What if civilization collapsed?
A story premised on the breakdown of society by disaster, plague, war, or environmental catastrophe, and survival after it.
What if civilization collapsed? in fiction: 9 works
A pandemic empties the world, leaving a lone survivor amid its ruins.
The substance ice-nine can freeze all water on Earth, and eventually does, ending the world.
A rogue-triggered doomsday device drives the world to nuclear annihilation.
Overpopulation and ecological ruin have left society dependent on a mysterious food product.
The breakdown of law and order into roving gangs frames the world.
Society's disintegration into walled enclaves and roving danger drives the narrative.
An engineered plague has wiped out humanity, leaving Snowman among the ruins.
Global infertility drives society toward despair and collapse, the film's premise.
A flu pandemic collapses civilization, and the novel follows survivors decades later.
More premises
- What if machines could think?
- What if we could travel through time?
- What if we met an alien intelligence?
- What if we could create life?
- What if reality were a simulation?
- What if we could live forever?
- What if we could edit the mind?
- What if the state controlled everything?
- What if we could engineer humanity?
- What if we settled other worlds?
- What if history had gone differently?