History GodzillaThreshold / RealLife

** Cardiopulmonary resuscitation involves forceful, sustained crushing force to the patient's chest, almost always resulting in multiple broken ribs (if done correctly) and quite possibly abdominal distension and aspiration pneumonia. It's an acceptable risk given that the patient is clinically dead, and every effort is now solely focused on keeping oxygenated blood pumping through the brain until defibrillation is possible. See [[UsefulNotes/CPRCleanPrettyReliable here]] on why CPR isn't necessarily as CleanPrettyReliable as fiction makes it out to be.

* Typically, when a computer company ceases support for an operating system, that's it: no more updates, and no more tech support. Microsoft, however, bucked the trend with Windows XP, an operating system they discontinued support for in 2008 and released patches for it; first, in 2014 when a serious security vulnerability was discovered in Internet Explorer, a web browser; again when the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack Wannacry trojan reared its ugly head in May 2017]], encrypting countless computers and hitting hospitals and police computer systems across the globe; and once more in 2019, when a vulnerability similar to the one Wannacry exploited was discovered.

** Sometimes the threshold for fire can be crossed before the fire even starts. After the Americans started their fire-bombing raids against Japan (causing far more destruction and casualties than even the nuclear bombs would later on), the government in Kyoto ordered two large firebreaks to be created in the city by demolishing two wide strips of the city perpendicular to the river (which itself formed another firebreak). Those firebreaks still exist to this day in the form of a pair of wide avenues, alongside some of the oldest urban buildings in Japan (the war ended before Kyoto could be bombed, meaning the firebreaks were ultimately not necessary).

* Churchill said later that the most difficult decision he ever made, not just during the war but in his whole life, was authorizing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Catapult Operation Catapult]] late in the spring of 1940.[[note]]The sinking of the French Navy to prevent Germany from taking possession of them[[/note]]\\

* Churchill said later that the most difficult decision he ever made, not just during the war but in his whole life, was authorizing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Catapult Operation Catapult]] late in the spring of 1940.\\

** Impeachment, initiated by Congress. Increasingly talked about casually by disgruntled congressmen and activists of the party not in power. It has only formally begun four times, only carried to its conclusion three of those, and all three times unsuccessfully, in large part because by design it requires strong bipartisan consensus that the president has done something unforgivable and detrimental to the nation's interest.

* The harshest possible punishment the NCAA can inflict upon teams is the so-called "Death Penalty," i.e. ''cancelling a team's entire season.'' So disruptive is this action [[note]]Not only is the team in question basically unable to play for several years due to being unable to acquire talent, team members are forced to transfer to other schools and in some cases may not be able to, squandering their scholarships and sports careers, and it severely disrupts the season schedule for other schools[[/note]] that it is reserved only for the worst offenses. It has only been implemented five times in the league's history, most infamously in 1987 against Southern Methodist University due to multiple violations including paying players from a slush fund. The scandal and the resulting Death Penalty has crippled SMU football ever since, and was also the inspiration for the film ''Film/NecessaryRoughness''.

** The situation at the start of Pompey's pirate war was by far the worse Rome had ever been in until the late Empire: the pirates of the Mediterranean had outright control of numerous fortified cities and entire countries, posed a dire threat to Rome's wheat supply from Egypt, and at one point even raided Ostia, ''Rome's harbor''. After the latter, most of the Senate (including almost all of Pompey's worst political enemies) voted a law that gave UsefulNotes/PompeyTheGreat greater powers than a dictator: they assigned him the equivalent of thirty legions (effectively the entirety of Rome's army), control of a fleet of either 270 or 500 ships with full crews, an initial budget of 144 million sesterces and full authority to draw from the public treasure if it wasn't enough, authority to choose 25 Senators and make them legates that answered only to him, and full authority to do anything he deemed necessary on the sea and on the land to up to 50 miles from the coast (and most of Rome's territory, including Rome itself, was at less than 50 miles from the coast), and a term of three years to solve the pirate situation. Pompey solved the situation in three months, celebrated his triumph, and then resigned.

** Cardiopulmonary resuscitation involves forceful, sustained crushing force to the patient's chest, almost always resulting in multiple broken ribs (if done correctly) and quite possibly abdominal distension and aspiration pneumonia. An acceptable risk is given that the patient is clinically dead and every effort is now solely focused on keeping oxygenated blood pumping through the brain until defibrillation is possible. See [[UsefulNotes/CPRCleanPrettyReliable here]] on why CPR isn't necessarily as CleanPrettyReliable as fiction makes it out to be.
** Both chemotherapy and radiation treatment are poisonous and can cause significant side effects -- the elevated risk of secondary cancers, bone marrow destruction, hearing loss, brain damage. But when the alternative is death from cancer, and especially when there's a reasonable chance of curing it with the chemotherapy...

