Apocalypse...how?

[thisbluespirit]

(I stole the title of this post from TV Tropes, but it was hard to resist). Anyway, seriesfive and I are going to run an Apocalypse mini-bingo! Soon/soon-ish!

So, first off, how many ways of ending the earth/a planet/universe are there? Flist, we need your help!

Via Wikipedia, TV Tropes, my own head, various SF novels and the inventive heads of other people, we have a list as follows:

War
Pandemic
Zombies
Environmental disaster - could be broken down further: fire, tidal wave, ice age, rising water levels, tsunamis, tornadoes, loss of atmosphere etc.
Alien attack
Nuclear holocaust
Meteor strike/Planet knocked out of orbit
exhaustion of planetary resources
second coming/horseman of the apocalypse/prophecy
end of the universe
over/under population
victory of the Dark Side
entropy
Horde of alien locusts
omnicidal maniac
apocalypse cultists
Gaia's Revenge/Earth takes vengeance
robots/androids take over/attack
technology takes over/attacks/renders humanity unnecessary
vampires
hostile terraforming
doomsday device/megabomb
supernova/stellar disaster
human incompetence
Evil wizards/Wizards' War
Time loops
Endless winter
Return of the Old Gods
EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse)
Dystopian government without end
Erased from Reality
Psychic Storms
Assimilated By Alien Group-Mind/Achievement of the Singularity
Computer program developed that writes the true name of God
Ragnarok
Demons/Angels
return of the (cloned) dinosaurs
hell/heaven on earth

So, what have we missed, which prompts could be combined into one square, and what would be the best names for the tropes/prompts? What do you think? (Please, do link this post around - we'd like to gauge interest as well as get people's thoughts on this.)

(We're thinking mini-bingo - 3x3 squares, probably. People will be able to have vetoes, so it's okay to have some fairly specific scenarios in the above list, although obviously most would need to be reasonably generic.)

This is just an extremely rough list as yet - many things are probably badly phrased, and not everything has to be included in the final list. If you object to either phrasing or a scenario, that's one of the things we want to know about here and why we're making this post, but please be nice to everybody when discussing the impending apocalypse, or comments will be screened or deleted. Thank you.

Comments

[purplecat]

Genetically engineered plants/animals take over

Possibly covered by Environmental Disaster but John Christopher's Death of Grass has the apocalypse brought about by a virus that destroys all grain crops (wheat and rice) and leaves everyone to fight it out over potatoes - World Wide Crop Failure would probably be a good prompt anyway...

[purplecat]

Time Stops

Mass Delusion/Hypnosis/Magically unable to see the truth/Everyone being used as batteries by machines

Technology/Electricity stops working/Can't be Used/Won't be Used

[purplecat]

Ancient Race reawakens and wants their World Back

Interdimensional Rifts

Temporal Rifts

Demolished to make way for a Hyperspace Bypass

[purplecat]

Ancient Prophesy of Doom

Worldwide Infertility (possibly covered by under-population above)

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! Lots of great ones there. :-)

I shall add them to the list, and there's a couple here which got suggested over on LJ, too.

[gillo]

Constantly occupied and resource-stripped by alien armies who barely notice the planet is inhabited.

Our universe is sucked into a demon dimension when an evil god opens a rift between worlds. (Glory in Buffy)

Bereaved witch destroys the planet out of grief and suicide impulse. (Willow in Buffy)

The sun goes out. (Byron!)Earth sucked into a black hole.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, yes, there are some good ones in there. Buffy is such a fruitful source of multiple apocalypses, of course. ;-)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nice list! A little rough, but nice. Although I'm wondering what exactly "victory of the Dark Side" means in practice. And I think maybe Arthur C. Clarke is the only one who could get away with "Computer program developed that writes the true name of God." :)

Astronomy geek that I am, I might add "nearby Gamma Ray Burst," but, a) that's probably too obscure for most people, and b) perhaps could come under the heading of "stellar disaster," anyway.

[thisbluespirit]

Victory of the Dark Side was my best stab at a fantasy fandom apocalypse - where the "dark" side, or dark lord/whatever wins. It needs work on the phrasing, but that was the most self-explanatory I came up with yesterday.

Obviously not that self-explanatory at all... :loL:

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy!

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: I know, I know!

[eve11]

Oh, how about

--Planet Eating Spaceships. Wasn't there a Star Trek story with those?
--Von Neumann machines (could be subsetted in with 'technology takes over', 'Ice-IX' type scenarios, or basic 'replicators')
--Something Achieves Sentience

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! :-)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a Star Trek story with those?

"The Doomsday Machine." Yes. :)

[clocketpatch]

(I love that you're doing this)

- Mass migration (everyone just leaves)
- Super volcano(s) erupt
- Infertility/everyone of X gender dies
- Everyone goes blind (or deaf, or mute, etc.)
- The children are possessed
- Everyone goes mad overnight

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: Thanks - there's some interesting ones in there! I'm not about Mass Migration - it does leave an empty planet, but everybody survives, which isn't on... ;-D

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

Under environment let's have world consumed by garbage too - the Wall-E apocalypse, if you like.

Meteor strike/planet knocked out of orbit should have unfortunate comets too - how about just 'astronomy disasters'. Or does that sound too weird. Doom from space?

Morlocks and Eloi - humanity diverges into two species, both fatally weakened?

As well as time loops, how about the end of time itself?

Cyclical apocalypse (ie moving on to a new phase - taking this from wiki on Buddhist belief: a "sword-interval," in which swords appear in the hands of all human beings, and they hunt one another like game", but a few survive, and a new age begins. Similar cyclical beliefs in Hinduism.)

How about Revelation? Too touchy? But there's one hell of a lot of source material for an apocalypse there. Seven headed beasts, four horsemen and all (and can we have the four horsemen at least - the Discworld and/or Good Omens Apocalypse?)

