Most horrifying fictional apocalypse.

[Ghostrick Dorklord]

Soul Nomad. Specifically the infamous Demon Path.

What basically happens is the hero decides to make a face heel turn before the story begins. Goes and burns down his village and takes out a World Eater. Eventually the hero becomes head honcho and world slowly goes insane. The fact that you became a much worst threat than the previous ones is really something and most of the characters spend a lot of time in the storyline to defeat the hero. Eventually the guys that join the hero's all go insane and/or depressed. And then there's a hope spot for everyone where pretty much every one who opposes the Devourlord (the hero) joins forces and tries to take him out. This includes 2 world eaters.

They can win and have a happy ending, where the hero will be eventually redeemed but if he/she wins it just goes to shit. Everyone but the hero lives and his/her god of death buddy inside his/her head (its a long story) talks about how they'll be together forever only to have the hero somehow eat him and gain more power. The hero then proceeds to destroy 2 gods (who were originally opposing each other I might add) and destroys the universe before going out with laughter.

Sure it may as well be a apocalypse on a larger scale but the way it plays out is pretty horrifying if you knew the details. I mean everyone who was the hero's friend in the normal path became enemies and the hero has to kill them. I mean some nitty bitty details from the normal path will even pop up too if you paid attention to both storylines. But honestly if you were to think about the whole Demon Path its horrifying.

Sorry for the long post about a game people hardly know or won't care about. Its just this game left a mark on me and I wanted to let that out.

 

[Syntax Error]

snip

How about

Spoiler

When you spare a cute angel-kid, only to kill him in front of his best friend?

DAYUM!

Also, try having a go at ExitMundi.

 

[Roofstone]

Definitely "I got no mouth and I must scream" If the name alone doesn't tell you enough...

It is a post apocalyptic world where there are five survivors rendered immortal by a evil machine (AM) and tortured every day, death never comes, and the pain never ends in a world ruled by a hateful god like machine that can reshape anything and everything at his whims.

I got no mouth, and I must scream.

 

[Vhite]

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.

Huh, I always thought it was rather optimistic ending since humanity that was stagnating transcends into higher form of existence. If there was something sad about it, it were overlords who could never achieve this state of being.

 

[Epicspoon]

Nobody ever sees the ghost apocalypse coming. I'm currently in the process of buying up shotgun shells and replacing the the buckshot inside the shells with rock salt just in case.

 

[Hawkeye21]

Spoiler: You all loose

"Gyo" by Jinji Ito is the creepiest shit by far. The end of days comes with a horrible stench...
His "Uzumaki" is also pretty fucking terrifying, although it is kind of a local apocalypse.

Spoiler: this used to be a normal town, now the houses are like this

Spoiler: and people living there became this

And all they wanted to do, was huddle inside...

 

[Epicspoon]

The worst in my view would be the hypothetical "Grey goo" scenario. Nanomachines that have the ability to self-replicate are very dangerous things. All it would take is ONE programming error and instead of consuming hydrocarbons found in oil from oil spills they consume carbon based objects including all forms of life as we know it.

Get fire. Lots and lots of fire.

 

[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.

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

Many years later when I saw it, I asked mum if she'd seen if when she first came out - she'd replied that she had. But you can imagine my shock and pant-browning terror when she added that if the bomb were to drop, she even said that she'd have stoved my skull in rather than let the radiation, starvation or cold get me. (When one considers how unpleasant living in the aftermath of a nuclear bomb - a quick death would be downright merciful.)

 

[CorvusFerreum]

I think I will go with the classic nuclear apocalypse, because that's a realistic thread still lingering over us.

Honorary mention goes to the various possibilities 40k offers to fuck planets up. My personal favourite in this scenario is Nurgle's Rot [http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Nurgles_rot#.UYdnZsocMrk], which is a highly contaigious dissease slowly rotting away your living body. It spreads fast, kills you slowly and is completely incurable. But that's not all: It also infects you very soul and leaves this to rot as well. You don't only rot away but you are also dragged to Nurgle's realm to become a servant in his demonic armies.

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.

Okay, okay, that one takes the cake. That's truly terrifying.

 

[Kyrian007]

Worst, well I'd agree

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.

that is possibly the worst. But the most personally horrifying... It was limited to a one house area in the short story, but imagine a world wide "The Rainy Season" by Stephen King. World wide, it starts to rain toads. I don't particularly have frog fear, but that shit starts to get freaky when the rain doesn't stop, and the frogs all have razor sharp teeth and are carnivores. Until there is a flood of tons of carnivorous toads per every acre of landmass in the world? That world dies screaming.

 

[Doclector]

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

That film had such a great concept. Few films seem to ask what happens after the bad guys "win", especially in the case of the many types of monsters whose greatest enemies are also their only food source.

The vampires are actually fairly civilised, most of the time. It's even said in the movie that at one point in the apocalypse, the vampires offered amnesty to the remaining humans: Join us, or be hunted down and farmed. Not an awful deal, considering that with blood stocks running high, vampirism didn't have many major drawbacks.

Problem is, the more hungry they get, the more feral they get, until they turn into mindless humanoid bat creatures, and the blood stocks are starting to run out.

We're left with the possibility of the last remaining humans being hunted down, and the last remaining vampires eventually succumbing to mutation after drinking them dry. A bleak situation where nobody wins, and nobody lives.

 

[Angie7F]

I think having a huge ayanami rei crack open in two is scary.
I would want to have turned into LCL before that happens.

 

[Epicspoon]

The worst in my view would be the hypothetical "Grey goo" scenario. Nanomachines that have the ability to self-replicate are very dangerous things. All it would take is ONE programming error and instead of consuming hydrocarbons found in oil from oil spills they consume carbon based objects including all forms of life as we know it.

Get fire. Lots and lots of fire.

And WHAT good exactly would fire do against nanobots made of metal and therefore impervious to fire?

Metal is not impervious to fire. It expands and contracts at different temperatures which would be more than enough to destroy machinery as delicate as nanobots.

 

[Strazdas]

Earth being struck out of its orbit and slowly getting closer to sun. you would cook alive, literally.

 

[Meihua]

1984 isn't *really* an apocalypse by definition, but it still gets my vote. I remember feeling so sick and horrible after watching it. Like I had this feeling of despair. Especially since its happened and is actually happening in some parts of the world (North Korea, anyone?)

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Probably any form of nuclear apocalypse, at least some of the others are survivable...