History Main / ApocalypticGagOrder

* ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'': The amateur astronomer who found the meteor after NASA did got to name it. He chose to call it after his wife, Dottie. Despite the roughnecks' blabbing at a strip club about their top-secret, world saving mission for NASA, the lid is kept on the secret until a meteor hits a major city (it's kinda hard to not notice Shanghai turned into a freaking crater); then the NASA guy gets a text that lets him know that Dottie has gone public. Even ''then'', news reports for the first few days complain that the government is still not telling the public much.

* Largely averted in ''Film/{{Contagion}}'', 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.

* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'': The scientist is ignored by the vice president, who refuses to fund research about the climate. By the time the weather changes, it's obvious to humanity at large. It all happens too fast to do anything but evacuate people down to the southern hemisphere, and lots of people die deaths of lacking in common sense because they don't take the problem as seriously as merited. The Vice President, who was an {{Expy}} of Dick Cheney, had pooh-poohed the seriousness of the threat.

* Season 3 of Marvel's ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' 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.

-->--'''Mayor Vaughn''', ''Film/{{Jaws}}''

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* 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 ot 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 siurvival 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 "The Dead Past": 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".

[[folder: Live Action Television ]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* For most of the 20th century, the British political establishment had recourse to the "D-Notice" system -- if all other attempts at persuading a newspaper not to publish had failed, the editor would be hit by a D-Notice officially prohibiting publication on grounds of state security. The system has never been repealed, but has fallen into obsolescence, as the rise of the Internet meant British people curious to discover what they are barred from knowing can get it off the Net. Its successor is the DSMA Notice. "The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned", according to [[https://www.dsma.uk/ the official website]].

* For most of the 20th century, the British political establishment had recourse to the "D-Notice" system -- if all other attempts at persuading a newspaper not to publish had failed, the editor would be hit by a D-Notice officially prohibiting publication on grounds of state security. The system has never been repealed, but has fallen into obsolescence, as the rise of the Internet meant British people curious to discover what they are barred from knowing can get it off the Net.

* In ''Night Claws'' 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."

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E25TheInnerLight The Inner Light]]'', when Kamin (whose memories Kirk 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).

* ''Series/YouMeAndTheApocalypse'' Zig Zags this. The government initially tells the public the truth about what is going to happen [[spoilers:but when the attenpt to save the world fails they only then start to lie to the public.]]

* ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'': The amateur astronomer who found the meteor after NASA did got to name it. He chose to call it after his wife, Dottie. Despite the roughnecks' blabbing at a strip club about their top-secret, world saving mission for NASA, the lid is kept on the secret until a meteor hits a major city (it's kinda hard to not notice Paris turned into a freaking crater); then the NASA guy gets a text that lets him know that Dottie has gone public. Even ''then'', news reports for the first few days complain that the government is still not telling the public much.

* 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]]

[[AC: {{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

[[AC: ComicBooks]]

[[AC: {{Film}}]]

[[AC: {{Literature}}]]
* ''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.

[[AC: LiveActionTelevision]]

[[AC: {{Webcomics}}]]

[[AC: VideoGames]]

[[AC: {{Anime}} and Manga]]

[[AC: Film]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

[[AC: Video Games]]

[[AC: RealLife]]

* ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'': The amateur astronomer who found the meteor after NASA did got to name it. He chose to call it after his wife, Dottie. Despite the roughnecks' blabbing at a strip club about their top-secret, world saving mission for NASA, the lid is kept on the secret until a meteor hits a major city; then the NASA guy gets a text that lets him know that Dottie has gone public. Even '' then'', news reports for the first few days complain that the government is still not telling the public much.

* 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.

* Largely averted in ''Film/{{Contagion}}'', 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.
* 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 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.

->''"The official position of the State... is that [[UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} a global nuclear catastrophe]] is not possible in the Soviet Union. They told the Germans that the highest detected level of radiation was 2000 roentgen. They gave them the propaganda number. [[spoiler:That robot was never going to work.]]"''
-->-- '''Boris Shcherbina''', ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}''

* 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.

The lower budget version of this is the small town threatened by monster or disaster, and the local government with the support of {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s wants to keep it quiet because it'll scare off the tourists.

* In ''Manga/SchoolLive'' the Japanese government knew of the upcoming ZombieApocalypse beforehand and the main characters' school was set up as a shelter. [[spoiler:Megu-nee was given an emergency manual on her first day of being a teacher however it wasn't known it was zombie related until after the epidemic hit.]]

* 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.

* ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'': The amateur astronomer who found the meteor after NASA did got to name it. He chose to call it after his wife, Dottie. Despite the roughnecks' blabbing at a strip club about their top secret world saving mission for NASA, the lid is kept on the secret until a meteor hits a major city; then the NASA guy gets a text that lets him know that Dottie has gone public. Even '' then'', news reports for the first few days complain that the government is still not telling the public much.

* 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.

* 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.

The Apocalypse or some great [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt world-destroying]] disaster is coming. Various governments of the world have already seen it coming, and are working on some way to counter it and save us all. Several governments may even be agreeing to work together despite previous animosities, just because if there's no world, they can't go back to saber-rattling at each other afterward.