io9: Apocalypse

A T-Shirt to Get You Ready for the 2012 Olympics

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:38:51 PDT

With everybody freaking out about this year's Olympic Games, the only thing a future-thinking person can possibly do is focus on the 2012 games — and this "Apocolympics 2012" tee from Terratag is the perfect thing (modeled by a guy from London dance troupe Renegade Dance). UK company Terratag makes a ton of amazing, future-minded designs with a trippy manga sensibility. They've got an entire line of mecha and gundam shirts, including ones with laser eyes. See more cute dancers in more cute robo-future tees, below.

I love the tee with the laser-eyed robot (below).

And who could resist this bizarre tee (bottom), which says "wonderful future life" and is topped with inexplicable pictures of mouse heads and explodey stars.

Be sure to check out the Terratag gundam gallery.

Terratag via Hide Your Arms.

The Ancient Apocalypse

Michael Reilly — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:40:00 PDT

Finally, a reason to think we'll survive the next apocalypse. Last week, a study that traced the origins of humans through mitochondrial DNA concluded that 70,000 years ago humanity underwent its greatest disaster ever. Africa experienced a massive drought at the time and it devastated our population, leaving perhaps as few as 2,000 people alive on the entire planet. Yet somehow we recovered — a warm thought for all the cold nights we spend dreading nuclear war, the next pandemic, dwindling water and food supplies, and global warming.

Today there are about 6.6 billion people on the planet and climbing fast (remember when we got to 6 billion...nine years ago??). It's hard to read the news and not come up with a laundry list of ways to destroy our civilization, if not all humanity.

So it's nice to know that humanity's a little more rugged than we thought. Here's what researchers from National Geographic Genographic Project had to say on the findings, which was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics:

Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through mothers — have traced modern humans to a single ''mitochondrial Eve,'' who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: ''Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.''

Source: Associated Press, via PhysOrg

One Pill Could Cure Radiation Sickness

Ed Grabianowski — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:20:00 PDT

Radiation exposure is going to be a serious problem after the nuclear apocalypse, or when your orbital home is going to be bombarded with plenty of dangerous cosmic radiation from solar flares. And in fact, it's already a problem now in many workplaces where people work with radioactive materials. But a solution may be in sight with a new pill, Protectan, that developer Cleveland BioLabs promises can prevent radiation sickness.

Protectan is being developed with Department of Defense funding as part of their efforts to protect soldiers from weapons like dirty bombs. It could also be used by astronauts and future space travelers, and will surely be a hot commodity after the apocalypse. It can be taken before or after radiation exposure - helpful, since radioactive zombies don't usually call ahead. Unlike some similar drugs being developed, Protectan only costs $200 per dose and doesn't require the assistance of a doctor to take it. Just pop one whenever your rad meter trips and you're good to go! Photo by Getty Images.

Cleveland BioLabs lands defense contract. [Buffalo News]

Postapocalyptic Images Made Out of Food

LISA KATAYAMA — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:30:00 PDT

Photoimagist Carl Warner depicts what the apocalypse and beyond might look like in a captivating series of food shots staged to look like scenery. In this piece, a black olive-and-watermelon ship sails through a sea of cabbage seeking revenge on vegetarians who have virtually annihilated the entire fruit and vegetable population. More vegetable landscapes below.

Once our world is annihilated, the planet will be occupied by giant mushrooms. Not hard to guess what foodstuff he used to make this one. And could this image, below, be a broccoli paradise?

Images by Carl Warner

Carl Warner main page via Playmedesign

Now That Plagues Are Played Out, What Should Be Movies' Next Apocalypse?

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:52:00 PDT

We fell in love with Doomsday's plague-quarantine horror, but sadly the rest of the world failed to fall with us. And maybe the failure of yet another movie about a deadly virus wrecking civilization means that people are finally sick of plagues? After I Am Legend, 28 Days/Weeks, and countless others, it's time for something else to take its turn crashing everything down. What do you think should be our new global disaster movie meme?

Nuclear Missiles Are Rock Stars In Moscow

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:40:23 PDT

Russians prepare to parade nuclear missiles through Red Square as part of the annual Victory Day celebrations. The procession of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, a scary Cold War tradition, ended after the Soviet Union fell, but now Russia is reviving it. Call it apocalyptic retro-futurist nostalgia. Or maybe just overcompensation. Either way, Russians will be screaming and maybe throwing their underwear at these shiny gray WMDs. A gallery of weapon-porn, after the jump.

