Below is the area soon after the breach. You can see the rivers around the area are pale blue, full of the toxic slurry. And the landscape itself around the plant are blackened by the ash.

SOURCE: NASA Earth Observatory

Located in Montana and Wyoming, Yellowstone is famous for its geysers, including "Old Faithful," which blasts steam into the air like clockwork every day. Now geologists studying the recent mini-quakes in the park say we might be in for a big blast. Such blasts tend to come about once every 600 thousand years, and we haven't seen one for roughly that amount of time.

The last big explosion in Yellowstone, according to Scientific American, was roughly 640 thousand years ago, and it covered about 240 cubic miles in hot ash, scalding rocks, and magma. But don't worry yet, says SciAm's David Biello:

Although the earthquake swarm continues, according to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, the volcano alert level remains normal. And a slew of larger earthquakes have occurred throughout the western U.S., Alaska, Puerto Rico and even Pennsylvania in the past week without incident, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

In recent years, Yellowstone's caldera has been rising thanks to uplifting magma beneath it—leading to more cracks, hot springs and even more frequent eruptions of Steamboat Geysers. Paired with the earthquakes, such magma movement might presage an eruption—either big or small. Unfortunately, scientists can't really predict when the next such eruption will happen, and the range of possibilities is large: from later today to a million years from now.

How will we know if we should start worrying? The real warning signs will be rapid changes in the shape of the ground as well as volcanic gases leaking from the ground, neither of which have been sighted—yet.

Right now, in some dark Hollywood pitch meeting, Jerry Bruckheimer is mud-wrestling with Michael Bay over the rights to a movie about this potential explodey Yellowstone disaster.

SOURCE: Scientific American

Thanks, Robert Atlas!

Photo by Nina Raingold/Getty Images.

The fly ash, collected from airborne pollution released in the making of coal, is quite dangerous for the environment, and locals report some areas are buried in up to 6 feet of ash. The biggest concern right now in terms of cleanup is keeping the slurry from reaching the Tennessee river, which feeds into the Mississippi and provides water for Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky.

SOURCES: Scholars & Rogues (which links to a lot of other great sources) and AP News.

Photo via AP Photo/Wade Payne.

How can researchers predict earthquakes? By studying coral reefs in the region. Not only are coral reefs many centuries old, but their shape is a direct response to water levels. After a series of earthquakes, usually the reef winds up higher or lower than it was before - and any part of it that's exposed to air dies.

Scientists studying Sumatran reefs say the coral there have experienced massive die-offs as well as new horizontal growth about every two hundred years. Moreover, these changes happened in fits and starts over phases of about 30 - 100 years. That suggests the area experiences what's called an "earthquake supercycle" for several decades every two centuries.

Last year's 8.4 quake off the coast of Sumatra is probably the first quake in a new supercycle, since the last big die-off in the coral reefs took place in 1833. Other quake cycles hit in 1374, 1596, 1675, and 1797.

Geophysicist Yehuda Bock co-authored a study published in Nature last week that asserted the recent Sumatra quakes were just the beginning. According to Science News:

The region’s 2007 quake released only one-quarter of the energy that had accumulated along this stretch of subduction zone since 1833. So, Bock notes, quakes in the region in the coming decades may be even larger than expected.

“This is the best area in the world to be able to predict a quake,” Bock says. “It’s clear that there’s going to be an event … We just can’t say for sure when it will happen.”

Reef Record Suggests Impending Sumatra Quakes [via Science News]

Eyewitnesses reported seeing the jet "spiraling" before it landed.

[via BBC and Reuters]

Of course, these join other disasters such as toxic spills, vehicle accidents and more.

Updated minute-by-minute in astonishing detail, the AlertMap gives you an interesting perspective on what counts as a "disaster," as well as how they spread across regions. Clicking on each disaster brings up the latest information about it.

Alert Map [via National Association of Radio-Distress Signalling and Infocommunications] Thanks, MissMercyStreet!

The couple decided to open their farm to the public for gleaning after hearing people were stealing food from local churches. But they had no idea that the response would be so huge. They had to convert dozens of acres of their farm to parking for the 11,000 cars that people drove to get free potatoes, carrots and leeks. Chris Miller told the Washington Post, " 'Overwhelmed' is putting it mildly. People obviously need food." You know the food riots aren't far away when you hear stories like this.

[via Washington Post]

Luckily, the bloggers at EastSouthWestNorth have translated her blog for people who don't read Chinese. The incident started quietly enough, with the student blogging about her friend Jiajia feeling sick and throwing up. But within hours, things started to get weird:

In class today, Yuanyuan said that Jiajia felt sick and has gone to the hospital. At noon, Jiajia came back. She was feeling good enough and she told us that the hospital is filled with Hainan University students with diarrhea. There were many people there waiting to see the doctors. The doctors were so busy that they had to arrange for queues.