** Cardiopulmonary resuscitation involves forceful, sustained crushing force to the patient's chest, almost always resulting in multiple broken ribs (if done correctly) and quite possibly abdominal distension and aspiration pneumonia. An acceptable risk given that the patient is clinically dead and every effort is now solely focused on keeping oxygenated blood pumping through the brain until defibrillation is possible. See [[UsefulNotes/CPRCleanPrettyReliable here]] on why CPR isn't necessarily as CleanPrettyReliable as fiction makes it out to be.
** Both chemotherapy and radiation treatment are poisonous and can cause significant side effects -- elevated risk of secondary cancers, bone marrow destruction, hearing loss, brain damage. But when the alternative is death from cancer, and especially when there's a reasonable chance of curing it with the chemotherapy...

** In the modern era, syphilis may not seem like a terribly frightening disease. Yet it was the HIV of its era, potentially causing a dementia-like condition if left untreated. One of the only somewhat effective treatments was mercury injections, which would give you mercury poisoning but help with the syphilis.\\

The first fully effective treatment for syphilis was to literally burn it out of the patient's body by inducing a very strong fever, and the best way to do that is giving them '''malaria'''. It was a widely accepted treatment for a time (apparently into the 1950s), even netting its discoverer Julius Wagner-Jauregg a Nobel Prize in 1927.\\

Simultaneously (1910s), Arsphenamine/Salvarsan was developed and used against several diseases including syphilis -- an organoarsenic compound the preparation of which involved adding an [=NaOH=]-solution (lye) prior to injection, causing internal chemical burns.

** Antibiotics are also subject to a lowering of the Godzilla Threshold, mostly though ignorance. They're intended to fight serious infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis, but some doctors will give them out to a patient if the person complains about a viral infection (cold or flu)... which is completely impervious to antibiotics. Leading to some antibiotics losing their effectiveness, and the rise of "super bugs" which are completely immune to all known antibiotics. This is further exacerbated by the misuse of antibiotics in the agricultural sector, where it is used to boost the growth of otherwise healthy livestock, which is then consumed by humans. Arguably, the Godzilla Threshold is simply being ignored outright.

** Treating addictions with a substitute addiction or substitute substance also falls under this. A lot of people would be the first to agree that being an addict to anything isn't good, but moving someone to one that is less damaging to their health from one that is objectively worse is sometimes the only workable option. For example, getting TheAlcoholic to become TheStoner or even a junkie might seem absolutely counterintuitive and unethical -- but if said alcoholic is developing liver disease, cannabis is ''far'' less hepatotoxic than alcohol, or if they are developing chronic alcoholic encephalopathy, cannabis or even opiates are far less permanently damaging to an adult brain than alcohol. A similar variant of substitution can actually be seen with the prevalence of [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee and soda]] and cigarettes in ''many'' recovering addict spaces.

*** The very first human inoculation against the disease. Pasteur wasn't sure it would work, and in fact, it could have infected young Joseph Meister... But as he had already been bitten by a rabid dog, so the worst the inoculation could do was kill him faster due to the additional infection, thus he proceeded. Never mind that, not being a licensed physician, he could have suffered prosecution for it. In the end, it worked, and you just don't prosecute someone for successfully curing what until then had been an incurable disease.
*** Standard treatment for rabies, administered as soon as the infection is ''suspected'', consists of large doses of anti-rabies antibodies, plus various doses of vaccine if the patient had not been previously inoculated. The immunoglobuline is extremely expensive, and the vaccine doses, depending on the type of vaccine, can be hellishly painful... But as the alternative goes from nerve damage to death, it's done anyway.

** Many kinds of surgery can be extremely dangerous. After all, surgery tends to involve cutting someone open and messing with their internal organs -- sometimes even the heart or the brain. And before anesthesia was discovered, surgeries had to be performed with the patient fully conscious. You'd have to be pretty desperate to undergo that kind of thing willingly. Easily one of the most drastic, last-resort surgeries is hemisphectoromy, which involves either disabling or completely cutting out an entire ''half'' of the patient's brain. This is usually only done on children, and only when they suffer from severe seizures that refuse to stop despite numerous other, less invasive treatments.

** Psychosurgery is still used today for extreme cases of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder among others. When first described, lobotomy was seen as a progress so much its inventor, António Egas Moniz, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949.

* This is pretty much the definition of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war Total War]], where all economic resources of a combatant are mobilized for the war effort and any constraints towards the prosecution of said war are rescinded. Constraints can include such mundane things as social taboos about women and children working in typically male professions or possibly even in combat roles.

