History Main / ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure

** In ''Shin Megami Tensei: VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'', the wards of Tokyo encircled by the Yamanote train line are sealed off to prevent escape of either the demons or the people in contact with them. [[MultipleEndings If all attempts to save the city fail]], everything inside it is ''fried'' by activating special microchips that emit EMPs, hidden inside all electronics manufactured in Japan.

* An episode of ''Series/TheChampions'' involved an island where evil scientists were making a lethal gas for chemical warfare or terrorist attacks. At the end of the episode, the Army has a nuke dropped on it.

** In ''Shin Megami Tensei: VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'', the wards of Tokyo encircled by the Yamanote train line are sealed off to prevent escape of either the demons or the people in contact with them. [[MultipleEndings If all attempts to save the city fail]], everything inside it is ''fried''.

** Her first attempt to kill the Beyonder involved [[http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3976/phoenixnukeii5.jpg something resembling an actual nuclear attack]]. It caused absolutely no damage either to him or the surroundings. [[TheOmnipotent Because he wouldn't let it cause any damage]].

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'':
** The CDC is rigged with a thermobaric device to prevent the release of [[LargeHam WEAPONIZED SMALLPOX!!]]
** Later on, in the second season, we are treated to a flashback of military helicopters trying to contain the zombie outbreak by [[KillItWithFire dropping napalm in the streets of Atlanta.]] Judging by the fact that [[YouCantThwartStageOne the rest of the series exists]], it probably didn't work.

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': In "[[Recap/AngelS05E11Damage Damage]]", Dana the Vampire Slayer subscribes to this trope and refers to it by name: "Heart...and head. Don't be scared, stab the heart, cut off the head, keep cutting until dust."
* In ''Series/StargateSG1'', the main team drops a massive nuclear weapon to blow up the gate through which the Ori intend to come to the Milky Way galaxy. It fails spectacularly, as all the energy of the warhead is only used by the Ori to collapse a planet into a black hole to power a nearby supergate. But before they realised that, they billed it as the "only way to be sure".
* In ''Series/{{Nikita}}'', in the episode "Self Destruct", Birkhoff quotes this trope as they contemplate destroying the Division facility.

* Threatened in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3''--but it's less a tactic to neutralize a threat and more to dispose of pesky witnesses and incriminating evidence (though there is some of the former, too).

* The ''[[http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/Alomal-137_Case_Study Alomal-137 Case Study]]'' by Lon Miller briefly describes nuclear annihilation of several east-coast cities in response to a pandemic.

** Even after Cortana acquires Halo Installation 04's Activation Index in ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'', she and Master Chief still destroy Halo's pulse generators and ultimately the Halo itself just to be sure it won't be activated. [[spoiler: It also serves as reassurance that the Flood aboard won't manage to leave the ring.]]

** The Halo Arrays themselves are the Forerunners' execution of this trope, killing all sentient life in the galaxy to ensure the Flood has no potential hosts.

** The Covenant doesn't stop at nukes when it comes to Flood outbreaks. They bombard the entire planet with plasma until rock and sand starts to melt and is transformed to volcanic glass. Earth gets spared this treatment in ''VideoGame/Halo3'' due to the Arbiter advising Half-Jaw against it... so Half-Jaw ''only'' glasses half of Africa instead.

** Even after Cortana acquires Halo Installation 04's Activation Index in ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'', she and Master Chief still destroy Halo's pulse generators and ultimately the Halo itself just to be sure it won't be activated. It also serves as reassurance that the Flood aboard won't manage to leave the ring.

** Even after Cortana acquires Halo Installation 04's activation index in ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'', she and Master Chief still destroy Halo's pulse generators and ultimately the Halo itself just to be sure it won't be activated. It also serves as reassurance that the Flood aboard won't manage to leave the ring.

