History Main / ApocalypticGagOrder

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!!Examples

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Film]]

* Subverted and lampshaded in ''Literature/TheDeadPast'': When a pair of scientists reinvent a Forbidden Technology that has Unforeseen Consequences, the government agents tasked with keeping it a secret are stymied by the fact that it's ''so'' secret they don't technically have the authority to censor it. They try threats of imprisonment without trial or worse, only to be told "This isn't the Twentieth Century".

* Averted in "Literature/TheDeadPast": When a pair of scientists reinvent a Forbidden Technology that has Unforeseen Consequences, the government agents tasked with keeping it a secret are stymied by the fact that it's ''so'' secret they don't technically have the authority to censor it. They try threats of imprisonment without trial or worse, only to be told "This isn't the Twentieth Century".
* ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'': In the ''Countdown'' Novella, the [=CDC=] and the governments of the world fed the news comforting platitudes to tell the world about the sickness sweeping the globe. One [=CDC=] scientist breaks the true story on his tween daughter's blog.

* ''Literature/{{Seveneves}}'': The Moon has broken up (a week is wasted wondering why) and Earth is facing a serious bombardment of rubble. We can't hide the fact that the Moon is gone, and we can't suppress the realization that everyone's about to be pounded back to the Precambrian. But we can try to get as many of the best and brightest out of the firing line, and pack as much of the fruits of human civilization away with them. At least, that's the line that's delivered by the powers that be. In reality, they've decided that it's a lost cause but giving people a year thinking that something is being done about the catastrophe (and You Too Can Contribute!) is a year not spent collapsing into mass panic. Those aware of the subterfuge go along with it in the name of peace and sanity. Ironically, some are genuinely working to mitigate the disaster but find themselves hampered by others only concerned with the palliative spectacle.

* In ''Literature/WorldWarZ'', China does a regular version in face of a ZombieApocalypse, with the addition of creating a military crisis with Taiwan to provide a cover for their press clampdown and army mobilization. The U.S. government gets in on the action with a variation: Although several outbreaks have made the news, the government presents it as a form of rabies, and helps a CorruptCorporateExecutive with marketing his rabies vaccine so that people will remain calm and assume the problem is under control. Once the vaccine is revealed to be useless and the outbreaks become more frequent The Great Panic begins.

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]

[[folder: Comic Books]]
* Franchise/{{Superman}} wouldn't exist without this trope. His father, Jor-El, warned the Kryptonian council that their world was going to explode from geothermic activity. They dismissed him and prevented him from making any noise about his findings, so all he and his wife could do was send their baby to safety in a ship.
** This differs from the usual trope in that the council wasn't covering up an oncoming disaster (they didn't believe there was any danger); they were covering up the embarrassment of having a distinguished scientist proclaiming an (apparently) crackpot theory.
* The 2015 ''ComicBook/{{Secret Wars|2015}}'' event had some of this going on as well. The governments of the world didn't know that there were multiversal incursions happening, all destroying the universes as worlds collided, but there were a handful of superheroes (and supervillains) who knew. They kept it secret to the point of mindwiping several other heroes who found out and disagreed with their methods, causing a schism amongst superheroes right as the last incursion between Earth-616 and Earth-1610 began.

[[folder: Fan Works]]

[[folder: Film]]
* ''Film/DeepImpact'': The IntrepidReporter actually thought she was chasing a cheating scandal or a disgraced politician scandal. But the President's people thought that she knew the truth about the incoming comet and treated her as such. The President shows some knowledge that something this huge is impossible to keep secret for long, and takes the appearance of the reporter to mean the jig is up: people are beginning to notice something's going on, and even if they silence this reporter, another will come along shortly. The information goes public a couple of weeks later, and the President issues orders on national television intended to keep society together as long as possible: no price gouging on gas, water, or other necessities.
* ''Film/DontLookUp'': President Orlean orders Mindy and Kate to keep quiet on the comet until after the midterm elections. Obviously, they decide leaking news of TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt is more important, but thanks to the media having the WorstNewsJudgmentEver, nobody takes them seriously until scientists from more prestigious universities verify their discovery. When Kate reveals to the public that [[spoiler:the president aborted the mission to deflect the comet so her donor's company could mine it for trillions of dollars worth of minerals]], she's kidnapped by the FBI and forced to sign a gag order. Later on, after [[spoiler:he grows disillusioned with BASH's plan and has a breakdown on live TV]], Mindy gets a similar order to sign.

