History Main / FantasticFallout

-> ''"You have to be clever to refrain from doing [magic] when you know how easy it is. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again."''
-->-- '''Creator/TerryPratchett''', ''Literature/GoingPostal''

* ''Literature/AgeOfDiscovery'' by Creator/MichaelStackpole is set in a fantasy world that has been devastated by a cataclysmic event known as the "Time of Black Ice." Warring armies years before the events of the books unleashed wild magic on one another, permanently altering the landscape. The most heavily-damaged areas are unmapped and extremely dangerous.
* ''Literature/BasLagCycle'' series by Creator/ChinaMieville: the city of Suroch was destroyed by a particularly nasty FantasticNuke. The effects were so horrific that a ''second'' fantastic nuke of a different type was dropped on the area just to destroy the abominations created by the first one. To this day, mothers threaten to send unruly children to Suroch, "where the monsters are."
* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'' by Creator/StephenRDonaldson: High Lord Kevin foolishly joins with Lord Foul to invoke the Ritual of Desecration, which he thinks will destroy Lord Foul. Instead, the land is reduced to dust and requires a thousand years to recover.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' series by Creator/TerryPratchett:

** ''Literature/HandOfThrawn'' establishes that the Dark Side nexus on Dagobah (i.e. the cave where Luke has his vision of battling Vader in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'') was the result of Yoda killing a powerful fallen Jedi there during the Clone Wars.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Mystara}}'' setting, module [=DA1=] ''Adventures in Blackmoor'': The Kingdom of Blackmoor was destroyed when its powerful magical devices exploded, causing it to sink beneath the sea. Thousands of years later it emerged again, becoming the devastated desert area known as the Broken Lands. There is almost no trace of the original Blackmoor.
** ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' setting: Thousands of years ago, the Suel Imperium and the Baklunish Empire fought a magical war. The Baklunish Imperium destroyed the Suloise with the Rain of Colorless Fire, which turned the lands of the Suloise into ashes and dust. The result was the [[SandIsWater Sea of Dust]].
** ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'' setting: Thousands of years in the past, there was a great war between wizards using defiling magic that caused the world of Athas to become a [[SingleBiomePlanet desert planet]]. Athas remains such even today.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy'': The city of Praag was once invaded by Chaos, and suffered heavy corruption and mutation. The people of Kislev burned the city down upon reconquering it, then rebuilt it, but even after two hundred years, Praag remains haunted.

* ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'': The rampages of the Black Beast in the game's backstory left the world with seithr, a kind of magical substance that is harmful in high concentrations, which rendered large areas of the world uninhabitable. After advancements in MagiTek, however, seithr becomes part of the world's everyday life.

[[folder:Web Original]]

Not so much in fantasy. If a powerful spell or a magical weapon blows up a large swath of ground, it is likely to never be the same again, or at least the effects will take far longer to go away than with any natural or technological disaster. At best, it's going to be a desert for a very long time. At worst, it will continue leaking strange (and often dangerous) magical effects onto anyone unfortunate enough to wander into the area. These effects will linger over the area hundreds or even thousands of years later - or worse, it may have even spread.

Often (but not always) the result of a FantasticNuke. On a larger scale, may overlap with WorldSundering. May also overlap with EvilTaintedThePlace, when the fallout is the legacy of a villain who used to lair in the area.

* ''Literature/TheToughGuideToFantasyland'': Long ago, there was a Wizard War that left large tracts of Fantasyland as Waste Areas, devastated by magical pollution that persists into the present.

* In the backstory of ''Manga/RaveMaster'', the kingdom of Symphonia was destroyed by Overdrive, rendering it a barren wasteland surrounded by an endless storm.
* In ''Manga/TheSevenDeadlySins'', the kingdom of Danafor was supposedly destroyed when Meliodas lost control of his wrath. All that's left is a giant hole the size of the kingdom.

* ''FanFic/FalloutEquestria'' has as a setting the AfterTheEnd countryside of [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Equestria]], which was stuck with a barrage of massive mega-spells, the effects of which went from "literal FantasticNuke" to "BodyHorror factory" and beyond.
* In ''FanFic/OogwaysLittleOwl'', mention is made of a time when Master Yao started cursing when he missed achieving enlightenment by getting distracted. This is NotHyperbole; the mountain he was living on at the time will not be habitable for at least another hundred years or so.

