Posts tagged apocalypse
In a post-industrial collapse scenario, what would be the most effective methods for contraception? Situation is a small scale civilisation with limited access to industrial materials and tooling b...
My world is far away exoplanet with water and some oxygene, but without life or plants, which means without coal and organic materials inside. High tech people from Earth come there and made some ...
This question is about a fictional scenario where an evil suicidal scientist has built a high-energy weapon somewhere on earth. His intention is to shoot a beam of some form of energy (or high-ener...
The apocalypse has come! Everything is dead, and I do mean everything. People. Animals. Plants. Don't ask how, I'm not entirely sure. Let's assume this town is in an out-of-the way area as far as ...
Something in orbit around an inhabited planet blasts it with a hefty dose of gamma rays/x-rays/something else, killing everyone within a relatively short time frame (hours or days) but leaving no o...
Is it possible for humanity to completely annihilate itself? By that I mean there cannot be one survivor left and the annihilation must be caused by humanity itself with current technology (no craz...
Alien AI DoomFleet has a mission: Destroy threats to their creator. They do this by detecting the signature of FTL drives, going to the system, and blowing everything up, up to and including the ho...
Scenario: Deadly virus wiped out 80 - 90% world population and it did it pretty quickly (in 2 months) Although it is plausible that among these 10 - 20% of survivors will be people who actually kn...
In the near future on our own planet of Earth, an odd plague has descended from space. It affects glass. Any glass whether natural or man-made turns into powder. The chemical elements are the same...
A tragic event strikes the Earth, killing all living plants and animals except humans. With no other food source, humans turn to cannibalism. Assuming fresh water and oxygen is still available, how...
Where should I shoot a solar flare that is at least as strong as the solar flare(s) in 2012 for the most death? What else would happen? And how much death, in percentage of world population, would ...
So there's this planet that, several decades earlier, suffered a massive famine and drought that made habitation impossible. Everyone still alive on this planet died, except for 2 escapees, both of...
Let's say some magic aliens come and prank us. They, in one step, remove out the innards of the earth, and put everything on the surface on the inside. They make some artificial gravity so we stay ...
One rule: it cannot be caused by aliens or AI invading the planet. But it is okay if an alien race causes the destruction in any other way. It's an Earth-like planet. I need the effects of the des...
The Scenerio In the very near future a NASA probe returns to Earth with a soil sample from an asteroid containing a strange substance able to catalyze cold fusion reactions. The economic value of ...
Follow-up of Could the entire world have been destroyed by the existing nuclear arsenal in 1962? Is it safe to grow food on land that was hit by nuclear bombs? Or will such food kill/fatally s...
The hypothetical world is for all intents and purposes earth or very close to it. So what would the effects be if the magnetic field were either stronger from the start of the planet, or if the ma...
How would one go about repurposing a small cargo ship, no more than 50,000 tons, to run on an alternative fuel source/propulsion other than oil? And what alternative source would work best for prop...
After asking this question, What's the worst natural disaster that could hit New York City in our lifetime, it looks like the most popular answer was a Tsunami. A tsunami, however, from the sources...
An airborne disease with an incubation time of 18 years goes unnoticed, but spreads across the world. 18 years later, its "timer" goes off, killing all adults. Good idea (thanks, @Morfium !), but I...
I'm exploring a post-apocalyptic world and want to build a realistic scenario for the condition of abandoned ruins. What would you estimate to be the lifespan of the following building types? And...
Plastic is a huge problem in our lives. One of the ideas is to engineer plastic eating bacteria or fungi. Experiments already begun, and accidents already happen: a team of international scient...
So the world has been destroyed. Pick your poison. We have probably 300 different scenarios lying around here somewhere. What's Left: The world is a desolate wasteland, dry and crispy and barr...
In post-apocalypse fiction, diabetics, if they are ever even mentioned, are typically portrayed as utterly, irrevocably screwed. In fact there was a pretty cynical example in Dies The Fire (a book ...
The eventual heat death of the universe is an awful time to be alive considering you wouldn't have long left after the last star finally fades away. In this scenario there is a small group of about...
