History Main / ItIsBeyondSaving

* This happens in the {{Batman}} StoryArc "[[BatmanNoMansLand No Man's Land]]," where an earthquake hits Gotham City and the US government decides to wall it off and make it no longer part of the US instead of trying to save anybody in Gotham.

* [[Literature/TheBible Noah's]] [[TheGreatFlood flood]] and the Greek version uses this as well. Also, Sodom and Gomorrah. God wants to destroy the whole cities because "their sin is very grievous" but Abraham tries to talk him down, bartering down to sparing the city if at least ten righteous people lived within. The criterion is not met.

* Lucian, the villain of ''FableII'', plans to use The Spire to wipe most of the world out and start fresh, creating a world where death and despair won't exist.

Needless to say, this is a fairly popular attitude in RealLife, no matter the facts, and for the sake of [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement avoiding arguments]], there will be '''NoRealLifeExamplesPlease'''.

* This happens in the {{Batman}} StoryArc "No Mans Land," where an earthquake hits Gotham City and the US government decides to wall it off and make it no longer part of the US instead of trying to save anybody in Gotham.

* [[Literature/TheBible Noah's]] [[TheGreatFlood flood]] and the Greek version uses this as well.
** Also, Sodom and Gomorrah. God wants to destroy the whole cities because "their sin is very grievous" but Abraham tries to talk him down, bartering down to sparing the city if at least ten righteous people lived within. The criterion is not met.
* In PoulAnderson's TechnicHistory science fiction set in the 31st century, during the waning days of the Terran Empire, Dominic Flandry of the Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps has noted that he's just doing his best to stave off the inevitable collapse of the Empire.
* In TheDresdenFiles book ''Summer Knight'' [[spoiler: The Summer Lady]] plans to use powerful magic to end the cycle of life and death, thus ending the pain that comes with death. Of course, in the short term this plan will kill off most everything currently living.
** From what little we've seen of his motivations, Cowl seems to feel this way about the White Council. He might have a point there.

* The separatists from StarWars : AttackOfTheClones use this rationalization in a deleted scene. [[spoiler:Arguably a subversion, as Dooku was secretly working for Chancellor Palpatine to create a conflict that would give Palpatine more power.]]

-->-- '''Ra's al Ghul[[spoiler:'s decoy]]''', ''BatmanBegins''

* As implied by the page quotation, this is the attitude towards Gotham expressed by the League of Shadows in ''BatmanBegins'', or at least by its leaders. Batman's disagreement with it drives much of the movie's story.

-->'''Dooku''': We don't recognize the republic here, senator, but if Naboo were to join our alliance, I could easily hear your plea.

-->'''Dooku''': The republic cannot be fixed, m'lady. It is time to start over.

-->Egon: Something terrible is about to enter our world and this building is obviously the door. The architect's name was Ivo Shandor. In 1920 he started a secret society (of Gozer worshippers)... After the FirstWorldWar, Shandor decided society was too sick to survive. And he wasn't alone, he had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted rituals on the roof. Bizarre rituals intended to bring about the end of the world, and now it looks like it may actually happen.

* ''{{Ghostbusters}}''. Egon Spengler is explaining the BackStory.

* This is the position the Craftworld Eldar held about the collapsing eldar empire in ''[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Warhammer 40000]]'' right before the fall of the eldar. They promptly decided to leave their homeplanets, leaving the debauched majority of their kind behind. Soon after leaving, the fall occured, which literally {{squick}}ed Slaanesh into existence, claiming the majority of the eldar empire with it. The few eldar who remained who survived did so only by taking shelter in the webway, where they became the Dark Eldar while the ones who escaped on the craftworlds barely managed to escape in time to survive the whole ordeal.

* [[TheBible Noah's]] [[TheGreatFlood flood]] and the Greek version uses this as well.

* In famous French writer Julien Gracq's book ''{{Le rivage des Syrtes}}'', in the end, the highest ranked government officials, depressed by the decadent and apathetic country of Orsenna they live in, decide not to prevent the on-going war with the military highly superior country of Farghestan (a war that would certainly lead to utter defeat and destruction), just so they can put an end to Orsenna as they know it.

