The Dozen Top Apocalyptic Fiction Themes

What is Apocalyptic Fiction?
Apocalyptic fiction deals with the processes that ends civilization. Such as zombies or aliens or just us killing ourselves or nature killing us.

So, what circumstances can lead to the fall of civilization? Some of these you have read, others you may want to read, and others you have no interest in reading. Explore this list and please let us know what you prefer to read.

The Dozen Top Apocalyptic Fiction Themes

1. War between countries (WW3) or factions (terrorism). Or war between us and our creations (robots, intelligent animals, computers, etc). Or war with invaders from outer space. Or war as a game gone out of control (Enders Game). Or an accidental war (Impact).
2. Sickness or pandemic that kills too many people (The Stand), or that kills our food, or that changes part of us into something else that leads to war (zombies?).
3. An impact event or events, such as asteroids (The Hammer Of God) or comets (Splinter) or even other planets (When Worlds Collide), either by act of nature or intentionally as an act of war or malice.
4. Technology makes humans irrelevant. The struggle to exist leads to a conflict with our creations (I Robot) or against something that created itself or even against other humans that have evolved by design, or against new creatures evolved by us to replace us.
5. The Earth changes so we change to adapt and thusly cease to be human. Perhaps we evolve to survive a prolonged ice age, or as water creatures in a flooded and mostly water Earth, or as desert creatures on a baked and near water-less Earth.
6. Violent natural events threaten our existence. Such as mega-earthquakes, mega-hurricanes, mega-floods, mega-freezes, mega-droughts, mega-volcanos, or mega-tsunamis.
7. Resource depletion could threaten our survival. Perhaps too little water, or air, or food, or men or women, or the inability to give birth (under population), or the inability to die (over population).
8. A lack of will could doom us. Perhaps the lose of faith, or of hope, or of the ability to love or to care or to fear. The idea that the world could end if we lost just one emotion or the ability to emote a all.
9. A wrong interpretation causes a wrong cure which dooms us. For example, viewing a disaster as divine judgment rather than as having been caused by human activity can lead to the unwillingness to act which can doom us. Or a miss-translation of an alien race's language leads to our doom. Or a misinterpretation of our DNA causes DNA modifications that doom us.
10. Perhaps we are off exploring other planets and stars when our sun explodes or our planet explodes or some natural or intentional event wipes out our home, so the aftermath is a subset of humanity trying to continue to exist but in space.
11. Perhaps the mere threat of extinction leads to our extinction. A recognition at the animal level in our brain that we cannot continue to exist, so we cease trying.
12. And finally the idea that we never existed in the first place. That we are the creation of something else that can cease to imagine us. Or cease to dream us. Of cease to need us as part of some planetary experiment. Or that the universe itself is a fiction and our perception of that fact dooms us.

Post-apocalyptic fiction
Post-apocalyptic fiction describes the world following that end, either immediately after or some longer time after perhaps as myth.

1. The story could take place as the world was ending, but not be a story about the end, but rather one of surviving (or not surviving) that end.
2. The story could take place shortly after the world ended. A world of terror, privation, hopelessness or terrible challenges. Perhaps a story about finding other survivors, or about building a new world, or about rediscovering faith or love.
3. The story could take place years afterward when there is still memory of the event but nobody remains alive that actually experienced it. There may be signs of the event but they are just ceasing to have meaning for the living.
4. The story could take place long after the event, so long after that the event has either become forgotten or has become myth. Physical signs of the event may still exist but no longer have that meaning. It is at this distance from the event that science fiction can morph into fantasy.

The Choices Are Endless

We have neither covered all the ways to end humanity here, nor all the possible periods to deal with that end. Some heretofore unseen event is perceived in the 1600's and the story deal with that vision, or the story is told by another race that remembers us.

The beauty of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction lies in its seeming endless possibilities.  Please let us know what your favorite books of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction are.