* It is precisely ''because'' of [[TheDreaded Simo Häyhä]]'s reign of terror during the Winter War as the [[RedBaron White Death]] that suspected sniper nests are justifiable targets for an AlphaStrike: Häyhä had so many kills under his belt (and using a [[DeathByIrony Mosin-Nagant]] at that) that the Red Army had to resort to calling in artillery strikes on places he was shooting at them from. He survived those attempts, and would continue to terrorize the Russians for the duration of the conflict.

[[folder: Web Comics]]

[[folder: Real Life]]

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Nightmare in Silver" has a scene when it's mentioned that previously [[spoiler:the Cybermen were only defeated by blowing up an entire galaxy resulting the death of trillions.]] In the story itself the standard procedure upon encountering any survivors is to implode the entire planet immediately, before any damage is done.

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': Dana the Vampire Slayer subscribes to this trope and refers to it by name: "Heart...and head. Don't be scared, stab the heart, cut off the head, keep cutting until dust."

* It is precisely ''because'' of [[TheDreaded Simo Häyhä]]'s reign of terror during the Winter War as the [[RedBaron White Death]] that suspected sniper nests are justifiable targets for an AlphaStrike: Hayha had so many kills under his belt (and using a [[DeathByIrony Mosin-Nagant]] at that) that the Red Army had to resort to calling in artillery strikes on places he was shooting at them from. He survived those attempts, and would continue to terrorize the Russians for the duration of the conflict.

* It is precisely ''because'' of [[TheDreaded Simo Häyhä]]'s reign of terror during the Winter War as the [[RedBaron White Death]] that suspected sniper nests are justifiable targets for an AlphaStrike: Hayha had so many kills under his belt (and using a [[HoistByTheirOwnPetard Mosin Nagant]] at that) that the Red Army had to resort to calling in artillery strikes on places he was shooting at them from. He survived those attempts, and would continue to terrorize the Russians for the duration of the conflict.

** The Halos themselves are the Forerunners' execution of this trope, killing all sentient life in the galaxy to ensure the Flood has no potential hosts.

* ''Discworld/TheLastHero'' has a shoutout to this when Leonard de Quirm describes a possible threat to his spaceship he just made. His illustration of the Imaginary Hull Borer ("if such a creature invades the ship, vital crew split up in order to search for it") includes the Latatian "Nucleus situm ex orbita, unus certis maximus". In other words, "Nuke the entire site from orbit, It's the Only Way to Be Sure."

* It is mentioned several times in ''Videogame/TheLastOfUs'' that the military killed as many people as they could to prevent the Cordyceps infectees from spreading the disease. The downtown area of Boston, for example, is a giant wasteland after they bombed the hell out of it.

* In ''VideoGame/TheColony'', [[spoiler:this is your goal after rescuing the survivors of a transdimensional alien invasion.]]

** The DLC forces Crane to decide if Harran must live or die; [[spoiler:he found the cure, but it just turns zombies into [b]sentient zombies[/b]. Which is worse, genocide or an outbreak of monsters?]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Anthronauts}}'': In the original series, a zombie outbreak succeeded in covering the earth. The president of humanity made the decision to nuke earth and retreat to mars. [[spoiler:Turns out that the zombies were a HordeOfAlienLocusts... with shapeshifting capabilities and all-female. Which would make them the perfect ambassadors if not for their unescapable hunger and unsustainable instinct to conquer and destroy. They usually hatch on new planets, conquer the other species by assimilating their traits and improving them, and ultimately fight each other until the planet explodes.]] It's unknown whether or not genocide of a near-limitless potential shapeshifting species is justifiable when they destroy planets on a regular basis.

Sometimes this strategy works, [[FailsafeFailure sometimes it doesn't]], and sometimes it ''[[NiceJobBreakingItHero really]]'' [[OhCrap doesn't]] [[InfernalRetaliation work]]. See FeedItABomb for similar philosophy of pest-control on a smaller scale, HurlItIntoTheSun when you bring the ''target'' to the cleansing fires instead of the other way around, and FieryCoverup for when the bombardment is intended to cover up the evidence as much or more than it is to destroy the threat.