D20 Apocalypse: Other Ways to End the World?

[Plane Sailing]

Children stop being born. The population is ageing and there are no more children. A slow death of the human race. It is now 50 years on and most of the world is middle aged or elderly and social fabric is disintegrating.

at the other end of the scale:

Puberty virus. All children are carriers, when they hit puberty the virus activates and kills them. survival as semi-feral children required.

David Brins 'Earth' has some good ideas - not least a third world war which was based on earth vs Switzerland and gravitic anomalies due to black holes within the earths crust.

 

[Aeric]

Shortly after developing the Grand Unified Field Theory, physicists accidentally create a singularity at the center of the Earth. Just exactly like the theory above...but with the added twist of it being, basically, our fault.

I recently read a two-book series by Brian Keene--The Rising and City of the Dead--which takes the typical zombie apocalypse scenario and turns it on its ear. Normally in such stories, the cause of zombies is a man-made virus, or radiation brought back by a deep space probe, etc. In these books, the zombies are dead bodies possessed by ancient demons imprisoned by God millennia ago, who were freed when scientists accidentally destroyed the barrier between our world and The Void (hell). So you have these zombies who are still slow-moving and falling apart at the seams, but they can talk, and think, and use their host's memories to their advantage (for skills such as driving, firing guns, etc.). Even animals are possessed, so you have these intelligent zombie animals working together and with the human zombies to kill the living.

 

[DMH]

Children stop being born. The population is ageing and there are no more children. A slow death of the human race. It is now 50 years on and most of the world is middle aged or elderly and social fabric is disintegrating.

Aldiss' Greybeard

Puberty virus. All children are carriers, when they hit puberty the virus activates and kills them. survival as semi-feral children required.

This setting would have humans around for about 12 years before everyone dies. Maybe less since the youngest would die without adults.

 

[jrtyler]

Aldiss'



This setting would have humans around for about 12 years before everyone dies. Maybe less since the youngest would die without adults.

Not neccessarily. As with all diseases you'll have a certain percentage of people who are immune. Plus the adults that were already around won't neccessarily die. The puberty virus might play on certain hormonal imbalances that only exist in children during puberty and fade with adulthood. After a generation, the children of the immune percentage have to rebuild the ashes of the old, while taking care of the rapidly aging (and possibly senile) adult population.

John Tyler

 

[C. Baize]

A butterfly effect.

Someone discovers time travel within the same time stream (as opposed to creating a convergent timeline in a mirrored dimension), causes what seems to be an incredibly minor change that has vast effects in the current time. Could be anything.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I had an apocalyptic campaign idea called Fractured Time. Experiments into time travel resulted in the breakdown of the time barrier. The past met the present. Intangeble boundaries between the years crumbled and all merged into one.

Sounds like Gordon R. Dickenson's Timestorm (a favorite book from my youth.) In that, the breakdown of time was caused by the eventual collapse of the universe. However, not all parts collapse at the same rate, so temporal "friction" between areas moving forward and those moving backward in time created a "storm", with localized effects on earth.

Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned a nano-tech apocolypse. Machines so tiny they're basically invisible, that use all available material to simply replicate themselves, eventually turning the whole world into a grey goo. Or, if they somehow became intelligent, maybe they might even have an agenda... (Greg Bear's Blood Music).

Oh, and make sure to check out this article on the BBC News site for zombie goodness

 

[The_Universe]

The aliens who live in the hollow earth emerge to conquer, alongside the secret antarctic nazi remnant.

 

[DnDChick]

Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned a nano-tech apocolypse. Machines so tiny they're basically invisible, that use all available material to simply replicate themselves, eventually turning the whole world into a grey goo. Or, if they somehow became intelligent, maybe they might even have an agenda... (Greg Bear's Blood Music).

This is good. I also think that nanotech is a good way to have a "zombie apocalypse" without having to go the supernatural or alien virus routes.

Experimental nanites were developed to keep soldiers alert and active for long periods without sleep, and to repair tissue damage to keep them alive long enough for more serious medical treatment. The problem is that once too many nanites replicate in the host body, the host dies. The nanites keep doing their job, however, and the body "animates" like a zombie, acting only on core impulses deep in the brain. Worse yet, the nanites can be transmitted through the bodily fluids of their host (saliva, etc.). Animal rights activists free all the animals in the lab before the drawbacks of the nanites can be corrected, and the nanites escape with them.

A few months later ... zombie apocalypse ...

 

[Gomez]

The aliens who live in the hollow earth emerge to conquer.

Which is pretty much the story from the anime Super Atragon.

 

[The_Universe]

Which is pretty much the story from the anime Super Atragon.

Yeah well...what about the well-known antarctic nazi remnant? Huh!? HUH!?!