* The scenario that ''did'' lead to nuclear war. That invading the islands of Japan would be incredibly difficult and bloody for the US (experience at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as well as the increase in [[TakingYouWithMe Kamikaze]] attacks demonstrated that Japanese were culturally geared to be DefiantToTheEnd) was their primary argument for [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki detonating two atomic weapons over Japanese cities in August 1945]].

* Sherman's March, late in the war, fits this trope. After having taken Atlanta and burned it to the ground, a development that historians believe led to Lincoln's re-election a few months later, General Sherman marched his soldiers toward the coast, up it into South Carolina and then back inland for the next few months. This was not to confront or pursue any significant Confederate resistance, but to bring the war to a swifter end by waging war not so much on the enemy's forces as the enemy's ability to support those forces economically—they burned farms, freed slaves, destroyed rail lines, and in general laid waste to everything in their path. It worked.

But then the Communist Party that had made a point of its opposition to Fascism and related movements such as Naziism went and made a secret deal with those very same Nazis. This led many Western communists to formally leave the Party, something many of them had sworn they would never do, and something that at that time came at considerable social cost.

France had surrendered to the Axis but still controlled its navy. If the Germans got control of France's fleet, Britain could not hope to maintain its supremacy on the waters, supremacy that even then made a German invasion of the British Isles a dicey prospect. The Vichy French government told Britain that they would never do that, to the point of scuttling their own ships, but the Royal Navy didn't trust them since they had just broken their agreement not to make a separate peace. And, they said, they would not just turn them over to the British themselves; that would be a violation of their armistice with Germany and Italy.\\

The threat of the Axis powers didn't just provoke the United States into using nuclear weapons, but to create them effectively from scratch based only on theoretical arguments from prominent scientists at the onset of the war. The inflation-adjusted cost of the Manhattan project was $20 billion dollars for the weapon and ''another'' $20 billion for the delivery system (the B-29). Neither of which had any guarantee of working when the projects commenced in 1942.

* The UsefulNotes/ColdWar. Western nations often couldn't think of anything worse than seeing another nation fall to Communism, so if keeping the DirtyCommunists out meant backing ruthless right-wing military dictatorships in third world nations, so be it. The Commies for their part didn't have any problems with working with ruthless left-wing dictators to keep American Puppets out of power in various nations. Of course, even by those calculations, sometimes, the Godzilla Threshold wasn't quite met to the extent that going nuclear was worth it, which is why we didn't end up fighting nuclear war over Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Angola, or any of a dozen other brushfire wars and proxy conflicts during that era. One of those conflicts was Afghanistan, where American political leaders basically thought, "A bunch of Fundamentalist Islamic guerrillas with terrorist tendencies can't possibly make the situation any worse than the Commies are, so let's give them a bunch of free guns". On this matter, America was no KarmaHoudini...\\

Communism clearly represented an existential threat to the United States. Through the mid-1960s, fully half the Federal government's total budget was for defense. This government spending was funded by upper income marginal tax rates of 50-90%, something considered unthinkable today without the specter of global communism. Much like in World War 2, the United States took arms production UpToEleven, producing over 30,000 nuclear weapons and the bombers, missiles and submarines needed to deliver them.

** Not just the USAF. Other countries will do the same, as Italy demonstrated in March 2018 when a passenger aircraft lost contact and two fighters were scrambled with orders to inspect it and re-establish contact before eventually shoot it down, terrorizing half of the Lombardy region when they broke the sound barrier to get on target as fast as possible (the plane re-established contact shortly before the fighters reached it).

** Averted (but not by choice) by the two pilots scrambled to intercept United Flight 93 after it was clear both that it had been hijacked and what the hijackers intended to do with the planes they had hijacked: There hadn't been time to load out their planes with missiles, so as they headed out to them the commander said: "I'll take the tail", leading to the junior pilot's response, "And I'll take the cockpit". In other words, had they intercepted the plane and failed to force it to land through the usual nonviolent means, ''they were going to ram it'' to force it down, killing not only the hijackers but ''themselves and '''the passengers''''' in the process.[[note]]This was an even bigger threshold for the junior pilot, Heather Penney, since her father was a United Airlines pilot who was flying that day... but she didn't know what plane. Yes, she was ready to kill ''him'' along with herself[[/note]]

* Necessity in Law, which essentially means damage to property and other activities that would normally be against the law [[HeroInsurance may be justified by necessity to prevent some bigger trouble]], and a person who has done it is not accountable for it. Factory burning and the only way to get access to one side is through a full car dealership parking lot? Bulldoze the brand new cars out of the way. Sea water bad in the long term for the precision materials and equipment inside the nuclear reactor and will undoubtedly make it unable to be used in the future? Fuck it, we need to cool it down ''now''.

