Well, like it says in the title, fellow writers…what’s the largest number of people you’ve killed, in a single story? (I was feeling morbidly curious…what can I say)
“People” including otherwise unnamed or unseen souls (e.g. “My god, there were fifty people in that bus!”), and not automatically limited to members of Homo Sapiens.
My personal record is a bit over 300 million (the sequel would be worse); and I’m working on one right now where two have died so far, but I’ve mostly been pretty good.
So…anyone else feel like sharing? Details welcome!
In a deleted passage from the story I’m working on, the narrator lists the casualties after a battle. I adapted the list from the US losses at Pearl Harbor, so it was in the thousands.
Unnamed billions, when I wiped out the human race and all of her colonies at the hands of a vengeful alien race, save for two surviving humans who managed to escape from a colony at the last moment and a sub-species that they inadvertently saved.
Bonus irony: the two surviving humans were both male. Not even a breeding pair!
I write short mystery stories, so there is almost always one DB. The most I’ve ever put in a single story was three, a triple homicide. But my stories are classic mysteries – crime (usually a murder), suspects, detective – not sci fi, and they’re short. It’s hard to kill off multitudes of people in less than 5000 words.
If they don’t need to be specifically numbered, several thousand across several planets is my record (war story, mostly taking place in deep space, so the civilians get off lightly, except for two battles, but hundreds of soldiers buy it).
If they must appear, or be specifically numbered, several dozen, all killed by the same being. A very racist alien, imprisoned for murder, he killed more than a dozen in his escape, including his accomplices (who he felt were too ‘thin blooded’), guards, and one unfortunate civilian who happened to be too near the prison in a 1-man starship. Then, on earth, he killed another 9 or so (long story behind why), and makes attempts on 3 others, who survive. I think I made a point of everyone involved in the disasters the main character intervened in surviving…
The sequel has, IIRC, 9 deaths - 8 murders (a different single perp…his motives are simpler - he’s a psychopath), one spontaneous human combustion.
I’ve written an outline for a story in which a scientific experiment goes horribly awry, destroying not only our universe, but millions of parallel universes as well.
I wrote one short story in school that consisted of the entirety of humanity (all of Earth, year '06) getting wiped out (that one got me a referral to the Councillor, who just thought it was a good story).
I wrote another short story that ended with 18 out of 20 fully developed human colonies, with numerous outposts being obliterated, so on the order of 120 to 200 billion.
In published stories, nine in a science fiction piece a number of years ago and four in a classic mystery and five in a hard boiled mystery more recently.
I have always felt a reader’s mind has trouble identifying with huge numbers of people dying and I feel the need to reach my reader. They are touched by individuals, but masses of people dying can’t really be grasped. When I wrote the short story with the nine deaths, I actually cut it down from 25 on the suggestion of the editor who expressed much the same feeling as I just put forth. He said he would have suggested cutting it down even more but acknowledged that a group was necessary for the plot.
Almost the entire population of Earth in one post-apocalyptic story, 28 in one horror/thriller, several thousand in another sci-fi story. Hell, even my romcom has three deaths, although two happened before the events of the story.
In a story which I only got one-third of the way through, untold millions had already died. An artificial planetoid was entirely wiped out. Widespread terrorism on Mars. Wars across every continent on Earth. The annihilation of the headquarters of the successor to the UN, which housed thousands. I forget what happened on the Moon, probably something bad.
