"The top nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
When disaster strikes, many people would expect The Government to sort things out, and to protect its own citizens in the process. But what happens if the people the government sends aren't there to help? Or, even worse, they're the ones who caused the disaster in the first place?
A fairly common trope in dystopian, disaster, and post-apocalyptic fiction is for the government — or what's left of it — to be highly antagonistic during times of crisis, rather than assisting the people it's meant to protect. Sometimes they respond to disaster by abusing their emergency powers and ruling with an iron fist, or sometimes they're only interested in protecting themselves and their assets. Sometimes, this is the result of a Government Conspiracy, and the crisis was either engineered by them as an excuse to seize authority, or it was made up entirely. In all of these cases, the government is the last organization you should expect to rescue you.
Some examples of this trope originate from conspiracy theories. For example, the United States has a decades-old conspiracy theory
which claims that the nation's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is in charge of helping people during disasters, is actually a pretext for the government to declare martial law and imprison dissidents into death camps without due process.
This trope mainly serves to provide an antagonist for dystopian and post-apocalyptic media, to ensure the protagonists get some initiative in how the disaster plays out, or to set the story up for The Reveal.
Also compare with Armies Are Evil, Emergency Authority, Let No Crisis Go to Waste, and Oppressive States of America. Compare and contrast with Armies Are Useless, No FEMA Response, and Police Are Useless. Can overlap with False Flag Operation or Genghis Gambit, and may be utilized by the Antagonistic Governor, Corrupt Bureaucrat, Mayor Pain, or President Evil. May be used to justify Democracy Is Bad.
No Real Life Examples, Please! Since this is often used as a plot twist, beware of spoilers!
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Astro City: Occurs during the "Confession" story arc. In the midst of growing public skepticism over superheroes, the neighborhood of Shadow Hill is rocked by a series of brutal murders. The mayor begins pushing for heroes to be registered; when they refuse and the murders continue, the Mayor becomes increasingly hostile, culminating in a citywide ban on all heroes and the capture of all violators. Ultimately justified as the mayor is a member of a race of shapeshifting aliens, who are neutralizing superheroes worldwide prior to invading the planet.
- DC Universe:
- In the Infinite Crisis: The Battle for Blüdhaven spin-off mini-series, a section of the government military occupies the ruins of Blüdhaven, destroyed in Infinite Crisis. A man named Father Time is overseeing their operation, which involves monitoring an alien being called "Astronaut Fetus" in a green test tube, and using Captain Atom's powers to create metahumans. To protect this operation, Father Time assigns Major Force as the new leader of the extremely jingoistic and patriotic Force of July (renamed "Freedom Ring" for the mini-series) to protect the operation from trespassers.
- Transformers: Sometimes comes up in the backstories of some iterations of the franchise.
- The Transformers (Marvel): In the backstory, it's revealed that in theory, the Autobots rule Cybertron under the leadership of the Overlord. However, in practice, Cybertron has begun fracturing into various polities and city-states, with Kaon and Tarn in particular becoming powerful enough to possibly challenge the Autobot city-state of Iacon for dominance. Hence when a war breaks out between Vos and Tarn (during the beginning of which the Overlord perishes when he's unable to escape), the Autobot council decides to let Vos and Tarn fight their war in the hopes they'll wipe each other out. Alas, after Vos and Tarn do indeed wipe each other out, the survivors turn their anger on Iacon and the Autobots, who could've sent peacekeepers to stop the war but chose not to... under their new leader Megatron.
- The Transformers (IDW)'s original continuity:
- When the Decepticons begin tapping into the increasingly vocal dissatisfaction felt by many Cybertronians, the corrupt Senator Proteus makes a promise that if 10 000 Decepticons sign up for the Decepticon Registration Act, then they would be recognised as a proper political party. In truth, it was a plot: the Senate intended to take advantage of any unrest (and were prepared to carry out a False Flag Operation) and then use the register to identify Decepticons and their sympathizers to be sent to the Institute for "rehabilitation".
- As the Decepticons grow in power thanks to their underground gladiatorial events, several senators try to take advantage of the situation for their own gain. Ratbat, for example, makes some decent money discreetly selling them weapons despite knowing full well those same weapons will be used against the Autobot police force. They are later used to massacre his fellows, and forcibly trap him in a diminutive new body. Even Senator Shockwave sees an opportunity to try to effect the societal change he feels is badly necessary.