Image from Getty Images

Instant, Inflatable Housing For San Francisco's Next Quake

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:03:10 PST

These modular, snap-together housing units were developed to aid in disaster relief for a potential hurricane in New York City. But to us they look a lot more like something we'd use in San Francisco after the next Big One. After San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake, people moved into tiny shacks in Golden Gate Park (a few of the shacks still exist). These habitats are this century's answer to the earthquake shack: they can snap together in an infinite variety of combinations and are covered with inflatable, water-resistant shell. Check out the future of San Francisco housing below.

Designed by Australian John Doyle, the shacks would be deployed to disaster zones in trucks, snapped together, and then covered in a massive, inflatable, weatherproof shell.

Green park? Check. Bicyclists zooming everywhere? Check. Disastrous earthquake devastates everything and takes out all services except high-speed internet? Check. Yep, it's San Francisco.

Here's what you get inside one.

John Doyle's Plans [New York Hurricane Relief]

io9's Geoff Manaugh has a post about another plan for disaster relief that involves giant floating suburban blimps.

Seven Reasons Why Australia is the Most Apocalyptic Country

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:10:11 PST

Ever since On the Beach was published in 1957, Australia has been the country we think of when we think "global apocalypse." That might be because people fantasize it's the one continent that will escape nuclear fallout. Or because it's so remote that people north of the equator imagine it as a savage wasteland of mutations. Either way, Australia is the coolest spot to stage the end of the world. The inspirations for that come from fiction and nonfiction. Check out our list of the reasons Down Under is going down.

Australia could be the last refuge in a world plagued by radiation. On The Beach, about a group of Australians waiting for the fallout cloud from a massive nuclear strike to float across the Pacific to kill them, is the most obvious fictional tale in this vein. Written by Australian Nevil Shute, the book was made into a famous U.S. flick with Gregory Peck in 1959. It was perhaps one of the bleakest nuke nightmares of the 1950s.

Australia is going to be the first country with water riots. Climate change has hit Australia pretty hard, and the country has been suffering one of the most profound droughts in its history. In fact, the rainfall patterns in the country have shifted almost completely since the country was founded and built up: the formerly rainy and more populated southern regions are now bone-dry, while the formerly uninhabited and unpopulated northern climes have become suitable for cities and farms.

Mad Max is Australian. OK, nuff said.

Australia is located next to New Zealand, one of the world's most fertile regions for post-apocalyptic stories. Despite living in beautiful Middle Earth, residents of New Zealand seem to have a gift for the apocalyptic. Not only did NZ's fortunate son Peter Jackson cut his teeth with apocalyptic flicks like Bad Taste (alien invasion) and Dead Alive (zombie infiltration), but one of the most disturbing end-of-the-world movies ever made, Quiet Earth, was made in New Zealand. The coolest post-apocalyptic blog in the universe is named after Quiet Earth.

Kangaroo mutants are cooler than all other mutants. Tank Girl is one of the greatest post-apocalyptic comics ever, and features a cute mutant kangaroo-human, Booga, who is the lover to our eponymous hero. The comic includes some great surreal jokes about colostomy bags and the Australian president, which aren't exactly post-apocalyptic or kangaroo-related, but are post-rational. While most fans of the comic hated the movie version, it's actually a pretty fun flick if you set aside your wish to see the more hardcore aesthetic of the comic brought to life.

Animal invasions are a regular feature of Australian life. As we demonstrated a few weeks ago, wild animals going nuts are a basic part of post-apocalyptic stories. And Australia has always had a problem with masses of crazed animals. Rabbits became so difficult to control at one point that a series of gigantic fences, spanning 3,256 kilometers, were erected on the border of Western Australia to keep the bunnies out of farmlands. Also, the terrifying spread of cane toads across the country has become a major problem too.

Vegemite. Any country that invents a black paste of "concentrated yeast extract" to smear on toast in the morning is already thinking apocalyptically.

BONUS: Y the Last Man even has an Australian subplot. Yorick's girlfriend, whom he's yearning to reunite with, is trapped in Australia. The message here? You just can't end the world without bringing Australia into it somehow.

Dogs Rule The Planet In 'Life After People'

Kevin Kelly — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:40:25 PST

Last night the two-hour post apocalyptic documentary Life After People aired on The History Channel, and it was awesome. As astrophysicist and author David Brin puts it in the film, "We're the first generation that could, by deliberate actions, cause its own doom." Find out what the Earth would do once we vacate, and check out some clips.

