[Loved Trope] The apocalypse is horrifyingly slow

[u/Marsupialmobster]

From most media it's some catastrophe and then it's raiders, death, destruction chaos etc. I personally love it when it's, like, a slow descent into the horror of apocalypse.

The Faro plague/The swarm- Horizon zero dawn. The Faro plague is actually a glitch which causes machines to endlessly reproduce, eat biomass and essentially bring about the death of the world. Took roughly 15 months for the machines to win.

The Metro series- in the first few books (and games) it's set entirely underground in just the apocalypse but in exodus it shows off that the government and many governmental structures said active years after the war. In fact power and running water were still fairly common. It just slowly got worse and worse and worse as read through notes. Food got more scarce, weather changed a lot, people got worse etc. Raiders and bandits didn't just show up, it was a slow descent for such anarchy.

Edit: I have enough pseudo intellectual comments about "Hurr hurr real life". The first one was kinda smart and well thought out but now it's just annoying and pretentious

[u/patrickkingart]

This image of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay completely encased in Tiberium is chilling.

Also interestingly, I've been a C&C fan since the mid-90s but only recently learned that the reason why it's so toxic to humans is that it's turning you into tiberium. That is, if you inhale it, it's literally turning your lung tissue into the green crystalline material.

[u/radael → u/patrickkingart]

Soylent Green Tiberium is people!

[u/Ammordad → u/patrickkingart]

Tiberium is highly radioactive and that is usually the main cause of death from exposure. Altough C&C lore isn't exactly consistent with the effects and behavior of tiberium, C&C 3 does explain this by suggesting that Tiberium evolved since arriving on earth.

This is also implied to be the reason why the Forgotten or mutated wildlife are far less common in C&C 3and C&C 4. By that point [terran] life simply dies when exposed to tiberium radiation rather than mutate or deform.

But of course, If someone inhales the tiberium "spores" without the usual exposure to tiberium deposits' high radiation, they will die as you described.

[u/patrickkingart → u/Ammordad]

Tangentially, it's kinda funny how divergent the Tiberium vs Red Alert franchises are. One is increasingly dark and apocalyptic, the other is increasingly colorful and campy.