- When the war erupts, Autobot commander Sentinel Prime is killed in action. The new Autobot leader Zeta Prime initially comes off as being more reasonable but quickly jumps off the slippery slope. He intends to use ancient weapons known as vamparc ribbons (which draw energy right out of another Transformer to fuel themselves) to destroy anyone who opposes his rule and seeks to make an example out of the rebellious city of Nyon. He sends Orion Pax and his team in, expecting them to be killed in action and giving him an excuse to actually launch his attack. When they instead survive and succeed in their mission, Zeta throws all pretense aside and launches his assault anyway. In his Motive Rant, he declares that he's perfectly willing to terrorise Cybertron into obedience if that's what it takes to defeat the Decepticons.
- Transformers (2019) (IDW's second continuity): As unrest grows, Sentinel Prime (the Autobot leader and elected head of Cybertron's government) muses using it as an excuse to lock up particularly troublesome elements of society including members of the Ascenticon political party. His subordinates advise against this, pointing out that the populace will view it as a naked power grab (especially because many Ascenticons are genuinely innocent), but when Ascenticon-sympathetic terrorists destroy a holy site Sentinel no longer cares and makes plans to arrest all Ascenticons. Unhappily for Sentinel, the Ascenticons make their move first and launch a coup that begins the Autobot-Decepticon war.
Fan Works
- In Fox in the Bunnyhouse, Mayor Bellwether attempts to take advantage of the rash of mysterious disappearances and attacks by proposing that all predators over the age of twelve be forced to wear a Shock Collar at all times. When she expects the ZPD to sponsor her bill, Detective Hopps calls her out on her blatant agenda.
Film — Animated
Film — Live-Action
- Star Wars: In the backstory of the film series, after their last defeat, the Sith spent centuries working in secret to manufacture crises and exploit naturally occurring ones to degrade the Galactic Republic. They begin to execute the final stage of the plan in The Phantom Menace: Darth Sidious, publicly Senator Sheev Palpatine of Naboo, gets the Trade Federation to take his home planet hostage to extort the Senate, and has enough other senators and bureaucrats in his pocket to stymie any response. He uses this to manipulate the planetary governor, Queen Amidala of Naboo, into calling a vote of no confidence against Chancellor Valorum and get himself voted in. From here he continues to degrade democracy and the rule of law until he's able to trick the Senate into voting him absolute power. From there it's only a matter of time before he has an opportunity to declare himself Emperor.
- In Starship Troopers, the asteroid that destroyed Buenos Aires is said to have been sent towards earth by Bug plasma from the Klendatu system. A visual representation shows that Klendatu and Earth are literally on opposite sides of the Galaxy, and seeing as the Terran Federation is secretly a fascist government (showing Public Executions on TV, glorification of the military, military uniforms that took inspiration from the Third Reich), it's heavily implied that the Terran Federation used the coincidental asteroid impact as an excuse to expand their dominions by invading the Arachnids' territory. To ensure public support, the Federal Network is putting on a very positive spin on the fact that the war has ground down to a quagmire.
- In V for Vendetta, it is revealed that the fascist government, which V is seeking to annihilate, came to power when their political party supported the creation of biological weapons in secret, which they then used on their own citizens, blamed on an unrelated group, and used the resulting crisis to gain political footholding.
- The X-Files: Fight the Future utilizes the FEMA conspiracy theory. According to Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil, The Syndicate has planned to use FEMA to seize control of the U.S. government in the event of an alien takeover, which it would use to declare a national emergency and suspend constitutional law.
Literature
- Dark Life: The Commonwealth of State, the central government of the setting, uses the rising sea levels as an excuse to keep everyone under Emergency Law, allowing they to suspense certain right and postpone elections for the next 20 years or so. They also have a Propaganda Machine that discredit anyone they feel is a threat, including the scientists who to points out that the sea levels are no longer rising.
"Can't switch horse midstream," the Representatives said with every cancelled election. An appropriate metaphor, considering 20 percent of the continent was now underwater.
- In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four it is strongly implied that the war the government is fighting is little more than a hoax designed to justify the government tyrannizing over the populace.
- In Gordon Dickson's "The R Factor", the heroes come across evidence that the world government intends to eventually kill everyone who is not directly an employee or ward of the Bureaucratic State through various forms of benign neglect in one way or another once it's decided that the state can do without them. This, in spite of the fact that this is 90% of the world population. The heroes are careful to note that this is a matter of class interest rather than conspiracy. "One spider spotted doing something good for the web and instinctively being assisted by the other spiders."as one of them describes it, but the end result would be completely the same as if it had been done through conscious conspiracy.
- Star Wars Expanded Universe/Star Wars Legends:
- Occasionally brought up as part of the reason people didn't like the Galactic Republic, even before its transformation into The Empire. The Galactic Senate was widely known to be corrupt and was more likely to view disasters as an opportunity to gain something rather than a chance to help. It's telling that during the Naboo Crisis, several factions saw an opportunity to increase their own power or settle grudges, even though they weren't part of the group under the Trade Federation's employ.