* ''Film/{{Outbreak}}'': Donald Sutherland and Creator/MorganFreeman's characters, despite knowing how deadly the Motaba virus is, play clueless so they can use the version they have a cure for as a germ warfare weapon. There's even a scene in TheWarRoom where they watch a projection of Motaba's contagion spread and death toll, indicating the president is on board. There are repeated examples of the government telling people who are sick that they'll be just fine -- right before [[KillItWithFire dropping a Fuel Air Bomb]] on the infection.
* ''Film/TheCrazies'': Not only did the government keep a lid on the sickness, but they tracked survivors and targeted them before they could get to safety and either blow the whistle or spread the infection.
* A particularly egregious example in ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve''. The IgnoredExpert warns what's going to happen, but is blown off. The secret is kept pretty well. The hero only finds out because of who he's working for. And the "save humanity" ships are pretty much meant only for those who can afford to chip in and have them built.

* In ''Film/TheReturnOfTheLivingDead'' the previous film ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968'' is presented as VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory - the government tried to hush it up but some news leaked out, so they let a movie be made but insisted that the filmmakers change certain aspects and claim it was fiction. Unfortunately for the protagonists, one of the things the government decided to keep hush-hush is that Trioxin zombies are damn near un-(re)killable, and not even ''ripping their heads off'' will stop them.
-->"You mean the movie ''lied''?!?"
* Implied in ''Film/BattleLosAngeles''. The government was all ready to take pictures and scan the landing spacecraft and in no time was sending a unit to plant explosives in the command center - however the rest of the world is surprised to see aliens arrive.
* Largely averted in ''Film/Contagion2011'', where the government is up-front about just how bad things are, but they do try to keep a lid on the Chicago quarantine because they're trying to avoid carriers leaving to infect others, but they're foiled by Dr. Cheever's attempt to warn his wife. Even then, Kreuzwielde does his damnedest to be a rabble rouser by making people believe that the government is keeping some very dire secrets under cover.
* Attempted but defied in ''Film/WithoutWarning1994'': when the governments of the world detect a second wave of impactors en route to Earth, aiming for several country capitals (like Washington, D.C.) they try to keep it quiet, but one of the doctors just [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere call it quits right then and there]] and announces that they are coming in an impromptu press conference before leaving to spend what he thinks are his last hours with his family ([[DownerEnding which turned out to have been a good assumption]]).
* In ''Film/IRobot'', after Det. Spooner interrogates Sonny, a rouge NS-5 robot, as to why he killed Dr. Lanning, Robertson, [=C.E.O.=] of [[MegaCorp U.S. Robotics]] tells Spooner and Lt. Bergin that Sonny is just a malfunctioning NS-5, and Lanning's death is nothing more than an industrial accident, and hands them a gag order, warning that if word gets out that the police apprehended a "KillerRobot," they will be prosecuted fro trying to start a panic. Near the end of the film [[spoiler: the "killer robot" turns out to be [[AIIsACrapshoot VIKI, an artificial intelligence system meant to run the city's infrastructure]], but had decided that humanity was too careless with their own survival and deduced that [[ForTheGreaterGood she had to use the other NS-5s' to shepherd the humans]].]]

[[folder: Literature]]

* Averted in the Isaac Asimov short story "Literature/TheDeadPast": When a pair of scientists reinvent a Forbidden Technology that has Unforeseen Consequences, the government agents tasked with keeping it a secret are stymied by the fact that it's ''so'' secret they don't technically have the authority to censor it. They try threats of imprisonment without trial or worse, only to be told "This isn't the Twentieth Century".

* In ''Literature/TheMidwichCuckoos'', the UsefulNotes/OfficialSecretsAct is invoked to cover up the initial incident at Midwich. Practically no details are known anyway, since everyone inside was mysteriously unconscious at the time and nobody outside could see what was going on.

* In ''Literature/WorldWarZ'' China does a regular version in face of a ZombieApocalypse, with the addition of creating a military crisis with Taiwan to provide a cover for their press clampdown and army mobilization. The U.S. government gets in on the action with a variation: Although several outbreaks have made the news, the government presents it as a form of rabies, and helps a CorruptCorporateExecutive with marketing his rabies vaccine so that people will remain calm and assume the problem is under control. Once the vaccine is revealed to be useless and the outbreaks become more frequent The Great Panic begins.
* [[Creator/NealStephenson Neal Stephenson's]] ''Seveneves'': The Moon has broken up (a week is wasted wondering why) and Earth is facing a serious bombardment of rubble. We can't hide the fact that the Moon is gone, and we can't suppress the realisation that everyone's about to be pounded back to the Precambrian. But we can try to get as many of the best and brightest out of the firing line, and pack as much of the fruits of human civilisation away with them. At least, that's the line that's delivered by the powers that be. In reality, they've decided that it's a lost cause but giving people a year thinking that something is being done about the catastrophe (and You Too Can Contribute!) is a year not spent collapsing into mass panic. Those aware of the subterfuge go along with it in the name of peace and sanity. Ironically, some are genuinely working to mitigate the disaster but find themselves hampered by others only concerned with the palliative spectacle.