* The United States' Declaration of Independence described political revolution in essentially these terms, and the bulk of it consisted of a list of reasons why the signers felt the actions of the British crown had crossed the threshold.

* In the UK, the military maintains a tradition of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort letters of last resort]]. In effect, these are the "final orders" to the Captains of the four nuclear-equipped Vanguard-class submarines to be opened in the event of a complete breakdown in command and control as a result of nuclear attack and which nobody knows except the Prime Minister themselves. Technically ANYTHING can be ordered but in general, the possibilities fall into four categories. One of which is to accept that deterrence has failed and not retaliate and one is to place the submarine under the command of an allied nation. The last two basically amount to the Godzilla threshold in that either a full nuclear retaliation is ordered or, perhaps most horrifyingly, for the Captain to simply "use their best judgement" which in effect amounts to a freedom to do anything he deems necessary.

* AncientRome had provisions for this during the Republic: when an enemy appeared invincible and on the verge of overrunning Rome, the Senate chose the man best suited to deal with that enemy and made him a dictator, giving him absolute power for six months and with no legal way to make him pay for anything he did during his term. It usually went well, as they would follow the example of {{Cincinnatus}}, who, upon defeating an enemy coalition that had surrounded the Roman army (thus prompting him being named dictator) within the first half of his term, resigned and returned to his farm, and, after being named dictator AGAIN to deal with a coup, he defeated the coup in one day and immediately resigned AGAIN. Then there's the two times [[UpToEleven that wasn't enough]]:

* Fire. A sufficiently big fire will turn anything in its path into a smouldering ruin and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Fires can get so bad, that perhaps the only way to deal with it is to set your OWN fire in the hope that your fire will consume enough fuel/air to fight the original fire. Of course, things CAN go wrong where the fire just merges into one [[FromBadToWorse Super Fire]] or even worse kicks off a firestorm which are so intense they create their own winds and literally suck you into the inferno.

** In an attempt to fight the fires set in the wake of the San Francisco 1906 Earthquake, the same technique as Chicago was used, but all the people experienced in doing this were dead, and the demolished buildings would themselves catch fire (proper demolition techniques would collapse the building on itself in such a way that most potential fires would be smothered), making things worse. At least 80% of the damage to the city was fire damage, and not direct earthquake damage.
** Lighting backfires (which burn towards the original fire, consuming all the fuel) is still a technique in use for fighting forest or brushfires. Setting backfires is reportedly as much art as science, and as previously mentioned is in no way guaranteed to work, making it a controversial tactic at best. Conversely, as a number of countries have learned the hard way (the US included) the absolute worst forest fire management policy is to stamp them all out as fast as possible. This leads to build up of fuel until it reaches the stage where it is no longer possible to suppress further fires, resulting in a titanic wildfire, such as the 1988 Yellowstone fire. The better option is to allow natural fires of limited scale to burn, suppressing only fires of large size or human origin. This allows a safe burn-off of the naturally accumulating fuel.

* Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital rocket has a launch escape system which fires a solid fuel rocket directly into the booster stage, in order to push the capsule and its crew away from a (potentially exploding) booster. This certainly terminates the mission and all but guarantees that the reusable booster stage will be destroyed by the combination of facing a hot jet of exhaust gases and the supersonic airstream to a bulkhead that was only designed to hold the capsule in place. If the escape system is activated, the control software has given up on saving the booster and is just trying to save as many lives as it can.\\

Despite this, the New Shepard booster survived the in-flight test of that Launch Escape System, and successfully achieved a controlled, soft landing. Even though the engineers both expected and accepted that the booster would probably be lost in the in-flight test of the escape-system, they wrote software code for the booster's flight-computer to attempt to keep controlling the booster anyway (which was already done to prevent risk of collision with the escaping capsule) and programmed the booster to attempt to fly itself to a controlled, intact landing, just in case the booster somehow did survive the in-flight test of the escape-system.

** A somewhat similar extreme physiological response occurs during hypothermia, where the body will stop sending blood away from the central mass where most of the vital organs are located to keep them from freezing to death for as long as possible. Extremities such the fingers and toes are considered non-essential in this case, since losing a few fingers or an ear to frostbite is more acceptable than having your heart freeze and stop beating.

** Because of the {{Conscription}} any civilian is potentially a soldier, and a very large fraction of the population has had military training and can potentially be called up as a member of the militia. Militia members are also allowed to keep their service rifle after their term ends. Prior to 2007, this was taken UpToEleven with the government providing each member of the militia with a sealed box with 50 rounds of ammunition -- just in case. Since 2007, all ammunition has been stored at military armories except for members of the military police and special rapid deployment reservist units.