* This is the position the Craftworld Eldar held about the collapsing eldar empire in ''[[{{Warhammer40k}} Warhammer 40000]]'' right before the fall of the eldar. They promptly decided to leave their homeplanets, leaving the debauched majority of their kind behind. Soon after leaving, the fall occured, which literally {{squick}}ed Slaanesh into existence, claiming the majority of the eldar empire with it. The few eldar who remained who survived did so only by taking shelter in the webway, where they became the Dark Eldar while the ones who escaped on the craftworlds barely managed to escape in time to survive the whole ordeal.

* Lucian, the villain of ''{{Fable}} 2'', plans to use The Spire to wipe most of the world out and start fresh, creating a world where death and despair won't exist.

* In the season finale for season 3 of ''{{ReBoot}}'', the city of Mainframe has been trashed so heavily by [=MegaByte=]'s rule that even [[BigGood Bob]] finds it hopeless to actually save the city. His solution is to intentionally lose a Game, corrupting the system past the brink and causing a total systems failure, gambling that the User reboots the system from backup, [[ResetButton restoring things to the way they were]], instead of reformatting, which would annihilate everything completely. [[spoiler: It works.]]

-->Egon: Something terrible is about to enter our world and this building is obviously the door. The architect's name was Ivo Shandor. [snip] In 1920, he started a secret society. After WorldWarI, Shandor decided society was too sick to survive. He had nearly a thousand followers. They conducted rituals on the roof. They intended to bring about the end of the world. Now it may happen.

** Also, Sodom and Gomorrah. God wants to destroy the whole cities because "their sin is very grievous" but Abraham tries to talk him down.

* By the seventh season of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', the Klingon Empire has had more than its share of corrupt and insane leaders, in spite of the stated Klingon beliefs regarding honor and courage. Ezri Dax's solution is to let the Klingon Empire, as it is then, die off instead of trying to fix things from within, reasoning that the Empire's governing system would just create more corruption in time anyway. This is a strong contrast to the previous Dax, Jadzia, who had a very romantic view of Klingon culture.

* IsaacAsimov's ''{{Foundation}}'' trilogy. By the time Hari Seldon created the science of psychohistory it was too late to save the Galactic Empire - at that point it was so decadent that its fall was inevitable. All he could do was to try to arrange conditions so a new Empire could rise in 1,000 years instead of 30,000.

This could be said by a WellIntentionedExtremist who genuinely feels this way, it could alternatively be used by some other variety of villain as a mere rationalization, or even... a form of XanatosGambit or BatmanGambit in which perhaps the intention isn't to destroy it/let it collapse/get people out of it after all, but to simply convince people that this is the idea. Also, it could be a heroic character using this justification, though that would probably tend to [[AntiHero evoke moral ambiguity]] by its very nature.

* By the end of EscapeFromLA, [[spoiler:Snake Plissken decides the DayOfTheJackboot CrapsackWorld that society has become deserves to be sent back to the iron age via the [[CutTheJuice global EMP]] satellite control which he helped to retrieve.]]

* By the end of EscapeFromLA, [[spoiler:Snake Plissken decides the DayOfTheJackboot CrapsackWorld deserves to be destroyed via the [[CutTheJuice global EMP]] satellite control which he helped to retrieve.]]

* By the end of EscapeFromLA, Snake Plissken decides the DayOfTheJackboot CrapsackWorld deserves to be destroyed via the [[TurnOffTheJuice global EMP]] satellite control which he helped to retrieve.

* The separtists from StarWars : AttackOfTheClones use this rationalization in a deleted scene. [[spoiler:Arguably a subversion, as Dooku was secretly working for Chancellor Palpatine to create a conflict that would give Palpatine more power.]]

Needless to say, this is a fairly popular attitude in RealLife, no matter the facts, and for the sake of [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement avoiding arguments]], there will be NoRealLifeExamplesPlease.

* By the seventh season of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', the Klingon Empire has had more than it's share of corrupt and insane leaders, in spite of the stated Klingon beliefs regarding honor and courage. Ezri Dax's solution is to let the Klingon Empire, as it is then, die off instead of trying to fix things from within, reasoning that the Empire's governing system would just create more corruption in time anyway. This is a strong contrast to the previous Dax, Jadzia, who had a very romantic view of Klingon culture.