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

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Unless their spaceships get blown up on the way out. Oh, the irony! :)

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: Well, that's true, but I want to try and keep the prompts simpler than they are at the moment...

I'm after nothing less than planet-wide destruction (more, but not less)!

I think, looking at it again, everybody losing one sense/ability isn't end of the world either. It'd cause panic, but there's no reason for the world to end and people not to adapt.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

John Wyndham used worldwide blindness to pretty good apocalyptic effect in Day of the Triffids, though, as I recall. Along with the killer plants. Ooh, maybe killer plants should be on there, too!

[thisbluespirit]

I'm sure it could be, but I think when we're winnowing out things that need to be simple prompts for a multi-fandom bingo, a generic one that suggests everyone having x disability would end the world is going to be the first to go for several reasons.

Killer Plants, however, has to go in. Someone said something similar over on Dreamwidth, and I'd just got there myself: wait, no plants reclaim the world? Man-eating plants?

You're good with the snappy generics, can we keep you? (Evil Wins, Killer Plants... Whereas I keep winding up with sentences!)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, I can't exactly argue with that. :)

And, yeah, there's a lot of possibility in the killer plants! I remember one very fun SF novel in which a new strain of grass grows out of hand until it covers the entire planet. Also one with the flipside of that, in which all grasses get wiped out by plant plague, leading to massive famine because that includes corn and various grains... Which leads to me noticing that "worldwide famine" isn't on the list.

And it's entirely possible I may have exhausted my snappiness at this point, I'm afraid. :)

[thisbluespirit]

Yep, worldwide famine, or crop failure came up on Dreamwidth, too. :-)

I did have Horde of alien locusts, though. We do have quite a lot of varying ways to get to very similar points...

And it's entirely possible I may have exhausted my snappiness at this point, I'm afraid.

Aw, shame!

[clocketpatch]

I was definitely thinking of Day of the Triffids on that one. Can you guess the other ones? (hint, Children of [insert word here] gets to play twice)

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, I'll take the mass hysteria/madness as one - it's come up slightly differently elsewhere, but I think we've got so many to choose from we don't need ones that are so obviously problematic, nor that leave room for continued existence!!

(I@m in it for the total destruction, okay. Bleak cuts no ice with me if it doesn't end with death or inevitable death for all. ;-D)

[thisbluespirit]

Well, no, that's how people write it - I'm looking at the prompts we're getting here for starting points, that's all. And there are enough that I think we can stick to obvious scenarios of doom. What people do with it in their fic is up to them - as long as they feature that scenario and probably they shouldn't be allowed to rescue everyone as a general rule. It is a bit hard to write fic where everyone's already dead, unless you've got Death as a POV character (though that's always an option). :-)

So I was still just talking prompts. Fic is another matter. Although, I have to admit, I tend to write fairly humorous zombie apocalypses without any actual zombies, so maybe I can't comment really...

[thisbluespirit]

I haven't, I'm sorry, I'm just talking too much online and probably ceasing to make much sense. But I certainly don't mean to say anything about the way people should write the prompts.

There are just one or two I already think we can safely leave off the list, but once we're done with the post, I'll pm or email you the lot with my comments and then we can whittle them down and try and fix the names up between us. We're certainly not going to be short of enough prompts to make a mini-bingo!!

The difficult bit is going to be the ones that are obvious groups or subcategories and whether we clump them in together or separate them out.

Other than that, it should be just be fun. :-)

[thisbluespirit]

Awww. *pets*

I'm tired, too - there's been a lot of commenting for me the last few days, though it's all been very nice.

Goodnight, and sweet dreams of lemurs! ♥

[thisbluespirit]

Good! (I hope it wasn't apocalyptic!!)

And that's perfect - where did you find it?

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, yes, I agree. :-)

I didn't realise it came from the film you were watching - how useful! Although I'm very glad to hear it wasn't too depressing.