** In the spirit of the redoubt, bridges and tunnels were set-up with demolition charges during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar to cut off all easy entries to the country, basically leaving potential invaders with the choice between mountains, lakes, rivers, or more mountains.[[note]]They were deemed too dangerous and expensive (while it is also possible to attain the same effect with mobile equipment) in 1991 and the last ones were disarmed and removed in 2014.[[/note]]

* In retrospect, this is how the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978-79 has been viewed. While a hardline Communist government is not ideal (especially a hardline Communist government that [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar the United States and its allies had very recently lost a major war to]]), what the Vietnamese invasion and occupation replaced was unarguably ''[[NightmareFuel/TheKillingFields worse]]''.

* During three successive years of abnormally low drought in the mid-2010s, the city of Cape Town, South Africa, began imposing stricter and stricter restrictions on water use—no watering lawns or filling pools, things like that. But by late 2017 the rains had not returned and the city's reservoirs were mostly open sand pits. So, the city announced that if the situation continued, there would have to be a Day Zero, when it would stop supplying water to everywhere but its downtown and essential services (like hospitals) elsewhere in the city. As of January 2018 that date was set for April; fortunately, the citizens' compliance with the water restrictions and some rain refilling the reservoirs has, as of this writing, pushed Day Zero into 2019 and averted the trope.
* In September 2018, Hurricane Florence began barreling towards the East Coast of the United States with North and South Carolina in its sights. With wind speeds around 140 MPH, a 500-mile radius, and the potential for catastrophic destruction on the coast, North Carolina actually invoked its first-ever in memory state evacuation to force everyone off the barrier islands (Outer Banks, Hatteras Island, etc.)

** In 2002, executives at Enron [[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/business/the-last-days-of-enron.html reached this trope]] when they realized just how badly CFO Andrew Fastow had mismanaged the company's books, partly to cover up huge losses but also money he'd diverted to himself and his wife:

** More extreme than a confidence motion is the option available to the government: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation prorogation]], basically asking the head of state to dissolve Parliament. Normally this is only done after elections have been called when it makes sense (or as a break between sessions of the same parliament). But in some circumstances it has been done as a response to a difficult situation: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis#Dismissal Australia's 1975 constitutional crisis]], where the Governor-General took it upon himself to do the proroguing rather than do so on the PM's advice (largely because he had dismissed the PM, itself a Godzilla-threshold move) and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute twice during Canada's 2008–2009 government]], without elections, when the ruling minority sought to avoid confidence votes and inconvenient investigations.\\

And then in 2019 new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had the Queen prorogue Parliament for longer than it usually was at the end of the summer, conveniently limiting the amount of time that Parliament sits before the October 31 Brexit deadline to a period that would allow a no-deal Brexit to go through without the opposition being able to prevent it.

** It is feared that the measures -- including the stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures -- taken to limit the spread of COVID-19, may bring about another Great Depression. This is seen as ''preferable'' to allowing the disease to run unchecked. Let that sink in.

** This all might seem excessive for a nation that hasn't been to war in three centuries, but considering their position right in the middle of what was until recent history the most volatile continent on the planet, being CrazyPrepared starts to make sense as a defensive strategy.

** When former Klansman David Duke won the Republican nomination for governor of Louisiana in the 1990s, his Democratic opponent was Edwin Edwards, who had previously been convicted of political corruption. A bumper sticker in the state pretty much lampshaded the trope: "Vote for the crook. It's important".
** In the 2010s, Brexit in the UK and ''Creator/DonaldTrump'''s election to the US presidency have largely been seen as an alienated electorate invoking this trope.
* Both houses of the U.S. Congress have the power of "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress#Inherent_contempt inherent contempt]]": to jail a witness for refusing to comply with their subpoenas ... ''without'' the involvement of the other two branches of government (normally, that compliance is enforced through the courts, which takes longer). It has only been used once, by the Senate in the 1930s; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurney_v._MacCracken the Supreme Court upheld it]].[[note]]As of this writing (May 2019), the House is considering its use on certain non-compliant officials of the Trump administration.[[/note]]

** Impeachment, initiated by Congress. Increasingly talked about casually by disgruntled congressmen and activists of the party not in power. but only formally begun three times, only carried to its conclusion twice and both times unsuccessfully, in large part because by design it requires strong bipartisan consensus that the president has done something unforgivable and detrimental to the nation's interest.

** The UsefulNotes/TwentyFifthAmendment. Adopted after John F. Kennedy's assassination led people to recall how William [=McKinley=] had been in a coma for over a month following his before he died, and how the Constitution was silent on how to handle situations where the President, while not dead, was incapacitated. Technically, only in that situation should the clause where the Cabinet can unanimously remove the President from office, at least temporarily, be invoked. But it's not explicitly limited to that, and its potential for a coup has been noted and used quite a bit in fiction.