The special asks what would happen to the planet once humans are gone, and manages to answer in a way that's both informative and visually compelling, blending interviews with experts, CGI animation, and haunting shots of already-human-free locations like Chernobyl.

The show opens with humankind having already vanished from the planet, and we have no idea where everyone went. Sadly, we've left behind all of our domesticated pets, and there are several scenes of an abandoned puppy wondering where everyone has gone to tug at our heartstrings. However, one of the experts tells us that the cute and tiny breeds of dogs will die off very quickly, and that packs of large feral dogs will roam as scavengers. Sorry about that, you Yorkie owners out there.

Another fascinating element of Life After People is a segment about how buildings would break down without the presence of humans. You wouldn't think that skyscrapers rely on humans to keep them together, but once the power goes out, that turns off the climate controls. That would cause the metal window frames to expand with heat, then fuse shut. And then it's just a matter of time until the glass breaks from its frame. Without windows, air pressure changes within the entire structure, and it becomes a lightning attractor. One strike, and you've got The Towering Inferno, sans OJ Simpson.

We also learn how quickly power sources would die out over the years, with the longest continual power most likely coming from Hoover Dam. Of course, it too would be doomed once mollusks choke the coolant pipes and the generators auto-shutdown. That means no more lights or the steady bleep-bloop of slot machines trying to attract your attention in Vegas.

The special starts from Day One without people, and goes all the way to 10,000 years later. So, who ends up coming out on top when we leave the planet? The cockroaches, of course. Oh, and Mount Rushmore, which experts think may still be standing after 100,000 years. Zoinks. Life After People will be shown several more times on The History Channel over the next few weeks. Catch it if you're still around.

New Television Series Examines Life Without Humans

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:00:15 PST

Movies like The Mist, I Am Legend, and Cloverfield depict aliens, monsters from the briny deep, and superviruses hell-bent on driving people out of the cities and off the face of the Earth. But what would really happen tomorrow if everyone suddenly vanished today? A new series on the History Channel called Life After People asks that exact question, and while it looks a bit like 12 Monkeys, it also looks utterly fascinating. Plus their tagline "Welcome To Earth, Population: 0" actually sounds like a great scifi series. Catch it this coming Monday on The History Channel.

Sunspot Announces New Cycle, End of the World

grae — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:00:31 PST

Mark your calendars - It may not feel like it, but last Friday was potentially the start of the end of the world. Friday, you see, saw the identification that a new 11-year solar cycle has started (as Charlie pointed out) and according to many, when solar cycles peak, so does societal and cultural revolution (look here for evidence of that theory, skeptics). According to New Scientist, we're still a few years away from the peak of this cycle — some researchers predict 2011 and others 2012. Wait... 2012? That date sounds familiar. Something to do with Timewave Zero.

For those who know their Terence McKenna, of course, 2012 just so happens to have particular significance:

The theory of Timewave Zero was revealed to Terence by an alien intelligence following a bizarre, quasi-psychedelic experiment conducted in the Amazon jungle in Colombia in 1971. Inspired by this influence Terence was instructed in certain transformation of numbers derived from the King Wen sequence of I Ching hexagrams. This led eventually to a rigorous mathematical description of what Terence calls the timewave, which correlates time and history with the ebb and flow of novelty, which is intrinsic to the structure of time and hence of the temporal universe. A peculiarity of this correlation is that at a certain point a singularity is reached which is the end of history-or at least is a transition to a suprahistorical order in which our ordinary conceptions of our world will be radically transformed. The best current estimate for the date of this point is December 21, 2012 CE [common era], the winter solstice of that year and also the end of the current era in the Mayan calendar.

My message to those who are making long term plans right now? Don't bother.

Maverick sunspot heralds new solar cycle [New Scientist.com]
Terence McKenna's Timewave Zero [Alternative Culture]

Searches for "End of the World" Are Skyrocketing on the Internets

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 07:00:20 PST

Smartypants futurist Jamais Cascio has noticed something especially eschatological in the search logs for his blog, Open the Future. A few months ago, "end of the world" suddnely become the most popular search term leading people to his writing. Just to illustrate the weirdness, he's created a graph showing how the phrase stacked up against other search terms like "anthrax" and "astroid strike." Check out the results, with handy color coding.

What the Heck? [Open the Future]

Solar Flare Divides World Into Pirates and Art Collectors

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 08:30:06 PST

A giant solar flare hits the Earth and decimates the entire Eastern hemisphere, killing millions of people and mutating others into hideous creatures. Would you run for the hills or start trying to save the world's greatest art treasures? Most people would probably be busy building a seriously badass underground bunker rather than thinking about the fate of the Mona Lisa while avoiding mutants and marauding pirates, but the heroes of the new comic book miniseries Afterburn coming next month from Red 5 Comics. Preview panels after the jump.

