Krypton is usually portrayed in comics as having exploded as a result of a nuclear chain reaction caused by the planet's unstable radioactive core (which created the Superman-deadly Kryptonite). As originally depicted, all the civilizations and races of Krypton perished in the explosion, except for one survivor: the baby Kal-El who was placed in an escape rocket by his father, Jor-El, and sent to the planet Earth, where he grew up to become Superman.
In some versions of the Superman mythos, additional survivors were later discovered, such as Krypto the Superdog, Supergirl, her parents (kept alive in the "Survival Zone", a similar parallel "dimension" to the Phantom Zone), the criminal inhabitants of the Phantom Zone, Dev-Em, Beppo the Super-Monkey, the residents of the bottle city of Kandor and the real parents of both Superman and Supergirl.
From the late 1980s through the early 2000s, the number of survivors was reduced to Superman himself in the comic book stories (the Eradicator was added in 1989 as a nonsentient device, and shown to be self-aware in 1991), but more recent accounts have restored Supergirl, Krypto, and Kandor, and introduced another newly discovered survivor, Karsta Wor-Ul.
Kryptonian civilization's level of technological advancement has ranged from being only a few centuries ahead of Earth (such as in Kevin J. Anderson's Last Days of Krypton novel), to being millennia ahead and referred to by Lex Luthor as "one of the most advanced civilizations in the Universe" (in the Superman film series).
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