* For the American federal political system, two words: constitutional convention. There's only ever been one before that replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. While plenty of people have proposed holding another convention to update the Constitution, there's never been a serious movement to do so because everyone is terrified of what the new Constitution might look like based on who holds and attends it. If one were to be held, it would an admission by all sides that American politics are hopelessly broken beyond repair and the only possible solution is to throw the current system away and start from scratch.

** The 25th Amendment. Adopted after John F. Kennedy's assassination led people to recall how William [=McKinley=] had been in a coma for over a month following his before he died, and how the Constitution was silent on how to handle situations where the President, while not dead, was incapacitated. Technically, only in that situation should the clause where the Cabinet can unanimously remove the President from office, at least temporarily, be invoked. But it's not explicitly limited to that, and its potential for a coup has been noted and used quite a bit in fiction.

** Averted (but not by choice) by the two pilots scrambled to intercept United Flight 93 after it was clear both that it had been hijacked and what the hijackers intended to do with the planes they had hijacked: There hadn't been time to load out their planes with missiles, so as they headed out to them the commander said: "I'll take the tail", leading to the junior pilot's response, "And I'll take the cockpit". In other words, had they intercepted the plane and failed to force it to land through the usual nonviolent means, ''they were going to ram it'' to force it down, killing not only the hijackers but ''themselves and '''the passengers''''' in the process.[[note]]This was an even bigger threshold for the junior pilot, Heather Penney, since her father was a United Airlines pilot who was flying that day... but she didn't know what plane. Yes, she was ready to kill ''him'' along with herself[[//note]]

** In the early 2000s in Wisconsin, Chronic Wasting Disease (the Deer equivalent of Mad Cow) was starting to spread and become a problem. If left unchecked, the disease risked wiping out the deer population to the point where it may not recover. The Wisconsin DNR first tried to find a cure for the disease, or at least find what was causing it in the first place in hopes of preventing further infections. The methods didn't work, so they had no choice: They extended Deer Season by a week and ordered for hunters in the state to shoot more deer than usually allowed in order to thin the numbers to extremely low populations (and to make sure that nobody consumed the infected deer.) Thanks to careful monitoring by the DNR, the deer would recover to normal populations within a few years, and now the disease is barely even a problem anymore.

** Averted (but not by choice) by the two pilots scrambled to intercept Flight 93 after it was clear both that it had been hijacked and what the hijackers intended to do with the planes they had hijacked: There hadn't been time to load out their planes with missiles, so as they headed out to them the commander said: "I'll take the tail", leading to the junior pilot's response, "And I'll take the cockpit". In other words, had they intercepted the plane and failed to force it to land through the usual nonviolent means, ''they were going to ram it'' to force it down, killing not only the hijackers but ''themselves and '''the passengers''''' in the process.[[note]]This was an even bigger threshold for the junior pilot, Heather Penney, since her father was a United Airlines pilot who was flying that day ... but she didn't know what plane. Yes, she was ready to kill ''him'' along with herself[[//note]]

* In the UK the military maintains a tradition of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort letters of last resort]]. In effect, these are the "final orders" to the Captains of the four nuclear-equipped Vanguard-class submarines to be opened in the event of a complete breakdown in command and control as a result of nuclear attack and which nobody knows except the Prime Minister themselves. Technically ANYTHING can be ordered but in general, the possibilities fall into four categories. One of which is to accept that deterrence has failed and not retaliate and one is to place the submarine under the command of an allied nation. The last two basically amount to the Godzilla threshold in that either a full nuclear retaliation is ordered or, perhaps most horrifyingly, for the Captain to simply "use their best judgement" which in effect amounts to a freedom to do anything he deems necessary.

* Locusts. Old school but still armageddon to farmers if a swarm manages to grow to Biblical proportions. Crop loss is often expected to be 100%. Methods used to combat locust swarms are usually using enough poison to kill every living thing in the area... except the locust, whose numbers will take a dent but as a hive being several miles wide and thus, can move around, over, or through the poisoned areas. Worse, it was only in 2009 that scientists even figured out what causes locust swarms to appear. Locusts are grasshoppers -- the same grasshoppers that are living in the area already. But if their numbers grow too large, this causes them to literally morph into locusts, swarm, and start eating ''everything in sight.''

