History Main / ColonyDrop

* ''VideoGame/SimCity2000'' inverts this trope. While the game has [[EndlessGame no real "win" condition]], the closest thing to it is the Exodus, which happens when the player builds enough Launch Arcologies (basically [[InfinityPlusOneSword super-structures]] that [[{{Arcology}} combine massive amounts of Residential, Commercial, and Industrial production]] in the same space), where they are all converted to {{Colony Ship}}s and take off for new worlds. "Enough" in this case is about 450, meaning the arcologies have to take up about 90% of your city's landmass. Mechanically, the Exodus is represented by the Arcologies all being demolished at once, leaving empty space for the player to develop all over again.

* ''VideoGame/{{Allegiance}}'': The backstory is that, by 2140, [[AsteroidMiners asteroid mining]] has become a profitable business. It's done by launching asteroids in the Belt towards the Lunar catching station and mining it on location. Unfortunately, a rather large asteroid ends up missing the station and hits Earth. The game takes place AfterTheEnd.

* ''TabletopGame/CoyoteAndCrow'' begins with the idea that the great comet seen passing Earth in 1402 was instead on a collision course, and the Great Spirit sacrificed themselves to keep it from becoming an Extinction-Level Event. It's presumed that the comet still hit somewhere in Eurasia, with the subsequent consequence that Europeans never colonized the Americas.

** ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' had the Space Colony ARK dropped. Dr. Eggman's grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik, brought to despair over the death of his granddaughter Maria, exacts revenge in spirit by programming the colony to crash into Earth while overcharged with energy from the Chaos Emeralds. The presence of the gargantuan [[EldritchAbomination Biolizard]] makes matter ''far'' worse, as it tries to fuse with the colony and forcibly drag it down into the planet. After both Sonic and Shadow power up to their super forms, the duo ultimately slays Biolizard, but with the colony swiftly entering Earth's atmosphere, they have only seconds to stop an imminent doomsday. Sonic's solution to stopping this is to use [[MassTeleportation Chaos Control]] to send it back into orbit. [[spoiler:[[HeroicSacrifice Shadow, on the other hand... does the unthinkable.]]]]

* TheTunguskaEvent is considered the largest "impact event" in human recorded history (discounting the much bigger, prehistoric impact events listed above), where in a June 1908 morning in Siberia, a massive explosion ripped through a remote forest area. No actual meteorite or even a crater was ever discovered -- the general scientific consensus is that whatever celestial body had entered Earth's atmosphere (either a comet or an asteroid) exploded before it hit the ground, which still impressively ''levelled'' the area in a 2,150 square-kilometer radius, with there existing photos of trees having been charred and knocked down by the shockwave. Had fate been less kind, the explosion could have decimated an entire metropolitan area.
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor Chelyabinsk meteor]] -- while it is much smaller than most examples on this list and it broke apart before impact, it still hurt quite a few Russians who saw it, stepped towards the window, only to get hit by glass shards as the shockwave (moving at the speed of sound) knocked out their windows. This "superbolide" became the largest known natural object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since TheTunguskaEvent, and also has the dubious honor of being the only meteor confirmed to have resulted in human injury (though thankfully, no deaths). Thanks to the Russian love for dashcams, there is actually quite a bit of footage of the event that scientists are quite gleeful over.
* The "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingyang_event Qingyang event]]" was an incident documented to have taken place in 1490 near Qingyang, China, with several surviving documents describing a massive and sudden shower of rocks that allegedly resulted in ''over tens of thousands'' of human fatalities. While said historical documents are usually considered accurate, modern historians and astronomers have been unable to decisively prove that this incident existed, let alone the damage it was described to have wrought, though general consensus sides towards the belief that there was in fact an ancient meteor shower that took place, even if the "10,000 deaths" count was likely an exaggeration.