* The ''Age of Discovery'' series by Creator/MichaelStackpole is set in a fantasy world that has been devastated by a cataclysmic event known as the "Time of Black Ice." Warring armies years before the events of the books unleashed wild magic on one another, permanently altering the landscape. The most heavily-damaged areas are unmapped and extremely dangerous.

* In ''Literature/TheForgesOfDawn'', Tsatsi's spell to obliterate Mobor's army and his own turns the whole Arabian peninsula into a wasteland where anyone who dies there becomes TheUndead. It turns out that [[spoiler:The effect goes on because Tsatsi himself is TheUndead, stopping NoOntologicalInertia from taking effect, and the wasteland fades once he is permanently killed.]]
* In the ''Literature/GuardiansOfTheFlame'' series, the party must travel through the Wastes of Elrood, a desolate wasteland created by a massive [[WizardDuel magical duel]] between two extremely powerful wizards. Only a small section of the original verdant forest remains, preserved by the magic of the Matriarch of the Healing Hand.
* In the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series, the Mage Wars ended with the Great Mages Urtho and Ma'ar causing The Cataclysm - an event that shook the world so hard that it left two giant craters in the landscape over a hundred miles wide, and strange magic mutations even farther out. It was so great in fact that, three thousand years later, the event rebounds like a rubber band, causing the whole mess to happen again in reverse.
* In ''Literature/IronDruidChronicles'', Aenghus Og's demon-summoning spell consumed all plant and animal life within a fifty-mile radius, even down to soil microbes, creating a death-spot that will take centuries to recover normally (fortunately, this occurred in an uninhabited semi-desert). Atticus and his apprentice later spend a great deal of time planting shrubs and inoculating the soil to speed up the recovery process.

* In ''Literature/TheSharingKnife'' series, Malices are [[EnemyToAllLivingThings Enemies to All Living Things]], rendering land sterile. The damage they do to the surrounding environment can take hundreds of years to recover.
* In ''Literature/{{Slayers}}'', Lina Inverse has a spell of her own invention called the Giga Slave, which involves combining elements of the Dragon Slave (a OneHitKill Spell that kills Dragons) and text from an incomplete version of the Claire Bible. Her first effort to cast the spell transforms a body of water into a "sea of death" where, according to Lina, nothing grows to this day.
* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', the land of Valyria was destroyed by a mysterious volcanic cataclysm that is heavily implied to be magical in nature. What's left of Valyria is described as something that resembles heavily irradiated areas: supposedly, the curse of Valyria that kills anyone who approaches works on a line-of-sight principle like gamma rays, and the only surviving city of Central Valyria (Mantarys) is full of mutants and freaks.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Mystara}}'' setting, module [=DA1=] ''Adventures in Blackmoor''. The Kingdom of Blackmoor was destroyed when its powerful magical devices exploded, causing it to sink beneath the sea. Thousands of years later it emerged again, becoming the devastated desert area known as the Broken Lands. There is almost no trace of the original Blackmoor.
** ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' setting. Thousands of years ago the Suel Imperium and the Baklunish Empire fought a magical war. The Baklunish Imperium destroyed the Suloise with the Rain of Colorless Fire, which turned the lands of the Suloise into ashes and dust. The result was the [[SandIsWater Sea of Dust]].
** ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'' setting. Thousands of years in the past there was a great war between wizards using defiling magic that caused the world of Athas to become a [[SingleBiomePlanet desert planet]]. Athas remains such even today.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'': during the last part of the century-long Last War, the nation of Cyre was covered in a strange mist out to its borders (at the time) which killed everything in it. Years later, the mist no longer kills instantly, but it prevents natural healing. Now known as the Mournland, its only inhabitants are either undead, constructs, or bizarre "living spells" produced by the magic of the place.
** In ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'', the domain of Hazlan suffers a bad case of this. Its darklord is an [[TheArchmage Archmage]] with little mind to the consequences of his or his students' experiments. He is actually aware of how much damage he's doing to Hazlan, but knows that it's not entirely real, and thinks that he can escape if he destroys it entirely. [[AllForNothing He cannot]].

