Most horrifying fictional apocalypse.

[Aramis Night]

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.

Makes sense to me. Men are required for breeding and only a few are left. They can still produce young well into old age. Women have a reproductive shelf life. It varies to a degree but usually odds of reproduction tend to drop sharply after 40. Between killing off and cannibalizing the women as they pass their reproductive life, and having a newborn to eat every 9 months(a year more realistically) per woman, It may be enough to stave off total species starvation for a time, though during that time its likely that populations would shrink.

Still not enough food on its own to feed everyone. Basically its a long term Donner party strategy. If the species can survive long enough to find another food source, it may still survive. If humans cannot find another food source, we will cannibalize ourselves into extinction. This method of mass cannibalization simply buys us time.

 

[debtcollector]

Because I enjoy being trendy and up-to-date(!) I will give bumps to Attack on Titan.

Spoiler: That is an adult woman in its hand, btw.

It's all sort of a horrifying reversal of the food chain. We get to feel like rabbits hunted down by hunters who devour us with absolutely no qualms. The fact that they look like grinning humans makes it all the more depraved.

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.

Points to you. Being at the mercy of a deranged god forever is pretty fucking hideous. Especially when

Spoiler

you manage to "free" your fellow inmates by killing them all, but you live. And then lose all ability to move or speak as punishment. Forever. While before you had at least the tenuous hope of death's release, now you are forced to spend eternity unable to sense anything but your own limitations.

Actually, yeah, that's hella worse than mine. You win this round.

Captcha: Win hands down. They all do, in the end. They all do.

 

[Doclector]

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.

Yeah, I was surprised by how many moments are genuinely tense and even scary. Especially the way that the jam seems to just, JUST give you long enough to experience incredible pain, and not a millisecond more.

Hell, if a load of people were in a line, it could easily get a killing spree.

 

[Fetus]

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

100% agree. Cannibalism and a horrible environment with no food.

Great film btw.

 

[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

100% agree. Cannibalism and a horrible environment with no food.

Great film btw.

I saw the film ages ago and thought it was pretty good, depressing but good.
I'm enjoying the book, the author has a very distinct style going on.

 

[Remus]

Daybreakers. 99.9% of the population are vampires, and the rest are either kept in blood harvesting facilities or are hunted to extinction.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

I have to go either with 40K, specifically a Tzeench apocalypse, because with Khorne, you know you will soon die, and at least Papa Nurgle makes you not feal any pain, Slaanesh is pretty terrifying due to...well...stuff that I'm not sure I'm allowed to post. But with Tzeench, you never know. It could be any or all, you just sit there, being horrified out of your mind (literally) waiting and wondering what the hell will happen next.

or

Mass Effect's, because you can tell they have motives of sorts, and give the impression of ancient, but evilly methodical and souless (much like myself), wisdom. They also fuck shit up very, very quickly, so we wouldn't have time to adjust or fight back if it was us with our technology.

 

[Rex Fallout]

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)

I was actually going to say the same thing.

 

[Yelchor]

John Carpenter's The Thing taking place anywhere else than in the furthest reaches of Antarctica.

...Do I need to elaborate?

 

[Azahul]

The one depicted in The Word and the Void series by Terry Brooks (and subsequently elaborated upon in Genesis of Shanara, but it's The Word and the Void where it's mainly terrifying). The apocalypse hasn't happened yet, but the Knights of the Word have visions every time they sleep of a post-apocalyptic world where demons rule. Nuclear weapons were used, most of humanity is dead, the handful of survivors live in fortified strongholds slowly falling to the armies of enslaved once-men used as grunts by the demons. These visions give them a task, a quest they need to complete to try and stop some horrifying event in the future. Despite that, the one thing they can never stop, never change, is the apocalypse itself. The world will end. Humanity will fall. All the Knights can do is make that end a little less painful.

It's a pretty standard post-nuclear apocalypse scenario (barring the whole demons and magic). What really takes it above and beyond the levels of horror in my mind is the whole inevitable nature of it. It will happen. The demons win, and everything will end in darkness. By having it looming over the story as the future of everyone involved, it takes it from being merely a depressing end to a horrifying consequence. Apocalypses are usually more bleak than horrifying, it's the promise of the Void's apocalypse that actually lends it a sense of horror.

All of which makes it rather impressive that the depiction of life in small town America in those books actually comes off as so utterly draining and life-sapping that you kinda want the apocalypse to happen...

 

[idontwannabeaschizo]

The Second Renaissance.

The Collapse and the creation of Chung Kuo.

Those two are disturbing (for me) for the sheer failure of humanity in creating the apocalypse, and the hopeless resistance afforded against the aggressors, the machines in SR, and the Chinese in Chung Kuo.

But as bad as that is, its the aftermath of those two that scares me, the sheer surrender of humanity, the rewriting of history and the destruction of culture and self-determination.

As much as other apocalypses can be worse during the event, the fact they sooner or later end is of some ironic comfort as strange as that can sound. Its the ones that have an aftermath of our corruption or servitude, and that should they happen to me that no, I won't die quick, I'll suffer on.

 

[Batadon]

Gotta be Nier. Talk about humanity going out with a whimper:

Endgame stuff

Spoiler

Yeah, you saved your girl, but she's still gonna die from the plague and by killing the "bad guys" you've effectively ensured that this generation of "people" is the last, because they aren't real people and can't reproduce!

Oh, and those "monsters" you've been killing the whole time? They're the real people that have gone feral without a body! You were just supposed to take care of their body until they found a cure for that plague, but then you had to go and ruin it by developing a soul, how dare you...

And the worst part is you're able to do all this because of the power of friendship...

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

The Biffpocalypse from Back to the Future II. OH THE HUMANITY!

Also, being devoured by Galactus would probably suck.

 

[saintdane05]

Nah, guys, you alls wrong, dudes.
The REALLY scary apocalypse is gonna look and sound like this.
<youtube=AyenRCJ_4Ww>

John Carpenter's The Thing taking place anywhere else than in the furthest reaches of Antarctica.

...Do I need to elaborate?

http://blip.tv/at4w/at4w-211-the-thing-from-another-world-2-6399355

There was almost a sequel like that. Check it out starting fom 2:02.

It finds a way to get around the blood test.

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.

" I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inside: Alone."

Damn. You win.

 

[octafish]

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.

I saw Threads at a very young age. I have to agree with Threads. Boy I had such nightmares in the 80's.

 

[uchytjes]

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.

When that sequence, mixed with that song, came on the first time I watched it all I could think was "what the HELL is going on!? Why are they turning into orange kool-aid!? And WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT GIANT WOMAN AND WHY DOES SHE HAVE A VAGINA IN HER FOREHEAD!!!???" I was even warned that it was weird, but nothing could prepare me for that...

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Double post, sorry.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

What the heck is an SCP?

The SCP Foundation (Secure Contain Protect) found here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/ has been described as "Imagine Torchwood... run by 4chan." It is a database of various Creepypastas and has allot of world ending devices and artifacts that are 'secured' in various facilities.

 

[DRTJR]

Brave new world, that place can burn. and the "Moral Character" is a class A moron.

 

[AlbertoDeSanta]

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]

This. A world in which the SCP fails in it's purpose is a terrifying one. They have alot of things that could potentially destroy Millions, and these things are (in the actual Canon) scattered across the Planet. If anyone can make it so that they all gain access to the outside world, We'd all be screwed. Then there is just SCP-231-07. If they stop whatever horrifying procedure they are doing to this poor Girl, an apocalypse WILL happen.