urge by John Wyndham
* The role-playing game Neuroshima from Portal Publishing
* The role-playing game The Morrow Project from Timeline Ltd
* The role-playing game Twilight: 2000 from Game Designer's Workshop
* The screenplay-novel Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley
* The series Hungry City Chronicles by Phillip Reeve
* The series The Pelbar cycle by Paul O. Williams
* The short story Autobahn nach Poznan
by Andrzej Ziemianski
* The short story Dear Devil
by Eric Frank Russell
* The short story Let The Ants Try
by Frederik Pohl under the pseudonym James MacCreigh
* The short story Magic City
by Nelson S. Bond
* The short story Second Variety by Philip K. Dick
* The short story and 1975 film A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
* The webcomic Post-Nuke that takes place in a nuclear winter
* 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"
* The novel The Steel, The Mist and The Blazing Sun by Christopher Anvil
* The role playing game 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.
* 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 1954 novel
I Am Legend by
Richard Matheson, filmed as
The Last Man On Earth (1964) and
The Omega Man (1971)
* The 1954 novel
Some Will Not Die by
Algis Budrys* The 1975-1977
BBC television series
Survivors by
Terry Nation* The 1978 novel
The Stand by
Stephen King, and 1994 miniseries
Stephen King's The Stand* The 1980 Japanese film
Fukkatsu no Hi also known as
Virus, directed by
Kinji Fukasaku* The 1982 novel
The White Plague by
Frank Herbert* The 1985 novel
Blood Music and the 1983 novelette of the same name by
Greg Bear* The 1992 novel
The Children of Men by
P.D. James* The 1995 film
Twelve Monkeys directed by
Terry Gilliam* The 1999-2003 New Zealand television series
The Tribe* The 2002 TV movie
Smallpox* The 2002 film
28 Days Later* The 2002-2004
Showtime cable television series
Jeremiah, based on the comic of the same name
* The 2003 novel
Idlewild by
Nick Sagan* The 2003 novel
Oryx and Crake by
Margaret Atwood* The 2003 novel
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
* The 2004 film version of
Dawn of the Dead* The
manga Eden: It's an Endless World by Hiroki Endo
* The comic series
Marvel Zombies* The 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* The novel
A Gift Upon the Shore by
M.K. Wren* The novel
A Planet for the President by
Alistair Beaton* The novel
Eternity Road by
Jack McDevitt* The novel
Plague 99 by
Jean Ure* The novel
The Day of the Triffids by
John Wyndham* The novel trilogy
Fire-Us* The short story
The City by
Ray Bradbury* The short story
The Visitor by
Ray Bradbury* The webcomic
Wandering Ones by Clint Hollingsworth
* 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 1999 British TV six part drama
The Last Train (
Cruel Earth in Canada)
* 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 PS1 video game
Chrono Cross, where in alternate time lines modern civilization was destroyed by an
alien parasite in
1999 AD.
* The
video game Destroy All Humans!, in which the player controls a Furon alien in an attempt to overthrow mankind.
* 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
* The custom StarCraft Campaign Legacy of the Confederacy Episode 1: Past Purposes'', though episode 2 is decidedly different portraying an advanced earth civilisation bent on revenge on the zerg for their invasion of earth.
* 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 "
Category 6: Day of Destruction" 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 aquifercurses 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 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, 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 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 mankinds actions.
* The anime Zoids: Genesis where an earthquake triggers a series of worldwide natural disasters that devastate Planet Zi.
* The novel Mother of Storms'' (1995) by
John Barnes - where a tactical nuclear strike in the North Pacific releases massive amounts of methane, spawning world-wide super hurricanes.
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
Colossus: The Forbin Project (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
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad,
Dune: The Machine Crusade, and
Dune: The Battle of Corrin.
* 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 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.(See also
Neon Genesis Evangelion)
* The
Cartoon Network/
Adult Swim animated parody of the barbarian/post-apocalyptic genres,
Korgoth of BarbariaAfter 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 OliverThe 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 NivenReligious 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
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
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
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.
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
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 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
Manifold: Time 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
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "
Encounter at Farpoint" depicts one aspect of the "post-atomic horror"; the film
Star Trek: First Contact takes place about a decade after the war and depicts one pocket of civilization living in a camp in
Montana, and the
Star Trek: Enterprise 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
Godzilla: Final Wars, 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.
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[
1].
* 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 Conjunction 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.
* The "
X-Men" story arc "
Age of Apocalypse" features a devastated alternate timeline.
*
Timeline of fictional future events*
Apocalyptic literature*
Cosy catastrophe*
Doomsday event*
Doomsday film*
Dying Earth subgenre*
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.
