History Main / TechnologyErasureEvent

* This is part of the truth behind the seemingly random appearances of the [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Zakus]] and [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamZZ Kapools]], and the "Dark History" of ''Anime/TurnAGundam'': [[spoiler:The titular mecha's Moonlight Butterfly, a technology allowing it to consume all technology surrounding it through a swarm of nanomachines, was unleashed on Earth, resetting it to a period before most technologies were invented, though with Mobile Suits still buried in the rubble of the old world.]]

* ''ComicBook/CloakAndDagger'' are pursuing drug smugglers across Europe when they get sidetracked into Latveria. A powerful energy beam created by Doctor Doom combined with a raging storm attracted Cloak's need to feed. The beam somehow has the power to suppress all nuclear reactions, both fission and fusion. Doctor Doom explains that he built the device to preclude Latveria from suffering damage, even incidental, from nuclear weapons. He views the negation of nuclear medicine as an acceptable loss.

* ''Literature/{{Change}}'' (by Creator/StevenRBoyett): In book 1 (''Ariel''), all technology on Earth that's more complex than a pulley abruptly stops working.
* ''Literature/EdgeOfTheAbyss'' (by Roman Glushkov): SufficientlyAdvancedAliens do this in a roundabout way by modifying Earth's atmosphere so that a lit match or an electric spark ignites it, creating an all-destroying blaze that spreads far and wide. The end result is the same -- humanity is kicked back into the stone age.

* ''Literature/LetThemDie'' (by H. L. Oldie): Firearms of any kind abruptly stop working.
* "The Pause," a short story by Creator/IsaacAsimov where a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien "operates" on humanity to prevent a nuclear holocaust. The alien removes all radioactivity from Earth and all knowledge of radioactivity from everyone other than a selected hundred or so. After five years, radioactivity will be returned and the selected humans will be tasked with teaching the peaceful uses of atomic energy.
* ''Literature/SeekersOfTheSky'' (by Creator/SergeyLukyanenko): The Redeemer, the stepson of God, takes away all iron on Earth that he is aware of.
* ''Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem'' (by Liu Cixin): The Trisolarians remotely influence technology on Earth, in particular making all particle accelerators nonfunctional, so that humans will not be capable of inventing weaponry capable of fighting against the incoming colonization fleet.
* ''Literature/{{Todor}}'' (by Felix Maximov): Downplayed -- the Romani, but nobody else, had their ability to light fires taken away as a punishment for some transgression.
* ''Literature/ToServeMan'' (by Creator/DamonKnight): The visiting aliens shower humans with gifts, one of which is a device that prevents explosions in its radius (which is incidentally global), thus stopping all wars, as it was not feasible to switch to bows and axes. Of course, the aliens have ulterior motives, the nature of which can be discerned from the trope this story gave the name to.
* ''Literature/TheUniverseAfter'': The series focuses on the aftermath of an event known as "the Pulse", which forcefully and permanently regressed the technology of planets throughout the universe. Some planets were barely affected, whilst others are so bad that a horse and cart are the only available form of transport. Part of the drama in the series is making sure that the Pulse doesn't return and regress technology further.
* ''Literature/{{Unsong}}'' (by Scott Siskind): As the Divine Machine suffers malfunction after malfunction, the archangel Uriel has to gradually turn off various concepts -- the Internet, airplanes, Taiwan, champagne, amethysts, justice and so on. Some of these changes are temporary, others permanent.

* ''VideoGame/Gothic3'': Xardas destroys rune magic altogether, depriving human paladins and fire mages of their power and allowing orcs to easily triumph over humans.
* ''VideoGame/TheLongestJourney'': In the sequel ''VideoGame/DreamfallTheLongestJourney'', it's revealed that in between the two games (specifically, on August 8, 2209), Earth experiences a catastrophic event known as "the Collapse", which saw many advanced technologies stop working overnight, including AntiGravity and FasterThanLightTravel. While the exact nature of the Collapse is never elaborated upon, it coincided in time with the enthronement of the Thirteenth Guardian of the Balance, and is therefore believed to be a consequence of the new Guardian stripping Earth[[note]]a.k.a. Stark[[/note]] of all technologies that were actually based on magic that seeped in from its twin world of Arcadia, in order to restore the Balance between the Twin Worlds.

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See also EnforcedTechnologyLevels.

* ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'': The alien Klaatu permanently disables all ability to generate electricity on Earth to prevent damage to its ecosystem.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Starfinder}}'': In the ''Drift Crash'' sourcebook and the associated Adventure Paths ''Drift Crashers'' and ''Drift Hackers'' the Drift, the most reliable and fastest method for FasterThanLightTravel for the past 300 years, temporarily stops working. It quickly comes back but travel times are doubled and it's filled with rifts into other planes until the conclusion of ''Drift Hackers''.

Of course it did not take long to figure out that a world that doesn't gradually transition away from, say, steam power, but instead has all of its crucial infrastructure instantly taken away, would not be idyllic -- it would be post-apocalyptic. All infrastructure that civilization relies on, such as long-distance communication, transportation, mechanized agriculture and advanced medicine, would instantly be lost, while wars can, of course, be waged with sticks and stones, as they have been in the past. The idea for the setting remained, however, and works that use it usually focus on the aftermath of the change, on the ways society is trying to rebuild itself afterwards (perhaps with alternative tech trees, or perhaps just capped permanently at a Stone Age or medieval level).

The way this sort of change can even function somewhat strains the suspension of disbelief, because in order to make technology impossible one has to fundamentally alter a lot of basic physical processes -- for instance, why would transmission of electricity along nervous tissue continue to work when transmission of electricity along metal wires doesn't? For this reason, even in hard sci-fi settings, such changes are not assumed to be the result of a physical phenomenon, but instead tend to be a direct intervention of sufficiently advanced entities. Of course, this is not generally an issue in fantasy settings.

A related trope is TheMagicGoesAway, which depicts situations where a form of supernatural power or effect, rather than a technological process, is lost. It is not uncommon for the loss of one to come with the resurgence of the other, so that a Technology Erasure Event is sometimes followed by [[TheMagicComesBack the Magic Coming Back]].

* ''ComicBook/DarkAgesMarvelComics'': In the prologue, during a battle with a technological monster at the center of the Earth, Doctor Strange opens a portal to a dimension where electricity doesn't function. The monster kills Strange before dying itself, and as a result the portal remains open and [[RealityBleed causes the laws of its reality to bleed over into Earth's and overlay it completely]]. This causes all advanced technology to cease functioning, destroys all synthetic lifeforms, and results in the collapse of civilization.

* ''Film/{{Wyrmwood}}'': The same comet that caused the ZombieApocalypse also made it so gasoline and ethanol can no longer burn... which turns out to be a problem, as the blood and breath of zombies turns out to be flammable in daytime.

* ''Literature/{{Emberverse}}'': In an event called "the Change", electricity, gunpowder, explosives, internal combustion and steam power all suddenly cease to function. Human civilization collapses suddenly and dramatically, as heavily urbanized areas are left unable to feed themselves and long-distance communications cease to exist. Within a year, almost all nations on Earth have ceased to be and humanity has suffered a population loss of billions, leaving the survivors to rebuild new civilizations permanently capped at the medieval level.

* "The Pause," a short story by Creator/IsaacAsimov where a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien "operates" on humanity to prevent a nuclear holocaust. The alien removes all radioactivity from Earth, and all knowledge of radioactivity from everyone other than a selected hundred or so. After five years, radioactivity will be returned and the selected humans will be tasked with teaching the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

* ''VideoGame/{{Starsector}}'': The physical phenomenon that allowed faster than light interstellar travel (via gateway) and communication abruptly stopped working, which would already prove devastating given the interconnectedness of the interstellar human civilization, but that was not the end of the troubles: nearly every somewhat advanced piece of technology was outfitted with extremely strict always-online DRM, online here meaning interstellar communication with the license holders' server, the lack of which turned all of it into little more than slag. Hundreds of years have passed since the Catastrophe, and the sector in question is not even close to recovering from the devastation.

* ''Literature/EmpireOfTheEast'' concerns a far future after the very laws of physics were changed to prevent nuclear weapons from working, which has disabled most other technology as well.

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* ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'': The alien Klaatu permanently disables all ability to generate electricity on Earth to prevent damage to its ecosystem. A similar situation happened in the original movie, but only for a day (hence the name) and simply as a demonstration of raw power, while at the same exhibiting great care in making sure people wouldn't actually be killed by this (hospital equipment and airplanes in flight are shown to continue functioning normally).

* ''ComicBook/CloakAndDagger'' are pursuing drug smugglers across Europe when they get sidetracked into Latveria. A powerful energy beam created by ComicBook/DoctorDoom combined with a raging storm attracted Cloak's need to feed. The beam somehow has the power to suppress all nuclear reactions, both fission and fusion. Doctor Doom explains that he built the device to preclude Latveria from suffering damage, even incidental, from nuclear weapons. He views the negation of nuclear medicine as an acceptable loss.