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What would happen if everybody found out that we all only had a few weeks left to live? Director Lorene Scafaria's apocalyptic romantic comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World starring Keira Knightley and Steve Carell captures the fall of society after it's announced that an asteroid is going to crash into the Earth. More »
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They're not appropriately dressed, but these ladies are managing to get by in the apocalypse all the same. Illustrator Andrew Tarusov created a doomsday calendar, with a different gal and a different apocalypse for every month of the year. More »
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All your life, you've probably told that reading was good for you. Reading will get you ahead in school, land you a good job, and preserve human civilization. But that's because reading has been lying in wait all this time, readying itself so the day it destroys mankind. In the animated short Reading Kills, bookworms, news junkies, and sandwich board skimmers alike face the deadly consequences of reading. More »
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The Beasts of the Southern Wild is very much one of the most buzzed films at Sundance right now. Everyone either loves it or respects it greatly. Whether or not this movie about a young girl facing a flood and terrible hog-monsters catches on with a wider audience remains to be seen — but I feel confident saying that he is a sincere new talent on the scene and that this is in a fresh, exciting film floating up from what feels like another world. More »
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If you woke up tomorrow and the zombie apocalypse had begun, what would you see when you checked your computer? What about the next day, and the week after that? What would the news from CNN, Al-Jazeera, and the Wall Street Journal look like? What would the most popular downloads on the Pirate Bay be? And how long before we figure out that zombie can't survive a sword to the head? More »
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Back in January 2010, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that they were moving their "Doomsday Clock" from five to six minutes to midnight, a sign of cautious optimism and renewed hope for Earth's nuclear safety. More »
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This is the 1980s toe-tapper "Cathy Don't Go" (lyrics and en Español), an earworm New Wave number that almost certainly ripped off Survivor's "Jackie Don't Go." Unlike Survivor's ditty, "Cathy Don't Go" was written by the evangelical doomsday cult The Family International about how the Antichrist is controlling us through barcodes. The music video will make your head explode. Here's a sample verse: More »
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We've called Xavier Gens's The Divide the most disturbing end-of-the-world movie we've ever seen — and even now when we think about it, we feel like taking a shower. Check out this exclusive clip from the post apocalyptic hellhole, otherwise known as Michael Biehn's basement. More »
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Or should I say "damned" Arkansas town. Last year, Beebe, Arkansas experienced a massive blackbird die-off that captured a perplexed populace's attention. The deaths were later chalked up to confused birds colliding as fireworks went off. This year, blackbirds once again rained from the sky, showering the citizens of Beebe with a necrotic avian rain. Explains AP: More »
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Everything comes to an end, and our sun is no exception. A star happily cooking along in its middle age, Sol has many millions of good years ahead of it — but its eventual doom is certain. Here's what that will look like. More »
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No, this wasn't the work of Vigo the Carpathian or a bunch of overzealous Slayer fans. In the city of Luoyang, illegal manufacturing workshops dumped chemical dye in the Jian River. The dye turned the river an unpleasant shade of hemoglobin crimson. It's not clear what the health ramifications of this unholy mess will be, at least there's the cold comfort that the Earth hasn't punctured an aorta. More »
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Forget Hershel's farm. When the first signs of the apocalypse hit, you'll want to hightail it to upstate New York, where this serene cottage sits atop a Cold War-era missile silo. And several of its underground rooms are already prepped for luxury bunker living. More »
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Jackie Blevins of Carter County, Tennessee has a singular dream: to display his automobiles dolled up in pure Satanic majesty at local car shows. But when his customized cars were kicked off the lot, Mr. Blevins protested the way aggrieved folks have been doing for decades — by adorning their homes with blinking Satanic missives: More »
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For the past two years, one of the most consistently readable comics on the stands has been writer/illustrator Jeff Lemire's end-of-the-world fable Sweet Tooth. Lemire — whose work you may know from books like The Nobody and Animal Man — tells the tale of Gus, an antlered boy born after a mysterious disease wipes out most of humankind. Gus is but one of many half-animal children to begin replacing the human population. Courtesy of DC Comics, here's an exclusive sneak peek at this week's issue. More »
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The urban explorers of Abandoned Scotland have quietly and assiduously documented those derelict locations in the northern climes where human presence has receded. Their videos and photography will take you millennia into the future, when we've all (hopefully) moved to the New Edinburgh Ringworld. More »
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Is the world going to come to an end? Certainly! The real question is how it might happen. That's what this gallery is all about. More »
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As you all know, on December 21, 2012 the rivers and oceans will fill with lava and we will all drown in a sea of fire tornadoes and locust clouds. But until then we've got one year left to celebrate. So let's go out in style. More »
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We've seen such luxury end-of-the-world residences as the Vivos doomsday shelters, but Vivos aren't the only folks pioneering fallout chic. Meet Edward Peden and Larry Hall. The former deals in selling bunkers to prospective homeowners and survivalists, whereas the latter is helming a residential development known as the Survival Condo Project... More »
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You've seen the world end with fire, earthquakes, and WTF in movies like 2012 and The Core. But to find out about truly horrific, plausible scenarios you need to ask a scientist. We talked to Cal Tech's Joe Kirschvink, a geobiologist who studies the ancient history of life — and mass death. He gave us a nightmare scenario where one evolutionary shift in ocean microbes leaves humans unable to breathe. More »
