Most horrifying fictional apocalypse.

[WindKnight]

A rather repulsive amateur fiction circle created a shared universe to set all their stories in where the majority of men and all livestock are wiped out by a virus.

The result? Women are figuratively and literally cattle. 'Used' while their 'hot', killed and eaten when their not.

One of those things that makes you wonder just what the f*** is wrong with people.

 

[Subatomic]

The "Thoughtpocalypse" depicted in the episodes Epitaph One and Epitaph Two of Dollhouse. The imprinting technology used in the series (which basically allowed reprogramming and storing of personalities) had been unleashed as a weapon - phone calls reprogramming people to kill everyone who's not imprinted, the wealthy and powerful using other people's bodies as backup copies, EMP-like weapons used to turn whole populations into mindless killing machines etc.

 

[Asita]

A rather repulsive amateur fiction circle created a shared universe to set all their stories in where the majority of men and all livestock are wiped out by a virus.

The result? Women are figuratively and literally cattle. 'Used' while their 'hot', killed and eaten when their not.

One of those things that makes you wonder just what the f*** is wrong with people.

...I'm almost scared to ask, but why just women? Ultimately it's cannibalism and that's unsustainable in the long term as a main source of sustenance unless additional circumstances (such as a VERY efficient (read: near cold-fusion level of efficiency) cloning method, for the sake of example) are added, and dividing along gender lines like that seems even more short-sighted. The very concept confuses me.

 

[ninjaRiv]

I wouldn't like it if Cthulu started fucking shit up... But remorseless, thoughtless killing things is something that scares the shit out of me. Things without reason like viruses. And Cthulu.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'm going to go with...

Spoiler: A race of sentient, empathy-less machines destroying any and all life it sees purely for the sake of keeping order

I mean seriously. It's one thing to have otherwise violent, hostile monsters destroying everything out of disgust or viciousness, but when the harbinger of our destruction actually thinks it's helping us, that's a particularly frightening thought.

No, the particularly frightening thought is when the harbinger of our destruction won't even notice we were there.

That's the real root of cosmic horror, of which the Reapers are just a pale reflection. Ancient, unfathomable, unimaginable powers to which the entirety of human endeavour is of less consequence than the millions of bacteria you kill when you wash your hands.

 

[Gunner 51]

The most horrible thing way the world can end. Nuclear War.
If you've ever seen Threads all the way though - you will know that the ones who get roasted alive / crushed by their own houses outside the blast zone are the really lucky ones.

Even after the nuclear winter, children will either be born sterile, cancerous, deformed or all of the above. In essence, humanity will end not with a roaring blast, but fade away crying and wimpering.

Nukes are very, very bad things.

 

[RJ 17]

I'll go with Invasion of the Nano-Bots.

I think this is better shown than described:

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Yahtzee's JAM...

"I woke up one morning to find the entire city had been covered in a three-foot layer of man-eating jam"

If you've not read it, go get it.

That was my first thought too. It's got all the worst qualities of the zombie apocalypse (everywhere is unsafe, it gathers where you are, resource depletion) with the inability to fight back or escape in any reasonable way and knowledge that one tiny mistake will absolutely kill you instantly and leave almost no trace of you behind.

Or, as other people have mentioned, the various W40K apocalypses. From the Tyranids devouring everything for biomass to Chaos plunging the universe into screaming eternal nightmares, it seems like there is no way to win, only your choice of horrible options when you lose.

 

[Kevin Lyons]

I would hate to think of an apocalypse that wouldn't be recorded in anybody's memories. An apocalypse which, in an instant, wipes out all life on earth. One such as the sun reaching critical mass and wiping itself out, the Earth along with it.
It's scary to think that millenia of cultural and societal growth can be wiped out of existence without so much as a glace from anybody else.
But this is to think of "the end of a culture," rather than "the end of the world." If mankind, or some other culture affiliated with mankind, were to survive after this "apocalypse," it wouldn't be as bad, considering that Man had made its mark somewhere else, and wouldn't simply disappear from existence.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The soda apocalypse.


Also, steam rollers.

 

[Silvanus]

I had to think for a few minutes, but I'm definitely, certainly going with 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream', by Harlan Ellison.

Spoiler: Don't open for plot unless you want to depress yourself.

In the recent past, the Westerners created a computer to run the war against the East. The Easterners did the same. The two computers merged into a single AI called AM (as in, 'I think, therefore I AM').

The AI does not want to wipe out humanity. Built for hate, hate is all that defines and drives it, so AM kills all but five of the humans on earth. The remaining five live deep within the earth, their cave-like environment artificially generated by the computer. They live forever, they cannot kill themselves, they life to suffer-- They are the sole outlet for AM's loathing, both of itself and of humanity.