More often we have heard countless of familiar sci-fi scenario whereby the inhabitants of a dying planet faces world ending catastrophe most notable the superman origin. My question is can a planet...
In its heyday Earth was a great interplanetary trading post on account of its low gravity moon which was used as a warehouse for all kinds of goods. The Moon was covered almost entirely in large w...
Supposing we had many thousands of antimatter bombs (they can be detonated in many different locations), how much total antimatter would we need in order to wipe out all humans on Earth? Supposing...
In the scenario I'm envisioning, my group is in a city. They've got a source of hydroelectric power, but a few downed power lines/utility poles are making it difficult for them to transmit the ele...
Some hundreds of years ago, all humanity was removed from the Americas. In fact, most humans are gone from the world altogether. In the intervening time, nature has overrun the formerly human domin...
I'm working on building a post nuclear war society in a nuclear winter where northern countries have risen to dominance through a combination of being non-primary targets in the nuclear war and hav...
I'm creating a post-apocalyptic world several centuries into the future. After the nuclear war whatever is left of humanity has regressed into the dark age. Society: The offspring of those few w...
Everyone suddenly disappears from earth except 35 people randomly scattered wherever they were before everyone disappeared. How long would it take on average for 2 or more people to meet? What othe...
First question so go easy! I've been looking around for the carrying capacity of Elephants, hoping to extrapolate that to a Woolly or Columbian Mammoth. I know logging Indian elephants can lift hal...
Assuming that the magnetic field on Earth can suddenly flip, if really bad timing were to occur, wherein some of the biggest solar flares Earth has ever experienced rained down on the planet, could...
Imagine an Earth-like world in all respects except that the Moon is much much closer. I think I'm right to say if the Moon were very close that tidal forces would slowly rob it of momentum and it ...
Suppose an evil genius (in 2015) wants to kill as much of humanity as possible. But he's on a budget; despite his years of stealing priceless historical artifacts, and despite having been selected ...
Let's say I have a binary star system. The planet is orbiting the smallest star similar to the Sun at 1 AU, the same Earth-Sun distance. The other star is located at around 50-100 AU from the Sun...
Humans have come and gone. Their aggressiveness and pride have caused their own end. War has torn apart all society, engineered diseases pick them off one by one. The last remaining people have fle...
As requested by JBH, I edited this question to fit the Anatomically Correct Series. The classic zombie is no mystery to anyone: undead, eats people and multiplies by biting humans. Could they ever...
How do my PA civilizations rebuild after a depletion of the planet's natural fuels? Even with a wealth of information to rebuild, would civilization still be permanently stunted due to being unab...
So, out in Kansas, in the DEC Oil Refinery, a group of people, called simply the Disciples, have set up a community. From the outside, it seems like a utopia, one where man and mutant get along pea...
The most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group, responsible for the HIV pandemic, dates back to the Belgian Congo city of Léopoldville (modern Kinshasa), circa 1910. And the genetic history ...
The only such media I've seen is Fallout, which is obviously highly fantastical. I mean, they mutant animals and irradiated zombies running around! But realistically, is there anyway that life cou...
Premise Suppose a world has no other means to deal with a potentially devastating meteor impact than creating a net on the planet. Their hope is that the massive net will catch the meteor and slow...
Could humans sustain life after a k-t like extinction event? I know that a long lasting winter was a side effect then, but humans have technology to protect against cold. What other effects of an a...
Okay, following my previous core question, after the apocalypse, one of my sets of survivors in this setting, the Usnay, managed to live in a fleet of ships for over a thousand years. This is pro...
Some hundreds of years ago, all humanity was removed from the Americas. In fact, most humans are gone from the world altogether. In the intervening time, nature has overrun the formerly human domin...
I would like to know what would happen if a new virus arose which could not be cured and which managed to escape the infected areas (and any quarantine zones). In order to scope this question I'm n...
Setting A nuclear war between two superpowers happens, and nuke after nuke is fired at nearly every country on the globe. The war, which lasts for about 4 hours, kills over 3 billion people, and m...