- The Thrawn Trilogy: During the Clone Wars, a battle took place over the planet Honoghr and a Lucrehulk-class core ship was shot down. The ship was carrying a cargo of deadly toxins that proceeded to contaminate the planet. The Republic took great interest in the effects of the toxins and ignored the plight of the native Noghri. Darth Vader arrived some months after the war ended and the Republic became the Empire and was impressed enough with the Noghri's fighting prowess that he agreed to have the Empire restore Honoghr in return for their service. Naturally, the Empire instead kept the planet in a state of barely survivable in order to keep the Noghri indebted to it.
Live-Action Television
- Babylon 5: This is something the Clark administration keeps doing subtly throughout the second season and into the third. They keep creating the sense that alien governments are infiltrating Earth, that there's a crisis of loyalty, and introducing new government programs and agencies to monitor and control the situation. Then a Shadow vessel Earth discovered on the Jovian moon Ganymede goes berserk, forcing Sheridan to destroy it, and thereby creating the impression that alien forces have attacked an Earth outpost in the Sol system itself. Clark uses the incident as the justification to declare martial law.
- The government in The Devil Judge invokes this by introducing a virus into poor slums and faking an outbreak just to drag innocent people away into the Dream Home medical center and do unethical experiments on them.
- Fear the Walking Dead shows local police forces stocking up and abandoning normal citizens when the Zombie Apocalypse starts. Meanwhile, the military locks down only small areas which they place under martial law while murdering any civilians found outside those zones. They're eventually given orders to kill all the civilians inside the safe zones too, to keep them from being zombified when the military withdraws. Daniel stops this from happening by leading a large crowd of infected to the nearby military camp, which overwhelms them.
- In Jericho (2006), nuclear bombs are detonated by terrorists in 23 major American cities including Washington, D.C., effectively crippling the federal government. In the wake of the disaster, the Allied States of America formed in the West, vying for control of what was once the United States. The brand new independent Republic of Texas becomes a swing state as both the remnants of the federal government and the Allied States compete for its allegiance.
- In a first-season episode of The Last of Us (2023) called "Long Long Time", Joel explains to Ellie that the government did help some uninfected survivors of the fungi plague in the early days. They would tell people they were going to a safe place, but only as long as there was room. After that, truckloads of people (including the elderly and children) could be executed and their bodies burned, because "dead people can't be infected."
- In the first season of The Last Ship, with the Red Flu having devastated the entire planet, Amy Granderson, one of the highest-ranking surviving officials in the US government, tries to set up a eugenic state in Baltimore, in which those deemed useful to her purposes get an actual cure for the Red Flu while everyone else gets a fake cure that kills them.
- In The Lottery, a pandemic causes a worldwide fertility crisis; the government takes advantage of it to control population after a breakthrough cure. Later, it's revealed the President of the United States himself accidentally caused the pandemic in the first place.
Video Games
- In Cannon Dancer, the Federation's attorney general Jack Layzon hires the main character Kirin to take care of a terrorist cult that has taken over one of his cities and he's tired of them. For the first two stages, Kirin goes through the city fighting the cult's armed forces, and when he finally gets to their temple, Layzon suddenly appears with a raid force and, after stating all the destruction caused, has the cultists arrested. As it turns out, this is what Layzon wanted: a reason to jail the cultists, and he used Kirin to stir up trouble so he could legally pin all the chaos to them. And just to tie loose ends, he proceeds to betray Kirin and throw him into a desert to be monster food. Unfortunately for him, he survived...
- Deus Ex: FEMA is used by the Illuminati (and later Majestic 12) to assert control over the United States.
- In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Jensen infiltrates a covert FEMA detention facility in Highland Park, which is used to illegally imprison thousands of civilian dissidents.
- By the events of the original game, FEMA's powers have been expanded, giving the agency the authority to control much of the nation's military, infrastructure, transportation, and media, and allowing it to imprison up to six million American citizens in designated concentration camps. FEMA Director Walton Simons utilizes this power during the outbreak of the Gray Death, which he assisted in creating. However, several state governors and National Guard units refuse to recognize Simons' authority, plunging the nation into chaos.
- The original Dishonored takes place against the backdrop of a massive epidemic of Pandyssian Rat Plague ravaging the city of Dunwall. Rather than set up medical facilities and treat the infected (which is entirely within the realm of possibility, as the good ending shows), the Imperial government and the aristocracy use the opportunity to corral the underclasses and other undesirables in quarantined homes and entire districts and to let them die out while they throw lavish parties and jockey for favor with the Lord Regent. Late in the game, it is revealed, in fact, that killing the poor with an engineered outbreak was Lord Regent's idea in the first place.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, during the Time Skip between Oblivion and Skyrim, the Aldmeri Dominion (an Anti-Human Alliance led by the Altmer/High Elves who has long opposed the Third Cyrodiilic Empire) shows their mastery of this trope in several instances:
- With the Oblivion Crisis claiming the life of the last in the Septim line, the Empire is just barely held together through the actions of Potentate Ocato, The Good Chancellor of the final Septim emperors. In a successful attempt to destabilize the rival empire, the Dominion has Ocato assassinated and puts the empire on the path of vestigial status.