 

[Madgamer13]

Most horrifying apocalypse? Zombie, virus and so forth are simply too common nowdays to warrant any reaction from me beyond: here we go again.

How about an apocalyptic threat? One so powerful and pervasive that it upsets the status quo. Here is an example:

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Yep, it's time to argue about this kind of thing again. What is the worst way in fiction in which the world has kicked the bucket?

Personally, I'm betting for SCP's version of the apocalypse. In short, everything that the SCP has been trying to keep locked away for humanities safety gets out.

Spoiler

See, that's bad. There's tons of apocalyptic fiction that centres around something escaping. The t-virus escaping from a lab, cthulhu rising from ry'leh, Alduin escaping from...whereever the hell he was, that wasn't explained very clearly, was it?

But just one keter level artifact escaping would be bad, possibly apocalyptic, at least just as destructive as the t-virus. In SCP's apocalypse, almost every single one gets out. Think about that. Let's start with the biohazards. The zombie virus, the flesh that hates, which basically turns everything into a silent hill monster, only with less metaphor, the goddamn clockwork virus, no prizes for guessing that one, to name only a few. Then the monsters. The sculpture, which is essentially a weeping angel, 682 AKA hard to destroy reptile, and a personal favourite, the plague doctor, all of which could rack up a bodycount far higher than most of the world's major serial killers altogether.

Then there's the safe artifacts, which wouldn't harm anyone. On purpose, at least.

So yeah. Fucking bad. Pandora's box mk 2.

i call dips on the soda machine ( SCP-294) that can give you everything thats liquid (GOLD, Immortality portion etc.)

ITS MINE NOW!

go, see return of the living dead and shit your pants when it comes true

Yeah, about the immortality one...

It doesn't always listen, more complex ones are only handed out (such as one request for medical knowledge to save a downed guard) when it is the machine is actively threatened or material for it are plentiful. So, yeah, immortality is out.

If it does give it to you, you may end up like these guys instead: http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-910

 

[Froggy Slayer]

Probably whatever the hell is waiting for us in the writings of HP Lovecraft.

Otherwise, I would say Warhammer 40k, but that manages to be so balls-to-the-wall crazy awesome at the same time that the terrifying aspect is kind of negated.

 

[zumbledum]

Terminator for me.
Nuclear apocalypse then hunted by remorseless relentless killing machines, if your lucky you dont end up in a processing plant /shudder

 

[Scarim Coral]

Do I dare say urotsukidoji? (Don't asked me more about it, it's really awful.) Eventhought I'm a guy (just that the females in that apocalypse suffer the worse fate unless there are monsters that swing the other way) but I'm sure as hell I never want to lived in that nightmare hell hole.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I'd say it's a toss up between the Flood from Halo and the Tyrannids from 40k. They both fall under the same category of all-consuming lifeforms whose only purpose is to consume and reproduce, although the Flood I find are much more unsettling as the spores basically hijack the victim's body and horribly disfigure it, leaving a shambling corpse basically, while the Tyrannids just kill everything off and then eat it.

 

[WindKnight]

A rather repulsive amateur fiction circle created a shared universe to set all their stories in where the majority of men and all livestock are wiped out by a virus.

The result? Women are figuratively and literally cattle. 'Used' while their 'hot', killed and eaten when their not.

One of those things that makes you wonder just what the f*** is wrong with people.

...I'm almost scared to ask, but why just women? Ultimately it's cannibalism and that's unsustainable in the long term as a main source of sustenance unless additional circumstances (such as a VERY efficient (read: near cold-fusion level of efficiency) cloning method, for the sake of example) are added, and dividing along gender lines like that seems even more short-sighted. The very concept confuses me.

The writers were more concerned with addressing their particular fetish/issues than actual logic. Lets face it, in order to have their scenario work, we have men being greatly outnumbered by women, but the women just going along with the oppressors plans like the cattle their being treated as.

At the risk of making sweeping statements, the general impression I got was the authors didn't get on too well with the opposite gender.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I had to think for a few minutes, but I'm definitely, certainly going with 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream', by Harlan Ellison.

Spoiler: Don't open for plot unless you want to depress yourself.

In the recent past, the Westerners created a computer to run the war against the East. The Easterners did the same. The two computers merged into a single AI called AM (as in, 'I think, therefore I AM').

The AI does not want to wipe out humanity. Built for hate, hate is all that defines and drives it, so AM kills all but five of the humans on earth. The remaining five live deep within the earth, their cave-like environment artificially generated by the computer. They live forever, they cannot kill themselves, they life to suffer-- They are the sole outlet for AM's loathing, both of itself and of humanity.

You beat me to it. Bar none the freakiest apocalyptic vision I've ever read or seen.