Posts tagged apocalypse
What artificial disaster could disrupt the orbit of our planet? Not necessarily making it leave the Solar System, but maybe changing its trajectory around the sun. And by artificial, I mean that th...
I am working on a scenario that begins with an impact event. I have multiple questions, but I'll start with the catalyst for this world. Is there a type of impact event that would not be a global ...
It's 2070, global warming is a terrifying reality. Coastal cities such as New York and Shanghai has already fallen to rising sea levels and extreme weather. In an effort to stem and perhaps counter...
Bobby, a human space traveler from Theta, and has been in space for a couple of centuries. He's been kept alive either through his own biology or some feat of technology. Having no contact with his...
I was looking at these two questions: Expanding Occupied Underground Habitations Safely Does Living without access to Sunlight have known Physical/Psychological effects? And in a story I'm writi...
Premise After an unfathomably powerful mass extinction event ALL life (fauna, flora, even extremaphiles and microbes) have died off. The Earth was then sterile for an undetermined amount of time. ...
A thought experiment occurred to me today that, say we have a synthetic superintelligence that does not wish to talk to people, not out of malice, but from an agonizing indifference toward humanity...
You are in charge of the world, with technology about the same as we have now, except that a while back the leaders of the world decided that nukes are too powerful, so they destroyed them all and ...
So at some point in the future, humans have small colonies on the Moon, on Mars and many space stations in orbit of all the planets in the solar system. Everything is going great until one day some...
Take the situation of a modern carrier group (Aircraft carrier, etc.) anchored just off shore (far enough that they initially couldn't run aground) with all the crews abandoning ship for land (in a...
One lab accidentally developed a species of bacteria which doesn't naturally die, but multiplies at usual rate. (And the scientists didn't notice in time, so the bacteria escaped). EDIT after Alex...
How could humans survive underground for centuries? People have built multiple underground facilities around the world to prepare for a catastrophe. Just to be careful they overcalculated their res...
Most of the AI's in films/books/series seems to turn out evil or using destructive/harmful ways of achieving what they want in critical situations because they can't understand the earth's biology....
So it's plausible that any planetary civilizations (alien or human) may have landfills. It is also natural to think that many planetary civilizations would die out, or migrate away from a planet. S...
For no apparent reason (this is a song, not a story, so I'm pretty economical with exposition) nearly every tetrapod on Earth has vanished, and water is gone from the oceans. Just sort of hand-wave...
(I'm talking binary:Male and female) This is post apocalyptic scenario. I'm writing a short story and storyline"‹ is as follows: In a distant future: After the world war there are only a few thous...
Viral zombies, that is zombies that are alive, are much more terrifying than their undead equivalents. While they lack the required headshot of their undead brethren, they are faster and often smar...
Because of an error in the interpretation of the Mayan calendar I just discovered, I know now that Earth will be destroyed on March 13, 2021 at 11 o'clock in the morning, time zone of Palenque. I ...
"Your children will be born in a world of two suns. They will never know a sky without them. You can tell them that you remember when there was a pitch black sky with no bright star, and people fea...
Ragnarök is the Norse rendition of the apocalypse. A major event during this apocalypse is Fernir devouring the sun. If we assume that the sun and all of its influence disappear entirely for 3 day...
If the Earth was destroyed by a cataclysmic event such as a large mass colliding with it, such that it fractured into multiple pieces, would any trace of human civilisation remain intact ? I.e., i...
Basically, I want to create an apocalyptic event that knocks out most electricity, for a long time, hundreds of years at least. Electronic devices that do work would be extremely rare, and people e...
Humanity has been exposed to prolonged nuclear radiation for thousands of years. In the past, hundreds of nuclear bombs dropped; then nuclear warfare ceased for thousands of years. Assume that hum...
I want a realistic event to occur that kills the majority of the Earth's population. However, the nature of this event must not effect humans or machinery currently flying at high altitudes (those ...
So let's say you live in a terrifying post-apocalyptic world. For whatever reason, this world is now infested with cockroaches the size of chickens (similar to radroaches from the Fallout games, bu...
