Horses are good company -- The Witcher

The destruction of Vulcan seemed to me to be one of those things in fiction where a place with lots and lots of people is utterly destroyed and yet it's meant to be more a symbol or motivator than the actual massive loss it would otherwise be. And I get that hearing about more people affected by a tragedy actually tends to make most unaffected people less empathic (apparently why savvy organizations focus on telling one heartstring-tugging story at a time), but I'm pretty sick of cities (or, in interplanetary science fiction, planets) being used as these symbolic population packets like that.