** Any treatment for rabies, as the illness is invariably fatal within days from the onset of the symptoms:
*** The very first human inoculation against the disease. Pasteur wasn't sure it would work, and in fact, it could have infected young Joseph Meister... But as he had already been bitten by a rabid dog the worst the inoculation could do was to kill him faster due to the additional infection, thus he proceeded. Never mind that, not being a licensed physician, he could have suffered prosecution for it. In the end, it worked, and you just don't prosecute someone for successfully curing what until then had been an incurable disease.
*** Standard treatment for rabies, administered as soon as the infection is ''suspected'', consists in large doses of anti-rabies antibodies, plus various doses of vaccine if the patient had not been previously inoculated. The immunoglobuline is extremely expensive, and the vaccine doses, depending on the type of vaccine, can be hellishly painful... But as the alternative goes from nerve damage to death, it's done anyway.
*** The Milwaukee Protocol is an experimental treatment for unvaccinated individuals that already present symptoms, and consists in ''putting the patient into a coma and shooting them up with a myriad of drugs''. Side effects include extensive nerve damage... But as it's rabies it can literally do no more harm-and even then, the success (read: survival) rate stands at 4 out of 35 treatments performed to date. Only one survived without serious permanent aftereffects and even then [[FalseCause it's not clear if the procedure helped at all]] (since she was found to have already had rabies antibodies in her before the treatment began).

** Nearly all major sports leagues and sanctioning organizations around the developed world have suspended and postponed their seasons, and in some cases, most notably in the case of the "March Madness" U.S. college basketball tournaments, canceled them altogether (The NCAA, just to be extra safe, canceled all the ''spring'' sports championships as well, which wouldn't otherwise have been held for a couple of months).

** Early in the epidemic China put the entire city of Wuhan, where the outbreak started, on lockdown ... no one could go out for all but the most essential reasons. This measure has been emulated by Italy and Spain as their caseloads exhaust available hospital space ... yes, in the former case, an ''entire country'' of 60 million people generally must stay at home when possible.

** Both chemotherapy and radiation treatment are poisonous and can cause significant side effects - elevated risk of secondary cancers, bone marrow destruction, hearing loss, brain damage. But when the alternative is death from cancer, and especially when there's a reasonable chance of curing it with the chemotherapy...

Simultaneously (1910s), Arsphenamine/Salvarsan was developed and used against several diseases including syphilis - an organoarsenic compound the preparation of which involved adding an [=NaOH=]-solution (lye) prior to injection, causing internal chemical burns.

** This does exist for drugs if they are specifically known as drugs of abuse. In extreme cases, sometimes requiring being enrolled in a trial, one could be prescribed: ecstasy for PTSD and major treatment-resistant depression,[[note]]This, incidentally, should be distinguished from the administration of ecstasy and low-dose LSD--yes, ''that'' LSD--for PTSD, which (as of the mid-2010s) has been shown to be extremely and permanently effective on all patients, in combination with therapy, but remains experimental.[[/note]] opiates for treatment-resistant depression, psilocybin for intense migraine or cluster headaches, and methamphetamine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The condition has to be ''so'' severe that ''all other'' medication approaches (everything from antidepressants to antipsychotics to anticonvulsants to every possible cocktail of them) and doses ''and'' all non-medication approaches (everything from cognitive behavioral therapy to electroshock) have either failed, are failing, or bear too much risk for the patient ''and'' the addiction that will result from opiates or the potentially fatal side effects of a dose of ecstasy are better outcomes than suicide or disability so severe the individual is literally bedridden or suicidal.

** Treating addictions with a substitute addiction or substitute substance also falls under this. A lot of people would be the first to agree that being an addict to anything isn't good, but moving someone to one that is less damaging to their health from one that is objectively worse is sometimes the only workable option. For example, getting TheAlcoholic to become TheStoner or even a junkie might seem absolutely counterintuitive and unethical - but if said alcoholic is developing liver disease, cannabis is ''far'' less hepatotoxic than alcohol, or if they are developing chronic alcoholic encephalopathy, cannabis or even opiates are far less permanently damaging to an adult brain than alcohol. A similar variant of substitution can actually be seen with the prevalence of [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee and soda]] and cigarettes in ''many'' recovering addict spaces.

** Many kinds of surgery can be extremely dangerous. After all, surgery tends to involve cutting someone open and messing with their internal organs - sometimes even the heart or the brain. And before anesthesia was discovered, surgeries had to be performed with the patient fully conscious. You'd have to be pretty desperate to undergo that kind of thing willingly. Easily one of the most drastic, last-resort surgeries is hemisphectoromy, which involves either disabling or completely cutting out an entire ''half'' of the patient's brain. This is usually only done on children, and only when they suffer from severe seizures that refuse to stop despite numerous other, less invasive treatments.