When the earth is flung out of the solar system as per Josh Pirhi's question, not everyone embarks on a spaceship. Instead, as earth becomes a rogue planet, a group of survivors created a self sust...
What would happen if the atmospheric pressure on Earth would suddenly start to slowly decrease? Let's say that the most precise prediction by scientists is that the air will be completely gone in 1...
Some of you have commented here: "How Do I Supplement Oxygen Intake?." I mentioned confidentiality, but that is no longer going to be a concern. We just want to do this right. The original concept...
I asked a similar question a small while ago. Unfortunately, the way the problem was defined excluded certain viable solutions. So I want to try again. The society would have to be complex. Perhap...
Let's say a terrorist organization decides to attack the cap on the Deepwater Horizon oil well. They use high powered explosives to blow such a large hole in the sea bed that there is no viable way...
In this scenario, all the humans on earth have disappeared, except for Fred. Sure, Fred is sad that everyone that exists is dead but him, including his friends and family, but he doesn't let that g...
By using antibiotics too frequently, some argue, we're setting the world up for a pandemic that we cannot treat. Every time an antibiotic substance is used, the bacteria that survive reproduce. Ev...
I was wondering on others people's ideas on how to take a Space Age civilization and send it back to the stone or bronze age. My own idea was that war and disease broke out, crippling the nation as...
I am working on a project (The Longest Day), and I'm sure some people here have the necessary knowledge to give me some more usefull info. OK, here it is: Lets say that Earth's spinning speed dim...
The situation is as follows: there is a city with different districts, each provided with electric power from a different power plant: Thermal power plant nuclear power plant Hydroelectric power ...
Western civilisation fell over a few centuries ago, because the Earth shifted back into a full on ice age climate. Oh and Skynet kind of happened. Ice sheets expanded, inexorably rolling over the...
What would happen if all dark energy (cosmological constant) instantly converted to radiation due to vacuum metastability event, while otherwise vacuum properties remain the same? Dark energy dens...
I'm trying to figure out a way to create a situation much like the apocalypse of Turry from Robotica, but which involves all the people on Earth being either temporarily or permanently strapped int...
The scenario is the following: a civilization with technology level similar to humanity's current, on a planet similar to Earth, shall be hit by a massive celestial body in approximately one year. ...
In my 10 book series, the historical time line turns on the fact that the greatest nation in the major continent's history, disappeared overnight during a national celebration. This nation was enj...
So, I'm writing a set of short stories (i.e. in the "Martian Chronicles" format). It was going to be centered around life on Earth through the sudden dissapearance of the Sun, but after surprinsing...
Which voltage and frequency would be selected if there were no legacy issues? I can easily find how selection of electricity frequency and voltage was based on backward compatibility and quite arb...
I'm building a post-apocalyptic setting where the cataclysmic event is a volcanic eruption from Yellowstone that releases a blanket of ash that reaches from California to just before the Midwest. E...
Imagine that, suddenly, a rather large cone shaped hole from the core to the crust appeared. All the land mass of the cone just vanished. Which could be the changes that this event would produce i...
I am a skilled metallurgist and engineer and, like most well-educated people, I'm terrified by the possibility of an impending apocalypse. Let's not worry too much about what form it takes. Nuclear...
In the event that MOST of the world population were wiped out in a plague / apocalypse that did not directly destroy infrastructure, just killed the people, how long would infrastructure like the p...
What would the weather conditions be like if earth was covered in a layer of clouds and pollution for 300+ years? there is still light in the day but it is minimal and the nights are pitch black. ...
My story is post-apocalyptic - takes place when they have put society back together again but in a new way. I'm flexible on when this takes place - could be 5 years later or 100 years later. For b...
For context I'm building a post apocalypse world that was in modern age before but storms and tsunamis wiped almost all civilizations off the planet. The question is how huge should civilization ...
I'm looking for the perfect kind of apocalypse that not only can kill great parts of the people on Earth leaving the survivors spread in little primitive groups across the world ,but can also avoi...
