Most horrifying fictional apocalypse.

[Doclector]

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.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I agree wit the SCP comment from the OP. SCP is terriying in it's own right, and an apocalypse by the creatures and...things escaping is just a really scary image. I also don't like the idea of a bio-apocalypse to be honest. I have a fear of those diseases that spread rapidly. It's just scary to think what they can do, ya know?

 

[Kopikatsu]

The world as depicted in A Brave New World. Fuck that place. (I consider it to have been an apocalypse because of how terrible it is)

 

[uzo]

The world as depicted in A Brave New World. Fuck that place. (I consider it to have been an apocalypse because of how terrible it is)

Shit man I look forward to a future like that. And we're more than halfway there. Now take your soma and chill the fuck out.

Horrible apocalypse? Hmm ... no. It's like asking me to imagine a night blacker than any other night. Ultimately, I find the concept of the Borg from Star Trek, or the Tyranid from 40K to be the limits of apocalyptic horror. You don't just die ... you JOIN them. That shit keeps you up at night if you think about it.

 

[Asita]

Horrible apocalypse? Hmm ... no. It's like asking me to imagine a night blacker than any other night.

Well there you have it then! We just have to find the Blackest Night! Everyone to google! Ok, top results...a DC zombie apocalypse, wherein the zombies have any superpowers they had in life, power ring abilities on top of that. ...Yeah, that's a pretty black night.

 

[Connor Lonske]

what happens in the Crossed comic. i would post examples but seems inappropriate on this board and i'm too lazy to look for copied pages of the comic.

 

[OneCatch]

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.

Childhood's End [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood%27s_End] by Arthur C Clarke always struck me as being pretty grim:

Spoiler: major plot spoilers

Ok, there are alien benefactors who stop war, increase prosperity and equality, blah blah.
But then you learn that the aliens are at the very apex of their evolution, and are intervening to transcend humanity to posthumanism as a kind of bitter way of coming to terms with the fact that they can't themselves.

After a while, all children born everywhere telepathically hive-mind and develop various psychic abilities, regard normal humans essentially as we would regard primordial ooze.

Most of the old style humans die out or kill themselves in despair, civilisations collapse.

Post-humans leave, old humans die, alien species forced away and left behind. The end.

Humanity as we know it ceases to exist in an overdose of nihilism, knowing what's coming for years but completely unable to do anything.
The aliens don't even get to witness the exodus of the post-humans (the reason they did the whole thing, their last hope as a species) because the post-humans don't even give enough of a shit to let them stay and watch.

 

[ascorbius]

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.

 

[knight steel]

The book/movie called 1984,sure it's not apocalypse in the average sense-no world destruction or monster but considering the kinda stuff that goes on, it might be worse than said destruction or monster's as at least with those your still free to think.

 

[Tiger King]

I've downloaded the book (and also a film) "the road".
literally it is end of the line apocalypse stuff.
nothing grows anymore, there are no fish in the water to eat, nobody trusts anyone and bands of cannibals roam the land.
I assume this is because of a nuclear war but I'm not sure yet. Either way there is no hope of a better future

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

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.

What the heck is an SCP?

OT: I sort of find the "realistic" fictional apocalypses like the ones in "Alas, Babylon" (wherein the US and the USSR nuke each other back to the stone age) or, for a more extreme version, "On the Beach" (similar situation, much worse outcome) to be the most horrifying. Part of the terror is that it could have happened and, indeed, still conceivably could.

 

[wulfy42]

Any of the many, many, movies where humanity has continued to expand until the entire planet is industrialized and no nature still exists. The human race getting destroyed at that point (by a meteor, themselves, a virus...who cares) is just secondary to the apocalypse we have already brought to the earth by that point.

In summary, We are the apocalypse and we have already started. We are locusts apon the earth, and destroying it steadily we are.

Zombies? Forget about zombies....they couldn't destroy the planet half as fast as we can. Technology + mass population * greed = DOOM

 

[Drake the Dragonheart]

The one where you wake up and everyone else is just gone. No zombies, mutants, robots, etc. You are all alone, last person left. You go insane from boredom.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I'm putting this in spoiler tags just in case someone doesn't know it yet.

So my vote for most horrifying apocalypse goes to...

Spoiler

Neon Genesis Evangelion for Third Impact.


There's something... well, EVERYTHING that creeps the heck out of me about it. There's not even a post-apocalypse, everything just ends in that one scene in a matter of minutes. Not even to talk about the bit where the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE EARTH is eradicated while screams of terror echo all over the world, but what the world looks like afterwards is all sorts of disturbing. Gargantuan, headless crucifix-shaped humanoids sticking out of the ground, nothing left of life but an orange sea, while a gargantuan half of a woman's head looms over the horizon. Yiech!

And don't talk to me about instrumentality and evolution, it's the fucking apocalypse.

Also, the way the Tyranids from Warhammer 40k swallow planets is quite frightening. Not only are they ending all life there, they eat it and use it as biomaterial to grow stronger, so they can swallow even more planets.

 

[JoJo]

The world as depicted in A Brave New World. Fuck that place. (I consider it to have been an apocalypse because of how terrible it is)

If we're going down the dystopian route, I'd say the world depicted in Nineteen Eighty Four is a tad worse. You wouldn't have much freedom in either but at-least you'd most likely be happy in BNW.

OT: I'd say the fundamentalist Christian prediction stories such as 'Left Behind' about the rapture and apocalypse are pretty horrifying, what with the world being torn apart by two opposing forces, a mass resurrection and then the vast majority of the population being thrown into a fire to be tortured forever because they didn't believe in the right faith. That's pretty dark really when you think about it 0.o

 

[WongKy]

The internet dying

 

[RoonMian]

I personally find the creeping decline in the movie Idiocracy the most frightening. While I know that it's not realistic and played for comedic effect it gets along without untold horrors lurking at the deep and deforming, maddening illnesses... Played straight it would be a true horror for the last sane person trapped in that crapsack world.

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