* Another crossing of the threshold was [[MeaningfulName Operation Downfall]] - if the Japanese hadn't surrendered, then the Allies would have launched the largest amphibious/naval operation in history: Hundreds of capital ships, thousands of aircraft, millions of men, chemical weapons, and, most chillingly of all ''[[NukeEm seven atom bombs]].'' (That's right--the contemplated alternative to dropping two A-bombs was dropping ''seven''.) The estimated dead for the conquest of Japan was half a million for the US and 5+ million Japanese.\\

* In a strange subversion of this trope, Nazi Germany didn't itself pass the Godzilla Threshold until late in the war, well beyond the point where it would do any good. The perceived weakness of their enemies combined with the string of early victories convinced the Germans that the war could be won with only a partial economic mobilization. Such investments as long-range heavy bombers and a nuclear weapons program were never seriously considered because a "short" war would have no need for such things. The Nazis also never broke with tradition and tapped their female population to work in the factories as it was deemed more important for them to raise the next generation of Nazi super-children. Despite all the heavy bombing, Nazi war production only reached its peak in 1944(!) after all the slack industrial capacity was finally turned over to the war effort and after the FascistButInefficient prior organization of the economy got replaced by the - equally ruthless but at least somewhat competent - Albert Speer.

* Self-defense is a subtype of this; if you or someone else is in ''imminent'' danger of ''physical'' harm, you are legally allowed to commit assault and battery against your attacker up to the point where you are safe. If they are using lethal force, you can use lethal force in response, sometimes resulting in justifiable homicide - about 400 per year are recorded by civilians in the United States alone. There is a strict line here, though, as they must be presenting an imminent threat to you or someone else - so if someone attacks you, you can legally defend yourself, but if they turn to run or surrender, you cannot continue to attack. Likewise, if someone throws a punch at you, you cannot pull out a gun and shoot them unless (a) you're willing to argue you went for a non-lethal shot (to the limbs, for example, to disable rather than to kill) or (b) the fight is severely unfair (like a small woman being confronted by a big man). Self-defense is an affirmative defense, as you are outright admitting to committing an otherwise illegal act but claiming that it was justified under the law - if your actions are found to be unjustified, then you are guilty of whatever crime you confessed to. Note also that if you provoke an attack (so-called fighting words), you are not eligible for self-defense, because you started it.

* Locusts. Old school but still armageddon to farmers if a swarm manages to grow to Biblical proportions. Crop loss is often expected to be 100%. Methods used to combat locust swarms are usually using enough poison to kill every living thing in the area... except the locust, whose numbers will take a dent but as a hive being several miles wide and thus, can move around, over, or through the poisoned areas. Worse, it was only in 2009 that scientists even figured out what causes locust swarms to appear. Locusts are grasshoppers - the same grasshoppers that are living in the area already. But if their numbers grow too large, this causes them to literally morph into locusts, swarm, and start eating ''everything in sight.''

** Because of the {{Conscription}} any civilian is potentially a soldier, and a very large fraction of the population has had military training and can potentially be called up as a member of the militia. Militia members are also allowed to keep their service rifle after their term ends. Prior to 2007, this was taken UpToEleven with the government providing each member of the militia with a sealed box with 50 rounds of ammunition - just in case. Since 2007, all ammunition has been stored at military armories except for members of the military police and special rapid deployment reservist units.

* Sino-Vietnamese relations have been historically ''turbulent'' - that is to say, China attempts to invade Vietnam nearly once every dynasty. The threshold was crossed when Phan Bội Châu struck up an alliance with the Kuomintang to get Vietnam out of the Vichy French regime's hands. China later became a very important strategic ally to Vietnam in the ensuing fight (the Indochina War and Vietnam War) in an EnemyMine situation, with the Communist Bloc in a united front. Four years after the fall of Saigon/Vietnamese reunification, the Chinese and Vietnamese went right back to shooting at each other.

* Fire. A sufficiently big fire will turn anything in its path into a smouldering ruin and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Fires can get so bad, that perhaps the only way to deal with it is to set your OWN fire in the hope that your fire will consume enough fuel/air to fight the original fire. Of course, things CAN go wrong where the fire just merges into one [[FromBadToWorse Super Fire]].

* Defending the city against the French in 1946, some Hanoians threw their family altar into the barricades. The altar is considered the most sacred object in the Vietnamese home, where prayers and offerings are made to spiritual figures and deceased family members.
* Previously, in the Mongol-Vietnamese War of 1257-1258, the Mongols managed to take over Thăng Long (later Hanoi), but the Vietnamese had already evacuated the city, taken all the food, and destroyed anything beneficial to the enemy. The occupation only lasted 10 days before the Trần returned to attack the city, forcing the Yuan-Mongols to flee, and successfully retaking the capital.