The newbie publisher describes this book as "Indiana Jones Meets Mad Max," and it's co-written by Red 5 founders Scott Chitwood and Paul Ens. It reminds us of that scene in Children of Men where Nigel (played by Danny Huston) sits back in the Ministry of Art and eats dinner in front of Picasso's Guernica and sips wine in front of Michaelangelo's David. In a world where the the planet's population is shrinking daily, he's more worried about the world's precious artworks than the human dilemma. Afterburn sounds like it's about the less dainty people who would work for him.

Check out the first five pages of Afterburn in our gallery, plus a bonus shot of Danny and Clive in happier times. You know, before the gutshot and all that.

A List of All the Ways We Imagine Los Angeles Being Destroyed

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:30:09 PST

Sure it's cool to destroy New York, but it's even cooler to destroy Los Angeles. That's why Omega Man, the 1970s version of I Am Legend, took place in Los Angeles. Viral decimation is only one of the many ways LA has been crushed, according to a 1998 book by Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear, in which the irascible social critic gives us a helpful list of how LA is destroyed in 145 scifi/disaster novels. Of course nukes top the list, with a whopping 49 books wiping out LA in a big blast. But you'll be surprised by some of the lesser-known forms of LA-elimination.

Here is Davis' list of ways LA is destroyed in literature, with number of occurrences, for your contemplation:

Nukes, 49
Earthquakes, 28
Hordes (invasion), 10
Monsters, 10
Pollution, 7
Gangs/terrorism, 6
Floods, 6
Plagues, 6
Comets/tsunami, 5
Cults, 3
Volcanoes, 2
Firestorms, 2
Drought, 1
Blizzard, 1
Devil, 1
Freeway, 1
Riot, 1
Fog, 1
Slide, 1
Bermuda grass, 1
Global warming, 1
Sandstorm, 1
"Everything," 1

Needless to say, Davis moved out of LA to Hawaii several years ago.

Movies That Smash the Statue of Liberty

Kevin Kelly — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:00:58 PST

A trailer for the upcoming movie I Am Legend shows Will Smith and his canine buddy wandering an entirely empty New York City. But that's nothing new. Hollywood has always loved to show one of the most bustling cities on the planet smashed to hell and emptied of human life. Check out our list of movies that crush New York under their boots. Special bonus: click through our gallery featuring emptied-out NY, with many mangled Statues of Liberty.

Planet of the Apes: Probably the most famous image from this film is ol' Chuck Heston riding up the beach and finding the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand, which means New York City is buried under a ton of coastline. "You blew it all up. You really did it. Damn you... goddamn you all to hell!" Sorry, Charlie.
Escape From New York: While there's still a few people kicking it around New York, Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison, and of course they haven't been kind to the Statue of Liberty either. Director John Carpenter shot the film in St. Louis, Missouri and was able to convince city officials to turn off the power to ten city blocks each night to simulate the desolate city.
Independence Day: New York City is bustling and full of life... until a giant flying saucer comes and zaps the place to hell. As expected, the Statue of Liberty buys it in this one, although it just looks like she might be taking a nap in the Hudson River, but the city didn't look fare quite so well.
Deep Impact: New York City gets taken out by chunks of a comet that has been split in two in this 1998 movie. Several other U.S. cities supposedly get decimated as well, but it's Manhattan that we see getting blasted. A tidal wave created by the impact also takes out the Statue of Liberty, and pushes her head through the streets like a giant pinball.
Armageddon: Two months after Deep Impact, Armageddon slammed into theaters, taking a good sized chunk of New York City with it. While the Statue of Liberty's plight isn't shown, we do get to witness the top of the Empire State Building coming off and slamming into the streets and bringing the observation level down to the ground floor. What a view.
Artificial Intelligence: A.I.: Even the combined might of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg couldn't manage to put any intelligence into this film about artificial intelligence, nor could they save New York City from being flooded and smashed up like some child's Lego toyset. Although bonus points for having the Statue of Liberty survive, even though she's buried underwater up to her torch.
Vanilla Sky: Tom Cruise wakes up to a bad day where he's the last person in New York City, resulting in a pretty spectacular shot in a desolate Times Square. The production was given unprecedented access to the location for filming, and the city let them shut everything down and empty it out one early Sunday morning just for this scene.
The Day After Tomorrow: Director Roland Emmerich wasn't satisfied with blowing New York City to smithereens in Independence Day, so he decided to give the place a good going over in this film. New York gets battered by tidal waves, flooded, and then frozen to absolute zero in order to show you the dangers of global warming. Even the Statue of Liberty gets iced with sideways icicles.
Cloverfield: All we know about this J.J. Abrams-produced movie is that some sort of giant creature starts tearing the city apart, and the Army tries to fight back. Plus, the thing whacks the heads off of Lady Liberty, and it goes sliding down a city street taking out cabs. For a thing built in 1886, she sure is pretty damned resilient.

