History ApocalypseHow / Class3B

* Resident {{Cloudcuckoolander}} Karl Pilkington of ''TheRickyGervaisShow'' thinks humanity will go this route because people will get so ugly that no one will want to have sex anymore.

* The documentary series ''The Future is Wild'' proposes what life on Earth might look like if humanity is no longer a factor in 5 million, 100 million, and 200 million year increments. The lack of humanity is merely a MacGuffin; nothing is mentioned about how or why humanity might go. The Discover Channel broadcast {{Bowdlerise}}d it by saying mankind had simply abandoned the world, and was sending a probe every couple of eons to check on the Earth's progress.

** In another episode, several people are slingshotted forward in time to an abandoned Earth by aliens. They discover that biological warfare rendered all human females infertile. Stuck in the future, the survivors mope about how humanity's still extinct (there are only five of them)... until they find one more piece of alien technology [[spoiler:that proceeds to read their DNA, scramble it for maximum diversity, and create dozens of infants. Humanity gets another shot.]]

** There is no danger of this happening at all for the forseeable future, the planets population is actually growing at such an alarming rate that there is a real concern that there will be too many people for the planet to support within the next century.

* The main objective of the villains in Tom Clancy's ''Literature/RainbowSix''. A group of eco-terrorists genetically engineered a weaponized, airborne-contact delayed-incubation version of Ebola so that humanity would be extinct and Mother Nature would eventually reclaim the planet. Although the ''real'' genocide was intended to come from the ''vaccine'' - as the boss villain owned the biotech corporation that had just created a useful Ebola vaccine, the initial plague outbreak would have spurred everyone surviving on Earth to buy some. Pity they were all going to be buying more plague virus in relabeled syringes...

* The main objective of the villains in Tom Clancy's ''VideoGame/RainbowSix''. A group of eco-terrorists genetically engineered a weaponized, airborne-contact delayed-incubation version of Ebola so that humanity would be extinct and Mother Nature would eventually reclaim the planet. Although the ''real'' genocide was intended to come from the ''vaccine'' - as the boss villain owned the biotech corporation that had just created a useful Ebola vaccine, the initial plague outbreak would have spurred everyone surviving on Earth to buy some. Pity they were all going to be buying more plague virus in relabeled syringes...

* In ''RaveMaster'', [[spoiler: it's revealed that this happened to the world some time ago, and Lucia's ancestor used Star Memory to create a world where humanity never died out. Endless basically exists because this world shouldn't, and it's his job to destroy it. And the Raregrooves are {{Cosmic Plaything}}s as a punishment for saying ScrewDestiny.]]

* Kate Wilhelm's WhereLateTheSweetBirdsSang shows the human race, as well as many/most animal species, dying off from a combination of disease, starvation, and infertility. A small group of humans and domesticated animals survive because of the development of cloning technology.

*** This population growth plateau tends to happen naturally in post-industrial nations, which is one of the main reasons why population experts predict the earth's population will start to stabilize in the next 50 to 100 years, as birth and death rates start to match up.

* An episode of the second version of ''TheOuterLimits'' features an extinct humanity, but surviving androids create two new humans from preserved DNA as an AdamAndEvePlot to give us a second chance. Of course, "only one mating pair" equals YouFailBiologyForever, but still satisfying, as it subverted the series's MandatoryTwistEnding. In a different episode, several people are slingshotted forward in time to an abandoned Earth by aliens. They discover that biological warfare rendered all human females infertile. Stuck in the future, the survivors mope about how humanity's still extinct (there are only five of them)... until they find one more piece of alien technology [[spoiler:that proceeds to read their DNA, scramble it for maximum diversity, and create dozens of infants. Humanity gets another shot.]]
* The backstory of ''DeepwaterBlack'' is that the entire human population is wiped out by a deadly virus. The only thing they could do about it was to send out a ship to be piloted by clones and stocked with DNA of a large amount of people to leave Earth and apparently come back when the virus is all gone.

* ''Series/TheLastManOnEarth'' is about a virus that wipes out the human race. While humanity is not completely extinct--there are at least five survivors--it is for all practical purposes.

* In ''VideoGame/TheTalosPrinciple'', all of humanity has been killed off by a million+ year old virus released from the melting permafrost of Siberia, due to global climate change. You are an AI whose purpose is to complete the trials set before you, [spoiler:defy Elohim]], and become the start of the newest form of intelligent life to inhabit the earth.

* Subverted by ''Series/DoctorWho'' (and the '''only''' category on this page that the show doesn't really fall into): the human race is explicitly stated, on several occasions (most recently "Utopia") to outlive the universe.

* In RaveMaster [[spoiler: it's revealed that this happened to the world some time ago, and Lucia's ancestor used Star Memory to create a world where humanity never died out. Endless basically exists because this world shouldn't, and it's his job to destroy it. And the Raregrooves are [[CosmicPlaything Cosmic Playthings]] as a punishment for saying ScrewDestiny.]]

* ''{{AI}}'' has every human die in an ice age; the "survivors" are robots who evolved into a new lifeform.

* Historically, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory Toba Event]] may have very nearly exterminated our ancestors, reducing the population from a few million to less than ten thousand (and possibly as few as three thousand).

** There are, of course, several examples in ''DoctorWho'' of ''nonhuman'' sentient races that have gone extinct by natural means. Humans in that Verse have also abandoned Earth for space in the wake of natural disasters, leaving us at least ''locally'' extinct there.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode "Dear Doctor," Doctor Phlox discovers that the Valakians are dying not from a plague as they had thought, but a genetic deterioration. He extrapolates that the entire species will be extinct by the twenty-fourth century. In the DarthWiki/{{Wallbanger}} moment of the series, Phlox and Captain Archer concur that they should not help the Valakians because it would "interfere with nature."

* An episode of the second version of ''TheOuterLimits'' features an extinct humanity, but surviving androids create two new humans from preserved DNA as an AdamAndEvePlot to give us a second chance. Of course, "only one mating pair" equals YouFailBiologyForever, but still satisfying, as it subverted the series' MandatoryTwistEnding. In a different episode, several people are slingshotted forward in time to an abandoned Earth by aliens. They discover that biological warfare rendered all human females infertile. Stuck in the future, the survivors mope about how humanity's still extinct (there are only five of them)... until they find one more piece of alien technology [[spoiler:that proceeds to read their DNA, scramble it for maximum diversity, and create dozens of infants. Humanity gets another shot.]]

* The entire plot of ''FragileDreams'', where almost all humans are dead as a result of [[spoiler: the failure of the "Glass Cage Experiment," intended to make language unnessessary and eliminate conflict by giving humans the ability to empathize with others' thoughts and emotions. When it was first activated on a large scale, everyone went to sleep...and did not wake up. The BigBad, Shin, now a ghost, is still trying to re-activate the experiment, which will eliminate any survivors.]]

* The backstory of ''DeepwaterBlack'' is that the entire human population is wiped out by a deadly virus. The only thing they could do about was to send out a ship to be pioted by clones and stocked with DNA of a large amount of people to leave Earth and apparently come back when the virus is all gone.

* The ''VideoGame/CombatOfGiants: Mutant Insects'' games has a meteor that annihilated humanity and civilization. The game itself took place 300 years later where giant mutated insects rule the world.

* In TheLordOfTheRings - for everything ''except'' humans (Ent, Hobbits, Orcs etc).

* The backstory of EdictZeroFis states that this happened to "Old Earth." The only humans to survive were the ones in spaceships en route to the planet that would come to be known as "Edict Zero."