* TheTunguskaEvent is considered the largest "impact event" in human recorded history (discounting the much bigger, prehistoric impact events listed above), where in a June 1908 morning in Siberia, a massive explosion ripped through a remote forest area. No actual meteorite or even a crater was ever discovered -- the general scientific consensus is that whatever celestial body had entered Earth's atmosphere (either a comet or an asteroid) exploded before it hit the ground, which still impressively ''levelled'' the area in a 2,150 square-kilometer radius, with there existing photos of trees having been charred and knocked down by the shockwave.

* The Chelyabinsk meteor -- while it is much smaller than most examples on this list and it broke apart before impact, it still hurt quite a few Russians who saw it, stepped towards the window, only to get hit by glass shards as the shockwave (moving at the speed of sound) knocked out their windows. Thanks to the Russian love for dashcams, there is actually quite a bit of footage of the event that scientists are quite gleeful over.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' has Meteor as an important plot point. [[BigBad Sephiroth]] plans to summon Meteor to destroy the planet, enabling him to worm his way into TheLifestream and attain godhood. This is a distinctly odd example in that Meteor actually falls quite slowly; in fact, slower than the planet's gravity should have made possible. The implication seems to be that, as Meteor is magical in nature, it won't merely collide with the planet and create a crater, but ''bore through it and come out the other side''. In addition, in the distant past, the alien Jenova crash landed on Earth through a (natural) meteor, causing a huge crater on the Northern Continent. In fact, Sephiroth, who coopted Jenova, is partly inspired by this piece of history when he conceives the plan to destroy the world.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' even uses its use as a plot point, being the means by which [[BigBad Sephiroth]] would use to try and worm his way into TheLifestream and attain godhood. This was a distinctly odd example in that Meteor actually fell quite slowly; in fact, slower than the planet's gravity should have made possible. The implication seems to be that, as Meteor was magical in nature, it wouldn't merely collide with the planet and create a crater, but ''bore through it and come out the other side''.

* In ''WesternAnimation/CarolAndTheEndOfTheWorld'', the premise is that Earth doomed to be destroyed by an incoming planet in mere months. Knowing death is inevitable, everybody on the planet has whipped out their bucket lists and indulged in their most shameless, fearless whims.

* This is how Igniz planned to end ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters 2001'', by driving the NESTS space station into Southtown. K' dealt with him before that was to happen, though.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters King Of Fighters 2001]]'' has this once you defeat the Lovable [[SNKBoss Ig]][[Creator/NorioWakamoto niz]]. He has a huge [[AGodAmI god complex]], but once you beat him, he decides to become a demon and attempts a colony drop. It fails, miserably.

* ''Film/StarshipTroopers'': Precisely-aimed meteors were the WeaponOfMassDestruction of the "bugs" in the movie. Although it's ridiculously implausible that the bugs could hurl rocks over light-years of distance on a sane timescale and with any sort of accuracy, an apparently disposable bit of background chatter suggests the rocks were coming from much closer to home. It may have been a natural disaster that the space Nazis used to justify a war against the bugs (or they could have been [[FalseFlagOperation dropping the rocks themselves]]).

* "VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask:" As part of the Skull Kid's "game" due to the influence of Majora's Mask, he pulls the Moon out of its orbit and plans to drop it on Termina in three days. The Moon hangs over you in gameplay, complete with its NightmareFace, and if Link can't revive the Four Giants in those three days, the Moon obliterates all of Termina and everyone living in it (which means a GameOver).

* In a WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory episode, Dexter launched a tractor rocket that moves the moon so he will gain strength from the rays of Saturn. But suddenly, the rocket gets broken so the moon will come crashing down into Earth, wreaking havoc by rolling across the city and then his laboratory.