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Hey you! Have a hankering for the end times? Will you be in New York City this weekend? Did you like Lifeforce? Want to watch me interview Larry Cohen, the director of cult classics like The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent? Fuck yeah, you do! More »
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I'm not sure what filmmakers Olivier Campagne and Vivien Balzi were attempting to achieve with their atmospheric short movie 5:45 am, but it certainly should appeal to those who were partial to the opening scenes of 28 Days Later. More »
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You may love stories about the end of the world, but that's probably because, deep down, you don't believe it could ever happen. But that's not because you're realistic. It's actually a quirk of the human brain, recently explored by a group of neuroscientists, which prevents us from adjusting our expectations about the future — even if there's good evidence that bad things are about to happen. More »
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Photographer Dornith Doherty has spent the past few years photographing "seed vault" facilites all over the world. These are exactly what they sound like: vast buildings devoted to preserving the seeds of as many plants as possible, partly for scientific research and partly to hedge our bets as more and more plants go extinct. Some of these vaults, like the Svalbard "Doomsday" Seed Vault in Norway, are designed to withstand global catastrophe, including wars and climate disaster. Sponsored in part by Monsanto, the Doomsday Seed Vault could also be the genetic tool set for future synthetic biologists looking to create better food crops, or even to design foods we could grow in space. More »
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Remember those zombie engagement photos? Here's something that might eclipse them on the Adorable-O-Meter. More »
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At the blog After The Final Curtain, photographer Matt Lambros documents some of the most majestically collapsing theaters across the United States. More »
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Just as restaurants have guides informing patrons how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver, in 1999, the creators of the eschatologically inclined Left Behind series made this video, Have You Been Left Behind? More »
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Brian Ralph's graphic novel Daybreak takes a phenomenological approach to survivalist horror. Like the participant in a pick-a-path novel, the reader is abruptly plopped down in the middle of a garbage-strewn hellhole. More »
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For the past three years we've been watching great economic institutions, from banks to nations, collapsing into chaotic uncertainty. The economic future looks murky at best, and apocalyptic at worst. You can prepare for the coming upheavals by reading nonfiction by economists, political scientists, and pundits. But sometimes it's hard to imagine what's coming next without a good story to illustrate different possibilities. More »
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The 1970s was a tough decade for America. As we saw in the second episode of paleofuture.tv, many people were predicting apocalypse. More »
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On May 27, 1956, The Ed Sullivan Show aired Peter and Joan Foldes' apocalyptic animation A Short Vision, thereby scarring wee viewers who had no clue they had front-row seats to doomsday. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5815788&view=rss&microfeed=true Scientific American has a great article about how low rainfall means that Europe will be facing food shortages this summer. What's particularly interesting is that the water shortages will also affect energy production too, especially in France: More »
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Jordanian-born designer Rad Hourani is known for his futuristic, hard-edged, unisex designs. With his Tranclassic leather jacket, he has taken his aesthetic and made a garment that's rapture-ready. More »
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If you're one of those Harold Camping superfans who've waited your whole life for an Old Testament plague, might I suggest moving to Nashville? A fellow who works there recently filmed a solid six stories of them. Warning: video's loud. More »
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In 1960, an enterprising inventor named Harold C. Tifft patented the "portable shield," a device that would ostensibly protect its user from radioactive fallout until help arrived. Or if help arrived. You're sporting your coffin on your back! More »
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If you're hungry for apocalyptic images (and who isn't?) I recommend this video, of a comet spotted by an amateur astronomer earlier this month as it smashed dramatically into the sun. That's right, even a wee comet made of nothing but ice and rock can cause a giant flame to leap from the sun's surface as it hits. More »
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According to professional apocalypse predictor/silky-voiced radio host Harold Camping, the Rapture's going down today. But Camping's not alone in his doomsaying. Many kooks have made similar dire claims in recent years. Here's a Whitman's Sampler of apocalypse-predicting nuts. More »
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We live with the constant threat of famine. Many parts of the world, like Ethiopia, have seen their populations starve repeatedly over the past decades. What's the best way to deal with it? Now, you can decide. More »
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Apocalypse by fiery nuclear war, apocalypse by ancient Mayan prophecy, apocalypse by Buffy villain - we expected almost anything. But not apocalypse by bed bug. More »
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Over at Salon, there's a great article by Peter Finocchiaro about all those mysterious billboards and ads online about how the world is going to end on May 21 - a week from tomorrow. Apparently, they're the work of a splinter group of Christians who follow Harold Camping. Though decades ago Camping incorrectly identified 1994 as the year that the world would end, that hasn't deterred him or his followers. They are convinced now that May 21 is the day. Here's Camping's evidence, as summed up by Finocchiaro: More »
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From earthquakes to slime molds, from zombies to the romance of decay, here are the manga you'll want to read to prepare for the End of Days. More »
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