** The Mana Wastes in the default setting Golarion are a narrow strip of barren land between the two {{sorcerer king}}doms Nex and Geb that resulted from a devastating war between the two. Apart from it being turned into a desert, it is also impossible to reliably cast any kind of magic there: in some places, it simply doesn't work, in others, it automatically becomes WildMagic. A {{steampunk}} city of Alkenstar was erected in the middle of the Wastes by those who chose to eschew magic completely.

* In the Hellfrost setting of ''TabletopGame/SavageWorlds'', the titular Hellfrost came with the invading armies of cold and darkness, and even after the war, never left. In the north, there are many places that are permanently under ice and snow. This may also have something to do with the gods of fire and sun apparently being dead or at least disappeared.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', the City of Praag was once invaded by Chaos, and suffered heavy corruption and mutation. The people of Kislev burned the city down upon reconquering it, then rebuilt it, but even after two hundred years, Praag remains haunted.

* ''VideoGame/FallFromHeaven'': If the Armageddon Counter (AC) is high enough, then the [[PhysicalHell Hell Terrain]] will spread - first in empires following the [[ReligionOfEvil Ashen Veil]] and then in neighboring neutral ones too. Terrain infected by the Hell Terrain will lose all features, are less productive, and can only be restored by Sanctification.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' used one as a transition to ''A Realm Reborn''. The moon Dalamud had fallen and revealed itself to be a prison for Bahamut, who promptly breaks free and starts wreaking havoc all over the place. Eorzea was barely saved by a HeroicSacrifice and the resulting scars led to a great deal of land being unrecognizable. The most notable are the Corrupted crystals in Mor Dhona and Thanalan, and Corthas's sudden climate change from a lush meadow to a frozen wasteland.

* In ''VideoGame/JetForceGemini'', one of the planets you visit was turned into a wasteland of undead monsters when the local Tribal mystic tried to use a spell to drive away the bugs.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' GameMod ''Thaumcraft'', being too messy with your [[FunctionalMagic thaumaturgy]] and producing too much flux can create Tainted Land, which covers everything with [[PoisonIsAcid tree-meltingly toxic]] purple MeatMoss, spawns horrible Tainted mobs, and very slowly expands its borders. There are also occasional pre-existing Tainted Land patches, presumably caused by thaumaturges now dead.
* In ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', there's a patch of bare earth in West Harbor where no plant will grow. It's a scar left by the shattering of the Silver Sword of Gith when Ammon Jerro fought the King of Shadows.
* In ''VideoGame/OverlordII'', the area surrounding the Tower from the first game has become a twisted and desolate wasteland, with massive lakes of raw magic corrupting (or killing) everything it touches and turning your minions into uncontrollable mutants after a few seconds. The cause? [[spoiler:The BigBad of the game tried to tamper with the Tower Heart in order to steal some of its magic and blew it up instead.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'', destroying the Wall of Flesh results in raw magic being unleashed upon your world, creating new Hallowed or Corrupted regions. Additionally, after this happens, smashing the various altars found in Corrupted regions results in new metal veins spontaneously generating throughout the world and mechanical bosses spawning more naturally.

Often (but not always) the result of a FantasticNuke. On a larger scale, may overlap with WorldSundering. May also overlap with EvilTaintedThePlace, when the fallout (metaphorical or otherwise) is the legacy of a villain who used to lair in the area.

Often (but not always) the result of a FantasticNuke. On a larger scale, may overlap with WorldSundering.

* ''Literature/BasLagCycle'' series by Creator/ChinaMieville: the city of Suroch was destroyed by a particularly nasty FantasticNuke. The effects were so horrific that a ''second'' fantastic nuke (though of a different type) had to be dropped on the area just to destroy the abominations created by the first one. To this day, mothers threaten to send unruly children to Suroch, "where the monsters are."

* ''Literature/{{Dragaera}}'': The Empire's old capital city was destroyed when a [[EntropyAndChaosMagic Chaos Magic]] spell [[MagicMisfire misfired]], reducing the region to a permanently impassible lake of [[MadeOfMagic raw chaos]] that dissolves anything it touches.

*** The Mere of Dead Men south of Neverwinter has a heavy {{undead}} infestation because fragments of the essence of the [[TheGrimReaper death god Myrkul]] landed there after Mystra killed him during the [[DivineConflict Time of Troubles]].

