History Main / SterilityPlague

* This comes to afflict all of humanity in ''Literature/{{Galapagos}}'', with the only people unafflicted being a tour group marooned on the eponymous island. As [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis the narrator]] is a ghost who observes said tour group and their descendants, he gets to observe how humanity further evolves from these few survivors.

* The "castrate your enemies" version is referred to in ''Film/{{Conspiracy}}'' (meaning that this crosses over with RealLife). The Nazi leaders at the Wannassee Conference discuss the possibility of using radiation and/or injections to render Jews sterile. However, in addition to the technical problems with this, Heydrich lacks the patience for such a slow process, and insists on [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust a more direct approach]].

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' revival episode "Dark Rain" concerns a future where chemical warfare has left most of humanity sterile. The rare women with viable pregnancies are sought out by the government and confined to hospitals so the newborns can be seized as wards of the state.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' revival episode "Dark Rain" concerns a future where chemical warfare has left most of humanity sterile. The rare women wits viable pregnancies are sought out by the government and confined to hospitals so the newborns can be seized as wards of the state.

* The plot point is still developing, but all the clones in ''Series/OrphanBlack'' are apparently sterile - with the exception of Sarah, who has a daughter named Kira. [[TheFundamentalist Tomas]] immediately decided to hunt Kira down upon learning of her existence, and Delphine purposely hid the existence of Kira from [[EvilutionaryBiologist Dr. Leekie]] when she was spying on Delphine. [[spoiler: It is revealed by Ethan, one of the original creators of the project, that the clones were intentionally made sterile, which also has led to the autoimmune disease that has killed many of the clones. Helena may also be fertile, due to having the same surrogate mother as Sarah.]]

* The villain in one of the [[Literature/NumaSeries Dirk Pitt]] novels intended to sterilize the human race this way, or at least half of it, as more "humane" than wiping them out. Pitt calls him a "freak" for this.

For one reason or another, people [[InfertilityAngst can't give birth anymore]]. This is often but not always due to a plague inflicted upon a species due to a DepopulationBomb dropped on them by their enemies, hence the name. However, this can just as easily be caused by a natural plague, biological changes in a species which might prevent sex, or a [[ValuesDissonance cultural phenomenon]] causing people [[SexIsEvil to be]] [[ParalyzingFearOfSexuality terrified of heterosexual sex]] (or at least pregnancy). Most horrifyingly, perhaps your enemies just decided to come along and [[GroinAttack castrate all your males]].

Compare {{Gendercide}} and ThePlague. Likely to result in a ChildlessDystopia and/or a BreedingCult. Sometimes may result in MandatoryMotherhood, or those that ''are'' fertile (women in particular) being forcibly used as [[BabyFactory baby factories.]] If it only happens to one character it's InfertilityAngst.

* ''Le Dernier Homme'' is an 1805 science fiction novel written as a prose poem where humanity as a whole is going sterile. It involves the voyage of the last fertile man to meet the last fertile woman only to meet with Adam, who has been charged by God to convince the couple to not reproduced, thereby allowing the world to end and be reborn.

* Zigzagged with the Genophage in ''VideoGame/MassEffect''. Playing it straight, it's a genetically engineered virus that attacks pregnant krogan females, causing alterations to hormone production that result in offspring being too deformed to survive and thus stillborn, and a mission in the second game even involves dispersing a new strain of the disease because the krogan are evolving immunity to the old one. Subverting it, the genophage was intended as a sort of mandatory contraception enforcement -- it's designed to allow a carefully calculated number of offspring to be viable enough to survive (which one of its creators notes was harder than just making it a standard sterility plague) - and its effects as a DepopulationBomb actually owe more to krogan inability to learn from their mistakes (or [[MoralMyopia admit to them in the first place]]) than its own inherent lethality. Mordin at one point outright states that completely sterilizing the krogan would have been considerably easier, the Genophage was designed to ensure that the krogan could survive, just at "pre-industrial" numbers. When asked why not go the whole way and wipe them out, he hotly replies he ''isn't'' a war criminal or mass murderer, and finds genocide morally repugnant.

For one reason or another, people can't give birth anymore. This is often but not always due to a plague inflicted upon a species due to a DepopulationBomb dropped on them by their enemies, hence the name. However, this can just as easily be caused by a natural plague, biological changes in a species which might prevent sex, or a [[ValuesDissonance cultural phenomenon]] causing people [[SexIsEvil to be]] [[ParalyzingFearOfSexuality terrified of heterosexual sex]] (or at least pregnancy). Most horrifyingly, perhaps your enemies just decided to come along and [[GroinAttack castrate all your males]].

Compare {{Gendercide}} and ThePlague. Likely to result in a ChildlessDystopia and/or a BreedingCult. Sometimes may result in MandatoryMotherhood, or those that ''are'' fertile (women in particular) being forcibly used as [[BabyFactory baby factories.]]

** HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is ''effectively'' an example of this: although having HIV doesn't directly incapacitate a person's ability to reproduce, responsible survivors who refrain from unprotected sex to ensure their partners aren't infected are, in effect, removing themselves from the human gene pool.

* Zigzagged with the Genophage in ''VideoGame/MassEffect''. Playing it straight, it's a genetically engineered virus that attacks pregnant krogan females, causing alterations to hormone production that result in offspring being too deformed to survive and thus stillborn, and a mission in the second game even involves dispersing a new strain of the disease because the krogan are evolving immunity to the old one. Subverting it, the genophage was intended as a sort of mandatory contraception enforcement -- it's designed to allow a carefully calculated number of offspring to be viable enough to survive (which one of its creators notes was harder than just making it a standard sterility plague) - and its effects as a DepopulationBomb actually owe more to krogan inability to learn from their mistakes (or [[MoralMyopia admit to them in the first place]]) than its own inherent lethality.

* In ''Film/{{Logan}}'', mutantkind is dying out because no new mutants have been born for twenty years. [[spoiler:This is due to Transigen using GMO corn syrup to suppress the X-gene.]]

* Part of the TwistEnding in Creator/DanBrown's [[spoiler:''[[Literature/DanBrownsInferno Inferno]]'': the titular Inferno is not a new version of the Black Plague but really a virus designed to make one third of the world's population infertile. By the time the novel ends, it has already infected everyone on Earth.]]

* OffWhite: No human babies have been born in the last three years because the human white spirit was eaten alive.

* ''{{Vandread}}'': The heroes come across a planet in the second season which had this done to them by Earth. Needless to say, they cure it.

* ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'': A main cause of the revolution that created the Republic of Gilead was widespread sterility. The few fertile women, dubbed Handmaids, are assigned to the households of powerful men for the express purpose of producing children. Unfortunately, if the men aren't fertile, the women are blamed for it.

* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': Birth rates in the US had plummeted to catastrophic lows by 2015. And of the babies that ''are'' born, many didn't survive long past birth. This is apparently due to environmental toxins.