[[folder: Live Action Television]]

* ''Series/IntoTheNight'' has NATO cover-up the arrival of a gamma ray burst from the sun that will kill anyone it reaches. Terrenzio, a high-level official in NATO only learns of it from overhearing other members discuss it.
* ''Series/YouMeAndTheApocalypse'' zig-zags this. The government initially tells the public the truth about what is going to happen [[spoiler:but when the attempt to save the world fails, they start to lie to the public.]]
* Season 1 of Marvel's ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' starts out portraying the team as essentially the Franchise/MenInBlack, not only working to protect Earth from Weird Stuff but also to keep it out of the public eye. At one point Coulson mentions having stopped an antimatter meteor from impacting Earth, and that they made sure no one ever heard about it.
** Season 3 has the American government creating the Advanced Threat Containment Unit to secretly detain anyone who has Inhuman-like powers and cover up any news regarding the spread of Terrigen on a global scale.

* ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}'': The Soviet Union tries to keep what happened secret until they are forced to admit it. Even when they are working with West Germany they downplay just how bad the radiation is, leading to [[spoiler:The Germans giving them a completely inadequate robot for the task.]]
* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E25TheInnerLight The Inner Light]]'', when Kamin (whose memories Picard is experiencing) confronts his government about the fact that their planet is dying, it is revealed that the government of Kataan had already known for a while. Their society doesn't have the technology to leave the planet, so they plan to FaceDeathWithDignity, while recording their society's culture in a probe and launching it into space (which the crew of the ''Enterprise''-D recovers, kicking off the episode).

* In VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry, the fact that the villagers of Hinamizawa are [[spoiler:hosts to parasite that causes them to go insane when under stress]] is a tightly held government secret. When [[spoiler:the Queen Carrier of the parasite dies]], rather than deal with a whole bunch of insane villagers, [[spoiler:the government decides to gas them all,]] destroying the village. After that, anything that might blow their [[spoiler:GasLeakCoverUp]] also falls under the gag order.

[[folder: Webcomics]]
* In ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'' the world governments pretended that the "rash sickness" was infectious but mostly harmless and that the [[PatientZero patients zero]] were responding well to treatment, and said that they were closing borders to travel simply because an epidemic would temporarily cripple the workforce. Of course, even they probably didn't know that the Illness could infect ''all'' mammals including wild vermin and whales, or that it occasionally [[ZombieApocalypse zombified its victims rather than killing them...]]
* In one arc of ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'', a man-eating shark appears on a terraformed planet that wasn't supposed to have any sharks, and killed one of the Toughs and mauled another as they vacationed there. When Der Trihs called the cops, they ''arrested him'' because they [[InsaneTrollLogic decided he must be trying to sabotage their tourism industry with a robotic shark]]. It wasn't until the police chief personally witnessed a MadScientist confess to releasing the thing ''and then get eaten by a giant squid he'd also released'' that he decided to close the beaches.
* In ''Webcomic/QuantumVibe'' the ultra-Libertarian L-5 City's Board of Directors orders Nicole to keep [[spoiler: her FTL drive a secret for at least a year, since it could be used to teleport nukes anywhere, destroying civilization again. So she invents an interdiction device.]]

[[folder: Video Games]]
* One of the functions of the title organization in ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'' is to keep the world public unaware of the real scale of the on-going alien invasion. Failing to deal with alien attacks discretely and to hide the evidence results in panic levels going up across the globe, which is bad all around.
* In the ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' series, the Citadel Council pointedly refuses to acknowledge the Reaper threat until it's too late because they want to preserve the Council races' military dominance and just plain old denial.