- Using Agent Provocateurs, they convince the Argonians of Black Marsh to become the first non-former Dominion territory to secede from the empire. Following the "Red Year" (where the central Volcano of Morrowind erupts leading to country-wide devastation), the Dominion uses the Argonians' long-time hatred of the neighboring Dunmer/Dark Elves (who used the Argonians as a Slave Race for centuries) to goad them into invade. Although the Dunmer ultimately stop the invasion and retake much of their territory, the Empire's inability/unwillingness to help them costs them another province as Morrowind all but becomes independent.
- The Dominion claims credit for ending the "Void Nights", a two-year span where Nirn's moons went missing from the sky, in order to gain the voluntary vassalage of the Khajiit, to whom the moons are sacred. Imperial sources flat out accuse the Dominion of Blatant Lies in this regard, while more neutral sources state that the Dominion had foreknowledge of the moons return and simply claimed credit, either case being exploitation.
- During the Great War before the events of Skyrim where the Dominion outright invaded the Empire, they captured and tortured Ulfic Stormcloak, then set him loose as a controlled asset, figuring that he would start a war for Skyrim's secession from the Empire and drain Imperial resources to give the Dominion an advantage in the inevitable second Great War. However, in their first major miscalculation, Ulfric proved far more effective than intended, threatening to unite the Nords of Skyrim and repulse the Empire completely ahead of schedule. (With the results coming down to the choices of the Last Dragonborn).
- In the Fallout series (mostly Fallout 2, Fallout 3, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel), the major antagonist is often the Enclave; originally a Government Conspiracy formed before the Great War by several factions of the military and the U.S government (including the President himself), along with several powerful corporations (most notably Vault-Tec and Poseidon Energy), they rode out the nuclear apocalypse on a massive oil rig off the coast of California, with the intent of taking whatever was left afterwards for themselves. Post-War, as The Remnant of the U.S Government, they consider themselves the sole "real humans" left due to being untouched by radiation and mutation, with their plans usually revolving around wiping out the Wasteland communities and rebuilding the U.S in their own image. This backfires massively, mainly due to the actions of The Chosen One in 2 and The Lone Wanderer in 3, and results in the destruction of their headquarters, the deaths of their leadership, and the survivors being hunted down by the New California Republic, to the point that by the time of New Vegas, there's only a few scattered groups left living on in hiding, turning one of the most powerful factions in the Post-War world into The Remnant of The Remnant of The Remnant.
- The New California Republic in New Vegas; The democratically elected government of most of the U.S West Coast, the NCR isn't openly malevolent like the Enclave, but instead opportunistic and expansionist, using the war against Ceasar's Legion and justifications like "peacekeeping" as an excuse to expand eastward, assimilating and exploiting independent communities on the way. Or outright exterminating them, as the Great Khans found out.
- In Jak II: Renegade, Haven City is constantly under attack by the ferocious Metal Heads. Baron Praxis, the tyrannical ruler of the city actually has an arrangement with them in order to keep himself on the throne and justify his rule. The Metal Heads attack the city just enough to scare the populace into believing their Baron is their only chance at survival, an in turn Praxis bribes them with an immense amount of Eco to feed on. In one of the earlier missions Jak and Daxter stumble upon a pair of Krimson Guards handing over barrels full of said Eco to the Metal Heads.
- The Last of Us has FEDRA (the Federal Disaster Response Administration), which governs quarantine zones within large cities across the post-apocalyptic United States. After the collapse of most other centralized authority due to the Cordyceps fungus, FEDRA turned most of these quarantine zones into Police States, containing civilians against their will and executing any suspected infectees.
- The Moment of Silence: This is one of the favorite tactics of The Conspiracy. For instance, when Peter's wife and son are killed by a failed assassination attempt, it's passed off as a Luddite terrorist attack in order to "justify" their further cracking down on dissenents.
- In the Resident Evil games, the U.S. government used the chaos of the Raccoon City outbreak as cover to send Special Forces teams into the Umbrella Corporation's research facilities in the city, in an attempt to steal Umbrella's research data. They mostly failed, because Umbrella sicced Tyrants on them. After Raccoon City had to be nuked, the government used the public backlash as a way of shutting down Umbrella, thereby getting rid of the government's biggest competitor in the bioweapons market.