Everybody laughed but then we realized that this is serious. I began to wonder whether I have cholera too. I went on the Internet and looked up all sorts of materials about cholera. Then I fell asleep. By around 5pm, I was awaken by several phone calls to say that I had to go down to the school office and get some medicine.

Then a series of events made me dizzy: the school was put under a quarantine; the three entrances were manned by police. Two persons from the School of Tourism were confirmed to have cholera. Many others people were placed under isolation. Jiajia was taken away!

What's interesting about this is how much this student and her friends are communicating about this online, especially using the popular Chinese social network QQ. She is constantly checking her friends' status on QQ, and writing down what they say. One of her friend's QQ signatures reads "TERRIFYING." Another says, "Socialism is good. Socialism cannot feed us."

It's hard not to see this event in the context of growing fears about a SARS-like pandemic breaking out in China and spreading worldwide. In fact, the student keeps talking about how she's terrified that this is going to be like SARS, even though she knows cholera can be treated with a three-day course of medicine. Apparently the authorities were treating this like a beta test for a more dangerous epidemic.

As things developed Monday, the student wrote more:

Cholera has become a part of our my life, along with taking medicine and eating instant noodles. The air smelled like disinfectant and instant noodles . . . I finally decided to go out. I left at 430pm in the hope of being able to get into one of the cafeteria. Today, another cafeteria opened up. There are now two small cafeterias plus the Muslim restaurant to keep the university going.

I read in the Intenet news that the university has been placed under quarantine. It is said that the teachers and students at Hainan University are living normally and remaining mentally stable. But nobody in the entire university campus has told me what the situation is. There are only people coming and going, spraying disinfectant and washing the walls.

Despite the visibility online of people writing about the frightening quarantine, few Western media sources have picked up the story. There was an item in the China Post yesterday, which made it sound as if the event was contained and over.

But yesterday, our student blogger wrote:

I did not think about going down to the cafeteria at all. Perhaps I was scared off by what I saw when I walked past the cafeterias after class. There were crowds out the entrance and the university workers were yelling: "Do not enter. Please do not push. It is already full inside. Even if you get in, you won't get any food." There were many students dressed in camouflage uniforms trying to maintain order. They chased waves and waves of students back out. Even the temporary stands outside the cafeteria for instant noodles were mobbed. There was a notice which said that the cafeteria which re-opened yesterday is closed today because of water stoppage. The workers watched the people from the second floor. As I walked past this cafeteria, I heard a male student yell from the second floor: "I want to eat food, I want to drink water."

When I got back to the dormitory, there were more notices downstairs. Two notices were new: water was stopped and the Internet will be down tomorrow. Everybody howled in collective agony again. I don't think cholera is scary. But the lack of supply of the various essential things in daily life is the true terror.

She's right. And in fact her ongoing coverage of this quarantine reads like a near-future science fiction story because what she's going through is just a small-scale version of what many of us would deal with if a pandemic did break out. In such circumstances it's possible that if a disease doesn't kill you, the quarantine conditions will.

Life in the Time of Cholera [via EastSouthWestNorth]

A limnic eruption is caused when a huge amount of carbon dioxide bubbles up from the bottom of a very deep body of water. Think of it as a kind of volcano, except with poison gas erupting from water, rather than hot liquid erupting from the earth. In fact, they tend to happen in volcanic regions. Limnic eruptions can happen in lakes, as the unfortunate inhabitants around Lake Nyos learned in 1986 when the water emitted so much carbon dioxide that everyone in the vicinity asphixiated. And they can happen in oceans, which are the world's deepest bodies of water as well as being highly volcanic.

While limnic eruptions are rare, Environmental Graffiti points out that there is strong evidence that they've happened on a mass scale before:

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have reached almost eight times the current level on more than one occasion in Earth’s history, leading some scientists
to speculate that limnic eruptions have occurred in our oceans before, and may happen again.

For the apocalyptically-inclined, this is one more reason to bring your oxygen tank and respirator everywhere.

Nature's Deadly Bong [via Environmental Graffiti]

Inspired by origami, these designs highlight the way a simple set of bamboo structures can be assembled in many ways and then covered over with tarp or other tent material to create a simple, effective shelter that could house families and groups of varying sizes.

I'm not sure how some of these shapes equal shelter, but they certainly help to evoke a sense of the possibilities for disaster housing.

Origami-Inspired Folding Bamboo House [via Inhabitat]

The report rates hospitals on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, correcting for differences in services offered. According to the study authors:

If all hospitals performed at the level of a 5-star rated hospital across the 17 procedures and diagnoses studied, 237,420 Medicare lives could have potentially been saved from 2005 to 2007. The region with the lowest overall risk-adjusted mortality rates was the East North Central region (IL, IN, MI, OH, and WI), while the East South Central region (AL, KY, MS, and TN) had the highest mortality rates.