I am having so much too much fun with this. So much.

[thisbluespirit]

I am having so much too much fun with this. So much.

:loL: And why not?

I think comets/meteor strike etc needs to be one prompt, and if I can't think of a snappier phrase, I'll stick with meteor strike and explain definitions or something.

Someone left "Time Stops" over on Dreamwidth, which I really like - but actually that isn't quite the same as "End of Time" and both are very good.

I've got the second coming/horsemen of the apocalypse/prophecy up there. I don't think you can really ignore it as an option.

I really like your suggestions, though - thanks! :-)

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

I love that you have all of LiveJournal outlining their favourite ways of wiping out mankind. Genocide, the internet's favourite hobby. ;)

Also, the talk of Horsemen pleases my inner Highlander fan. Methos isn't too sure about killing everybody, but Kronos is all but bouncing up and down with glee. I think he'd like you to add "sword-wielding maniac" to your list. One against seven billion is good odds, apparently...

[thisbluespirit]

It's not really all that many of us, just a few who are worryingly enthusiastic.

I don't think sword-wielding maniac will quite do it, though I'm sure I have an omnicidal maniac that he could come in under, or a Rogue Superbeing/magic user?

:-)

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

Everyone stops procreating for whatever reason?

[thisbluespirit]

Good one! Thanks. :-)

[tardis-stowaway.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this is a fun list.

You're missing the apocalypse we're actually in the process of bringing about: climate change/global warming.

It's related to resource depletion and population growth and causes rising sea levels, which are already on the list, but I think it deserves its own item. While I think climate change is more likely to bring about a drastic decline in living standards and large but not civilization-destroying numbers of deaths rather than a full-fledged apocalypse, I think its worst-case scenario belongs here. I guess you could argue that "human incompetence" covers it, but incompetence is really only one reason we're in this mess.

Uh, that was maybe too serious for a ficathon. Other suggestions!
-wish(es) gone awry
-Grey Goo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo), a subtrope of the technology attacks scenario in which self-replicating nanobots consume all other matter to make more of themselves
-the Universe exists in a dream. The dreamer wakes up. (Related: the Universe is a story that ceases when no one believes it.)

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, thanks - some good ones there!

The gobal warming/climate change is included in Environmental Disasters - all the things that may or may not result from it, plus loss of atmosphere, but, yep! :-)

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

You seem to have many, many options going there. :-)

[thisbluespirit]

I know - it's either wonderful, or a bit worrying, really. ;-)

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

Wow, now that's wholesale destruction. Good grief! ::makes note to never let Lost Spook be in charge of the world::

I should think you could combine all the living creatures into one square though Cloned Dinosaurs would also fit under Technology Did It (or whatever name you give that square). You've probably already got that suggestion though. I also think people who are into Apoca-fic are going to love your mini bingo! I hope you get lots of people joining in.

[thisbluespirit]

Now, you mustn't confuse fiction with reality. If I ruled the world, it wouldn't go well, but the only scenario that I would bring from the above would be "human incompetence".

Thanks! I think there's a reasonable amount of interest just here, so when we start pimping it about, we should get a reasonable number of people, I think. We'll see. It doesn't really matter, anyway! :-)

[corngold.livejournal.com]

This looks like a tonne of fun! I'm actually a little bummed that my fandom takes place in outer space, which makes the idea of apocalypse fic somewhat daunting/problematic - though think of the potential for COSMIC DESTRUCTION. (Actually that was what 'Star One' was sort of about, wasn't it?)

Anyway, fantastic idea, and I'm really pleased you're doing it! Even though I can't quite see my way to participating...I would, though. :)

[thisbluespirit]

There is always room for cosmic destruction (there are a few - stellar disasters, end of the entire universe, entropy, time stops, time loops, time goes backwards and probably more that could be applied. Not to mention that destruction of the planet we happen to be on would count. And I should think, discovery of worlds which have been destroyed (which is v B7 anyway).

:-)

[lolmac]

I didn't see if the Children of Men scenario had been added: human fertility drops to nothing, no new children born, everyone dies of old age. (This is from the book, which I read and admired, not the movie, which I studiously avoided.) (ETA: D'oh! Of course it had already been suggested.)

Also:

widespread food shortages --> famine --> cannibalism

widespread industrial poisoning --> significant irreversible global drop in intelligence --> mass die-off from teh stupid

downward spiral of quality of life --> widespread nihilism --> mass suicide

true nature of afterlife discovered --> mass suicide because it's so much nicer there

sentience achieved by some other species (apes, dolphins, sharks, squid, kittens) --> humanity loses global dominance/wiped out/enslaved/kept as pets/used as ploughhorses/made into puppy chow

And, of course:

invasion of ninja penguins battling their deadly enemies, the bonsai giraffes --> humanity caught in crossfire & wiped out

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! Some very good ones there. (And, incidentally, an exceptionally nasty little collection; I may need to hide behind the ninja penguins! ;-p)

I had been going through them yesterday and had been playing around with "mass suicide" type ideas, but I don't like that as an actual prompt. (I got the perfect/immortality achieved idea (=humanity loses will to live/dies of boredom/oversophistication) and I'd been wondering about nihilism. I think if I do a "mass nihilism" prompt that covers most of the mass suicide bases quite well, also taking in more passive loss of will to live, so not necessarily active leming scenarios.)

Cannibalism. Oh my (personal squick) but, yeah, that does need to go in. *adds it to the list*

I hadn't thought of Mass Stupidity, but I think I might have it generically covered with regression/devolution. (I'm trying to render all these prompts back into reasonably generic starting points.)

(Excuse the incidental working out going on here. I'm mainly talking to myself; you just happened to be here...)