Which Current Technology Will Destroy The World?

charliejane — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:10:14 PST

Chances are the seeds of the end of the world are already in our midst. But which technology that we embrace to our bosoms will end everything? Help us decide, before it's too late!

iphone image by idiotboy Crystal meth bong image by kissthis.

Southland Tales Devolves Into Artistic Apocalypse

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:06:32 PST

Southland Tales was eagerly anticpated by fans who loved director Richard Kelly's cult hit Donnie Darko, but. But the weird movie that blended musical comedy with post-apocalyptic LA is getting raked across the coals by reviewers. Kelly was able to sign up talent like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake, but even this A-list Oscar crowd of thespians couldn't save the flick from itself.

The main problem is that this movie has been a lame duck in the movie pond, trying to paddle for shore ever since the Cannes Film Festival. Kelly rushed the film into competition there, even though it "wasn't finished," and it got savaged by the critics as a result. Most people who saw it had no idea what was happening with the story, and even The Rock had trouble following along. You know your film is in trouble when braniac former pro-wrestlers lose the plot. Kelly vowed to finish (and fix) the film, adding over 100 visual effects, trimming scenes and having J.T. re-record his voiceover track. Did any of this work help?

L Magazine's film critic Michael Joshua Rowin had a real soft spot for it, saying "Here it is, at last: the worst film of the year." Even New York Times film critic Mahnola Dargis, who seems to be one of the few loners who enjoyed the film to some degree, calls it "messy" Granted, Donnie Darko was called messy and confusing in plenty of reviews when it came out, but it didn't have the albatross of bad Cannes reviews hanging around its neck when it was released. Southland Tales does have that albatross, and these reviews are pulling it under like an anchor. The film is playing in limited release right now, which means if you're near New York or Los Angeles you might have a chance of seeing it, but if you live elsewhere you'll have to pray for a DVD release. With reviews like this, you won't have to wait long.

Review: Southland Tales spins nonsense [AP]
More on Southland Tales [GreenCine Daily]

Can A "BaadAssss" Time Traveler Prevent The Apocalypse?

charliejane — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:44:53 PDT

A second-generation blaxploitation director plans to tackle science fiction. Mario Van Peebles is writing and directing The Uniter, an epic about a political fugitive from the future who journeys back to our time to prevent an apocalypse in 2012. The time traveler aims to stop the disaster before it happens by training a 13-year-old to use his superpowers to unite "the warring factions of the world," says Variety.

Van Peebles says the film's influences include his travels in India and the fact that the Aztec calendar ends in 2012. (Expect a rash of dumb apoca-books in 2011.) The Uniter will probably be insanely cheesy, but in a good way. After all, it's the work of a man who gave up his job as an economic analyst for Mayor Ed Koch to follow in the footsteps of his dad, who directed Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Cool apocalpytic image by brndnprkns.

Van Peebles set for sci-fi directing [Variety]

What Make Of Car Is Most Likely To Survive The Apocalypse?

charliejane — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:13:15 PDT

The only thing left of the Earth is a space shuttle and a bombed-out looking car, in the first episode of Odyssey 5, a show about humans who travel back in time to prevent the destruction of Earth. The Canadian Odyssey 5 is a great example of the way a non-US show can compensate for its low budget. The actual destruction of the Earth isn't much to look at, but the floating car is an arresting image. (Is it an SUV? A PT Cruiser? Help us, car experts!)

Odyssey 5 is one of two shows which start with the total destruction of Earth. (Click through for the other one.)

The other one, of course, is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The only lame part of the Odyssey 5 pilot is the kindly old man from outer space who rescues the last few humans, on the space shuttle. He sends their memories back in time, so their five-years-ago selves remember the destruction of Earth. It's a bit cheesy, but could be the set-up for a cool show. Too bad it only lasted one season.