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]

[[folder: Film]]

* ''Film/DantesPeak'': The guy sent from the National Geological Survey warns of a volcano. There are all the signs. The local government doesn't want to lose the tourism dollars because the town just won a "greatest places to live" award, and his boss thinks he's overreacting from a previous bad experience with a volcano. By the time they can be convinced to share it with the town, the volcano is already in the process of erupting.
* In ''Film/NightClaws'' there's a Bigfoot killing people in a national forest next to a town. The mayor tells the sheriff to keep things quiet or they'll scare off the tourists coming into town. Spoony splices in footage of the first Jaws movie where something similar happens, only substitute "killer shark" for "Bigfoot" and "beach" for "forest." Oh, and "scientist played by Roy Scheider" for "sheriff played by Reb Brown."
* Creator/SyFy has a metric ton of movies with the small town version of the trope (with the application of ObstructiveBureaucrat, SuitWithVestedInterests, or worse yet, ArmiesAreEvil (as in whatever is the MonsterOfTheWeek is some kind of secret GovernmentConspiracy project)). For example: ''Film/LakePlacid: The Final Chapter''.
* In ''Film/TheRock'', the government keeps a lid on the terrorists' threat (launching VX gas rockets at San Francisco) for fear of creating a mass panic.

[[folder: Literature]]
* In ''Literature/TheMidwichCuckoos'', the UsefulNotes/OfficialSecretsAct is invoked to prevent news of the Midwich Dayout from spreading. This leads some to suspect that it was the doing of a GovernmentConspiracy, especially since The Grange, a Ministry research facility, was at the epicenter of the incident. However, before the BizarreBabyBoom kicks in, very little is known about what happened except that everyone in Midwich fell mysteriously unconscious for the duration of the incident and nobody from the outside world could get within a mile of the town.

[[folder: Video Games]]

[[folder: Real Life]]
* Ironically, ''China'' is not one of the countries with a gag order--their official word is simply that they will release the information if it ever becomes necessary, and say to the world "YouDidntAsk" if someone questions why.
* In 1942, the British government tried to suppress the news of the sinking of flagship battleship HMS ''Barham'', on the grounds that this would be one disaster too many for the British people to take. Unfortunately the news had already reached the ship's home port, and rumour spread which combined with official denial to make the situation look even worse. One victim of this fallout was a fraudulent medium making a living out of Navy families in Portsmouth. She got hold of the story through non-psychic channels (the Royal Navy rumour mill) and then pretended to have got the news via her guides and the spirits of the dead sailors. As the ship had not officially been sunk at this time, the British authorities silenced her by using the centuries old Witchcraft Act -- making her the last official witch to be tried and found guilty in a British court. [[note]]She was not burnt at the stake -- merely imprisoned.[[/note]]

* In November 1979, the Masjid al-Haram - the holiest site in Islam - was captured by extremist insurgents calling for the House of Saud to be overthrown. In a desperate attempt to prevent word from getting out that the self-appointed "custodians of Mecca" had, in fact, lost control of Mecca, the Saudi government shut down the phones and put heavy restrictions on the media. This backfired terribly, as rumors swirled around that the Grand Mosque had been seized either by Iran-backed Shiites or Americans, which led to riots throughout the Islamic world.

* ''Series/FearTheWalkingDead'': Implied, but never shown onscreen. All the main characters know is that there's some weird bug going around and that people are staying home for fear of catching it. The news has a couple of disturbing shots on video with rumors flying online. But the fact that the ZombieApocalypse has started is not common knowledge as of the series' first two episodes. It's obvious that the news has trickled down through the government though. The Police, already know to use BoomHeadshot, are starting to desert to prepare for the worst.
* ''Series/IntoTheNight'' has NATO cover-up the arrival of gamma Ray's from the sun that kills anyine it reaches. Terrenzio a higher up in NATO only learns of it from overhearing to other members discuss it.
* ''Series/YouMeAndTheApocalypse'' Zig Zags this. The government initially tells the public the truth about what is going to happen [[spoiler:but when the attenpt to save the world fails they only then start to lie to the public.]]
* Season 1 of Marvel's ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' starts out portraying the team as essentially the Franchise/MenInBlack, not only working to protect earth from Weird Stuff but also to keep it out of the public eye. At one point Coulson mentions having stopped an antimatter meteor from impacting Earth that they made sure no one ever heard about.

* In a Russian sci-fi novel (can't remember the name), the Russian and German empires become aware of a black hole approaching the Solar System. While they start secretly preparing to evacuate their countries' populations to other worlds (ignoring the American-led ban on large-scale colonization), they also position a sizable chunks of their [[SpaceNavy Space Navies]] in the Oort cloud in order to block the view of the black hole from any astronomers. They don't want to start a panic and a race to evacuate the planet. Eventually, the two empires unite and announce their decision to relocate to other worlds.

* Attempted but defied in ''Film/WithoutWarning1994'': when the governments of the world detect a second wave of impactors en route to Earth, aiming for several country capitals (like Washington, D.C.) they try to keep it quiet, but one of the doctors just [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere call it quits right then and there]] and announces that they are coming in an impromptu press conference before leaving to spend what he thinks are his last hours with his family.