* In ''FanFic/Oogway'sLittleOwl'', mention is made of a time when Master Yao started cursing when he missed achieving enlightenment by getting distracted. This is NotHyperbole; the mountain he was living on at the time will not be habitable for at least another hundred years or so.

* In ''Anime/TheSlayers'', Lina Inverse invented a spell called the Giga Slave, which involved combining elements of the Dragon-Slave (a OneHitKill Spell that kills Dragons) and text from an incomplete version of the Claire Bible. Her first effort to cast the spell transformed a body of water into a "sea of death" where, according to Lina, nothing grows to this day.

** The books feature this in spades, in keeping with its "magic = nuclear power" theme. There are areas of high magic build-up where laws of reality are malleable, leading to various mutations and strange creatures, as well as uninhabitable zones that are the result of magic wars. For example, the area around the Unseen University has become stained with magic "radiation" that leaked out of the university over the centuries, leading to effects such as [[spoiler:Gaspode the Wonder Dog retaining his ability to speak.]]

* ''Anime/OnePiece'': Following a fierce battle between Admirals [[MagmaMan Akainu]] and [[AnIcePerson Aokiji]], the Island of Punk Hazard has become perpetually covered by flames and lava eruptions on one side, and blizzards and snow on the other.

Often (but not always) the result of a FantasticNuke.

!Examples

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': The ForeverWar between Cresce and Alderode has permanently wrecked the BackgroundMagicField along their contested border, which mutates the local fauna into {{Dire Beast}}s and can [[RealityIsOutToLunch compromise reality itself]] -- unlucky people might clip through the ground or have their bones walk off without them.
[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' uses one as a transaction to ''A Realm Reborn''. The moon Dalamud had fallen and revealed itself to be a prison for Bahamut, who promptly breaks free and starts wreaking havoc all over the place. Eorzea was barely saved by a HeroicSacrifice and the resulting scars led to a great deal of land being unrecognizable. The most notable are the Corrupted crystals in Mor Dhona and Thanalan, and Corthas's sudden climate change from a lush meadow to a frozen wasteland.

** The Blasted Lands is a rocky, orange crater that was created by the fel energies of the Dark Portal. It used to be part of a teaming swampland called the Black Morass, but there's no vegetation left in the region.
** The Orc homeworld Draenor became the Outland after it was ripped apart when Ner'zhul recklessly opened portals all over the planet. Netherstorm is the most destroyed, being reduced to nothing but clusters of floating purple rock. Even relatively untouched areas like Nagrand are filled with random floating islands.

-->-- '''Creator/TerryPratchett''', ''Literature/GoingPostal''.

-> ''You have to be clever to refrain from doing [magic] when you know how easy it is. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again.''
-->-- Creator/TerryPratchett, ''Literature/GoingPostal''.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': Dagorlad, the great plain before the gate of Mordor where the previous "last battle" against Sauron was fought, is an immense swath of beaten, stained, and broken land where nothing green is able to grow.

* In ''Manga/NanatsuNoTaizai'', the kingdom of Danafor was supposedly destroyed when Meliodas lost control of his wrath. All that's left is a giant hole the size of the kingdom.

* ''Anime/TheSlayers''. Lina Inverse invented a spell called the Giga Slave, which involved combining elements of the Dragon-Slave (a OneHitKill Spell that kills Dragons) and text from an incomplete version of the Claire Bible. Her first effort to cast the spell transformed a body of water into a "sea of death" where, according to Lina, nothing grows to this day.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' setting. Thousands of years ago the Suloise Imprerium and the Baklunish Empire fought a magical war. The Baklunish Imperium destroyed the Suloise with the Rain of Colorless Fire, which turned the lands of the Suloise into ashes and dust. The result was the [[SandIsWater Sea of Dust]].

* In the Hellfrost setting of ''TabletopGame/SavageWorlds'', the titular Hellfrost came with the invading armies of cold and darkness, and even after the war, never left. In the north there are many places that are permanently under ice and snow. This may also have something to do with the gods of fire and sun apparently being dead or at least disappeared.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' uses one as a transaction to ''A Realm Reborn''. The moon Dalamud had fallen and reveled itself to be a prison for Bahamut, who promptly breaks free and starts wreaking havoc all over the place. Eorzea was barley saved by a HeroicSacrifice and the resulting scars led to a great deal of land being unrecognizable. The most notable are the Corrupted crystals in Mor Dhona and Thanalan, and Corthas's sudden climate change form a lush meadow to a frozen wasteland.

* ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'': Right in the middle of a bustling city, an area the size of a park remains abandoned for years: trees burnt, ground scorched, apparently never recultivated or developed. Details on this site are gradually revealed as the story unfolds: [[spoiler:the area was razed by the interrupted activation of the Holy Grail during the previous Holy Grail War]].

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', the city of Praag was once invaded by Chaos, and suffered heavy corruption and mutation. The people of Kislev burned the city down upon reconquering it, then rebuilt it, but even after two hundred years, Praag remains haunted.

* ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'': The rampages of the Black Beast in the game's backstory left the world with seithr, i.e a kind of magical substance that is harmful in high concentrations, and it made parts of the world becoming uninhabitable, and the rest being lifted upwards through science. After advancements in MagiTek, though, seithr becomes part of the world's everyday life.

* ''Anime/OnePiece'': The island Punk Hazard is perpetually covered by flames and lava eruptions on one side, and blizzards and snow in another. It is after Admirals [[MagmaMan Akainu]] and [[AnIcePerson Aokiji]] had a fierce fight for ten days straight there, two years ago.

* In ''Literature/TheForgesOfDawn'', Tsatsi's spell to obliterate Mobor's army and his own makes the whole Arabian peninsula into a wasteland where anyone who dies there becomes TheUndead. It turns out that [[spoiler:The effect goes on because Tsatsi himself is TheUndead, stopping NoOntologicalInertia from taking effect, and the wasteland fades once he is permanently killed.]]
* In the ''Literature/GuardiansOfTheFlame'' series, the Waste of Elrood is one of these caused by a massive magical duel between two extremely powerful wizards.
* In the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series, the Mage Wars ended with the Great Mages Urtho and Ma'ar causing the Cataclysm. An event that shook the world so hard that it left two giant craters in the landscape over a hundred miles wide, and strange magic mutations even farther out. It was so great in fact that three thousand years later, it rebounds like a rubber band causing the whole mess to happen again in reverse.
* In ''Literature/IronDruidChronicles'', Aenghus Og's demon-summoning spell consumed all plant and animal life in a fifty-mile area, even down to soil microbes, creating a death-spot that will take centuries to recover normally (fortunately, in an uninhabited semi-desert). Atticus and his apprentice later spend a great deal of time planting shrubs and inoculating the soil to speed the recovery process.

* In the bustling city contributing to setting of ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', a place size of a park remains for years, trees burnt, ground scorched, apparently not recultivated, not recovering and not being developed. Details on it are gradually revealed as the story unfolds. Among both heroes and villains of "Fate" arc there's a large number of involvements with the burn, which was brought on by interrupted activation of [[spoiler:the Holy Grail, prize in the previous Holy Grail War]].

* The "Age of Discovery" series by Creator/MichaelStackpole is set in a fantasy world that has been devastated by a cataclysmic event known as the "Time of Black Ice." Warring armies years before the events of the books unleashed wild magic on one another, permanently altering the landscape. The most heavily-damaged areas are unmapped and extremely dangerous.

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'' by Creator/StephenRDonaldson: High Lord Kevin foolishly joins with Lord Foul to invoke the Ritual of Desecration, which he thinks will destroy Lord Foul. Instead, the Land is reduced to dust and requires a thousand years to recover.

** The books feature this in spades, in keeping with its "magic = nuclear power" theme. There are areas of high magic build-up where laws of reality are malleable, leading to various mutations and strange creatures, as well as uninhabitable zones that are the result of magic wars. For example, the area around the Unseen University has become stained with magic "radiation" that leaked out of the university over the centuries, leading to effects such as [[spoiler:Gaspode the Wonder Dog retained his ability to speak.]]

* ''Film/TheDarkCrystal'' shows the ugly and forbidding castle of the Skekses rising amid a wide area of desolation. About half of Thra is barren wasteland, while the other half is green and fertile. The latter is home to the gentle Mystics, and the small, harmless podlings, as well as the last two Gelflings: Jen and Kira. Thra has been this way ever since the Great Crystal was fractured, and a shard went missing.