SW Apocalypse

I was browsing apocalyptic plot devices at TVTropes, when a thought hit me: how would those sort of stories work in SW? Of course they can't have an actual "end of the world" plot, but how could it work? What kinds of apocalypses (apocalypsi?) could work? Zombies? A virus? Droid takeover? Ewoks escaping the confines of Endor and unleashed upon an unsuspecting Galaxy?

 

Well we've already had Zombies (Rakghouls), a virus (nanokiller, Alpha Red), Droid Rebellion (but it was barely covered, and in Star Wars Droids aren't evil machines).

We've head Palpatine come back from the dead and try to possess people, Darth Andeddu was a lot like the Mummy, Darth Nihilus destroyer of worlds, the Anzati are definitely vampires.

We've even had Kreia try to destroy the Force, the Yuuzhan Vong trying to assimilate the galaxy, and some Marvel plot where Luke stopped some mad scientist from destroying the entire universe.

So I really don't know what's left!

 

But those all failed. What could actually destroy the galaxy/kill everyone. Things like Paalpy and the Vong don't count, they were just trying to take over.

 

They all could have succeeded.

And both Palpatine and the Yuuzhan Vong would have eventually ended with the death or mindless drone-like slavery of every living being in the galaxy.

Dark Empire's Palpatine was trying to become GOD and feed on the lifeforces of the galaxy and spread his Empire to other galaxies.

If they conquered the galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong would have killed all non-Vong slaves after using them, and looking at what they did to their last galaxy the Vong would have just turned on each other and destroy the Star Wars galaxy as well, and eventually leave it for another galaxy.

For pure destruction, Nihilus would have definitely destroyed all life in the galaxy, and Kreia was looking to destroy the Force itself.

Muur would have turned the galaxy into Rakghouls, hideous monsters that only obey him.

The nanokiller is a plot that definitely has the potential to kill off everything in the galaxy, and I doubt we've seen the last of it.

Alpha red showed it could have mutated and exterminated galactic natives as well as the Vong.

 

Give a Suncrusher to every emotionally unstable teenager on Kessel. Done.

 

I still think of the Yuuzhan Vong as the ultimate apocalypse of the Star Wars universe. The galaxy was on the brink there: Galaxy almost entirely enslaved, Jedi genocide, capital not just taken but REMADE/DESTROYED, mass death (including major characters)... the Vong were it.

Alternativley, if you're looking for something that hasn't happened that "COULD," happen ...

... I think the Force could destroy the galaxy. Not a person using the Force necessarily, but just the Force itself, "resetting" everything if you will.

 

Droid takeover has been done offscreen but I want to see more of it:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Droid_Revolution

And this one actually covers those first three all at once:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sictis_Wars
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Technobeast

 

One that I've mentioned a number of times that wouldn't "destroy" the galaxy...but would destroy it the way we know it.

The fracturing of hyperspace.

All the space lanes, broken.

worlds that depend on trade, isolated by volatile hyperspace instabilities.

The galaxy becomes nearly impossible to travel across...and certainly impossible to do with any speed.

Suddenly you have backwater worlds becoming dark ages primitive...you've go little fiefdoms and local tyrants, hidden behind barriers of impassible void.

A small universe gets almost unfathomably larger.

 

Mass Charon invasion?

 

But they were still alive though, even though they were mutated.

I think what would be hellish, is if they had true zombies, something like a cross between Resident Evil and 28 Days Later. They would be truely dead as in Evil, but the infection would spread fast like it did in 28 Days. We would have planets filled with billions of the walking dead, panic and small wars over dwindling food as the galactic economy starts shutting down, and fights between humans and non-humans over who has more right to any availible food. And any Force-sensitives would be avoided, because the virus would have a strange tendancy to mutate those with high midichlorian counts into Nemesis-like creatures.

 

Unless they were sentient enough to fly starships, it wouldn't really cause problems. If a planet is lost, the galaxy can move on unaffected.

I believe many if not most planets are self-sufficient.

 

So, slow infection. And I don't think many, if any planets connected to the rest of the Galaxy (i.e., with constant hyperspace traffic) are self-sufficient. Either they are heavily industrialized and need to import food, or they are agrarian and need to import machines.

 

if you are referring to planets in terms of civilizations or colonies in systems...a great many are far far from self-sufficient...and many more would likely have to dramatically change the way life is conducted to acclimate to "natural" conditions.

Some worlds could be "self-sufficient"...provided they depopulate by vast amounts...heck, even Coruscant could probably survive in isolation...but 90% of the population would need to vanish before the planets meager foodstuffs would be of adequate supply.

Star Wars is built greatly upon the depending need of trade to make much of these "fringe" cultures work...it's how we can see bases on planets made of ice or volcanic planets...it's as imperative as the technology that is shuffled.

So while "planets" will live on...the shape of what we know as the Star Wars universe is significantly interlaced and co-dependent.

Isolating worlds would be apocalyptic to the universe as it stands.

 

How about collision with another galaxy?

Or the galactic core explodes?

 

Indeed, borrow an idea from James Blish' Cities in Space and have the galaxy collide with an anti-matter one.

 

A planet's a big place. Things would be tough for the untamed Rim worlds, certainly, and for any extremely built up worlds. But even in the Core, there's a lot of agriculture and undeveloped land on places like Corellia, Chandrilla, and so forth. There are also a fair number of planets where interstellar trade isn't economically significant, or is even non-existent. One aspect of the Star Wars universe is that you can go to planets like Maridun and Kashyyyk that get by just fine on their own, and really don't depend on large-scale imports and exports. If it's the Empire, they can be oppressive and mean; if it's Han and Chewbacca, than they can do some minor trading and have various adventures. But "off the grid" planets do just fine.

Furthermore, I think a Galactic rakghoul plague could be kept at bay by a competent Navy and Customs service.

 

Didn't see if anyone thought of this, but it could have been something like what happened in "The Truce at Bakura".

 

Chuck Norris is force sensitive after all and is trained to become a Jedi Master. Try to stop that!!

 

Chuck Norris+John Wayne=Chuck Norris crying like a little girl.

 

It would have to be set centuries down the line; if there were another galaxy that close, its impending collision would be pretty darn obvious.

 

[image=http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5562/tesb2hk9.jpg]
You mean like that?

 

Two galaxies colliding isn't a very "apocalyptic" event -- for one thing, it takes place on a timescale of MILLIONS OF YEARS, and therefore not really be noticed by anyone. By the time the galaxies are actually in the process of colliding, they will have been in the process of colliding since before any of the extant civilizations were founded and the galaxies being in collision will be remembered as just the way things always were.

And, of course, galaxies are SO FRAKKING HUGE and the space between stars within a galaxy SO FRAKKING WIDE that the chance that any two individual stars would be significantly affected by the galaxies "colliding" at all would be effectively zero. The galaxies sliding through or merging with each other would have a long-term effect on stellar formation and evolution within the galaxies, but this is, again, stuff that would happen on an astronomical time-scale and have nothing to do with the people living in them.

 

The Force is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case Vader is the sixth version.

The first Force I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by Waru's monumental failure.


Fixed to work here.

 

As you adequately put it, the problem is choice. But we already know what you're going to do, don't we? Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you to the simple and obvious truth: she is going to die, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

( no fix necessary in this case )

 

As you can see, in the aforementioned Matrix Architect references, you cannot end the universe.
The closest possible exception would probably be the dilating pupil theory, whereas you get a Big Bust, where the universe contracts to the point of singularity and then, crash, Big Bang, and everything is started fresh once more.