** In [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam the original series]], Zeon dropped one of Earth's space colonies during the BackStory "Operation British" in an attempt to destroy the [[TheFederation Earth Federation's]] [[ElaborateUndergroundBase nuke-proof headquarters]] in Brazil. The colony breaks up before impact and misses its intended target, instead completely annihilating Sydney, Australia and generally making a mess of things. ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam0083StardustMemory Gundam 0083]]'' actually shows the crater left by the drop, making clear that the explosion was equal to about 60,000 MT, and the UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast game ''VideoGame/MobileSuitGundamSideStory0079RiseFromTheAshes'' drives the point home by featuring the continent of Australia (where the game takes place) on [[http://gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/Sega_Dreamcast/Title/big/Gundam_Side_Story_0079-_Rise_From_the_Ashes_-_1999_-_Bandai.jpg the title screen]] with what looks like a ''bite'' taken out of it where Sydney, Canberra and a quarter of New South Wales used to be. The impact itself and its devastation on Sydney is also shown in gratuitous detail in the opening of ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamNarrative Narrative]]'', with the shattered city and surrounding area featuring at the beginning of ''[[Manga/MobileSuitGundamThunderbolt Thunderbolt]]'' Season 2. The ''Origins'' manga went on to explain that between the impacts proper and the environmental aftermath, the population of Earth on Impact + 1 month was ''half'' of what it was before the drop. If the colony hadn't broken into three pieces before impact (with one-piece breaking up further during reentry), it probably would have been ''worse''.

* ''Spriggan Mark 2'': Played with like Gundam in this rare (but very fun) UsefulNotes/PCEngine shooter.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen "Revenge of the Cybermen"]]: The Cybermen [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin (obviously)]] make a second attempt to destroy Voga by crashing the Nerva beacon, laden with Cyberbombs, into the planet. The Doctor and Sarah, who they've left on board, prevent this from happening.
** The Cybermen do the same thing again in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock "Earthshock"]] when they try to crash a massive transport ship into future Earth to stop an anti-Cybermen conference. They succeed... sort of. Adric inadvertently saves the planet by fiddling with the controls so the thing goes back in time, to become the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
** [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned "Voyage of the Damned"]]: Max Capricorn attempts to make the space ''Titanic'' crash into Earth. His motivation? [[spoiler:To drive his former company that he was forced out of bankrupt and get its current owners arrested for exterminating humanity.]] It narrowly misses [[spoiler:Buckingham Palace]].
*** In the following season, in the alternate universe where Donna didn't [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft "Turn Left"]], [[spoiler:the Doctor died before he could stop the space ''Titanic''. The fallout from the explosion obliterates London, turning the UK into a third world country overnight, forcing martial law, forced housing, and the eventual Nazi-ish removal of foreigners to concentration camps.]]
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWho2016CSTheReturnOfDoctorMysterio The Return of Doctor Mysterio]]", the Harmony Shoal attempt to drop a [[spoiler:spaceship onto New York in order to trick world leaders into hiding out in their reinforced buildings, thus allowing them to perform a GrandTheftMe on all of them. The Doctor accelerates their plan and aims the ship towards Lucy Fletcher's apartment building, broadcasting a message that only one person on the whole planet can hear -- Grant Gordon, AKA the Ghost (ComicBook/{{Superman}} {{Expy}}). Grant catches the ship with one hand and then flies off to HurlItIntoTheSun.]]
* An episode of ''{{Series/Eureka}}'' has the accumulated space junk accidentally forming into this level of a threat. Not so much a colony drop, but space junk drop to make it implicit to only the title town.

* ''Series/Foundation2021'': At the climax of the pilot, [[spoiler: a terrorist attack severs the tether of Trantor's space elevator from the orbiting space station, causing the cable to fall and, in Brother Day's words, "wrap itself around the planet like a garrote"]]. It leaves a scar 50 levels deep on the city-planet and kills 100 million people.

* Also done in ''Series/StargateSG1'' where an asteroid is found to be hurtling towards the Earth. Cue the ''Film/Armageddon1998'' reference from Colonel O'Neill. In a twist, it was revealed that the asteroid was not a natural phenomenon, but a way for Anubis to get around the Protected Planets Treaty. ''Shockingly'', blowing the asteroid up was not the answer, as the asteroid in question was [[MadeOfExplodium specifically chosen]] by Anubis so that blowing it up [[EarthShatteringKaboom would just make things worse]]. Unfortunately, SG-1 was stuck with a [[WireDilemma very poorly-designed bomb]].