What's surprising is that the best survival rates were not in the wealthiest regions of the nation, though the lowest survial rates were in some of the most impoverished areas. Generally, the high survival rates had to do with the density of 5-star rated hospital facilities.

The health gap between different regions in the U.S. is an issue that's likely to affect future generations in the country far more than the collapse of the world finance markets. Though of course money problems will only exacerbate our already-existing health problems.

But there is just something so stark about a statistic showing that where you live means you're 70 percent more likely to continue living if you go to the hospital. It brings home the reality of a crisis that's only going to get worse.

AP Photo/John Bazemore.

Death rate 70 percent lower at top-rated hospitals [via HealthGrades]

This image was taken in the "electric railway powerhouse" after a fire ripped through Baltimore and destroyed about 1500 buildings over 70 city blocks. For those of us in the U.S. watching Ike rip through Texas, there's a comfort in knowing that our cities have been surviving disasters for a long time.

What's the worst disaster your city or town has survived?

Top image via ISS; bottom image via Shorpy (thanks Joshua Glenn!).

Though it's likely that a bigger assault on New Orleans would have caused the rebuilt levee to collapse — and indeed it might still collapse under the pressure of all that water — the US Army Corps of Engineers is hasty to point out that the repairs are not complete yet. Still, there is hope that the data they gathered during yesterday's storm will make the completed levees more likely to be flood-proof. Certain areas, like the industrial area you see above, were flooded despite preparations. But while most of Louisiana's coast suffered a blackout, New Orleans remained powered up. Sloshing levee photo above the fold by Stephen Morton/Getty Images. Topped-up levee and industrial area photos by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

The most horrifying images and stories that emerged after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans were all related to the evacuees. Or rather, the lack of evacuees, since the process of getting people out of town went so badly that casualties were high and tales of evacuation centers grim (people were beaten and raped in the city's emergency facilities, for example). But when Hurricane Gustav threatened this year, evacuation began days in advance and free busses and trains carried more than 2 million people out of the New Orleans and Louisiana coast areas. Of course, about 10,000 people remained behind in New Orleans. But that was by choice. Perhaps because huge portions of the population never returned after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has become one of the most easy-to-evacuate cities in the world. Evacuee photos by Mario Tama/Getty Images

In the months leading up to Hurricane Gustav, images like this one by the graffiti artist Banksy started showing up on the levees. New Orleans has already started to weave its status as a weather disaster city into its public art. This is significant because when storm disasters become part of the city's self-image, part of its mythology even, it can serve to reinforce its citizens' ability to mobilize in a disaster. This playful image may seem frivolous when compared to the faces of those evacuees above, but it's testimony to the way New Orleans residents view themselves as storm survivors.

Now it simply remains to be seen if the city and the US government can finish those repairs in time to save the city from a truly dangerous storm. We've got evidence now that it can endure a category 2, but there is already another hurricane called Hanna brewing over the Atlantic — soon to be followed by more in this storm-heavy season. Will New Orleans go the way of Mayan cities, which some believe were abandoned due to years of terrible weather? Or will it become a hardened city of the future, prepared for disasters that could become part of everyday life as our climate slowly transforms?

Banksy art photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Reporting for the Anchorage Daily News, Beth Bragg captures the odd excitement of local volcano researchers:

"Things are very hopping," research geophysicist Peter Cervelli of the Alaska Volcano Observatory said Monday afternoon. "We've been ramped up 24/7 for nine days because of Okmok, and to have Cleveland suddenly go off keeps us busy. I'm not sure I'd describe it as fun, but it's certainly exciting."

I love any geophysicist who describes a volcanic eruption as "very hopping." Images via AP.

Dueling Volcanoes [Anchorage Daily News via Knight Science Journalism Tracker]

• Use a Mantra - Whether it's something simple to keep you focused ("I will survive.") or an inspiring reminder of what you'd miss if you give up ("I love my wife and kids."), repeating a mantra over and over can help clear your mind and get you through a chaotic situation.
• Don't Be a Victim - Once your basic needs are taken care of (like, you're not going to bleed to death in the next few minutes), divert your attention to the other people around you. See what you can do to help them. This takes your focus off of your own injuries and mental trauma. People who maintain this kind of selfless behavior have better survival rates in disasters. That's just one more reason to start leading a less self-centered life.
• Learn New Things - When you devote time and effort to learning a new task or skill, such as playing a musical instrument or speaking a foreign language, it literally changes the shape of your brain. If your life is in a rut and you follow the same routine, never trying anything new, your brain will have a hard time dealing with the sudden upheaval of a disaster. Keep your mind limber and you'll adapt more easily if the worst happens.
• Stay Emotionally Cool - Anger, frustration, or despair will cloud your thinking and lead you to make poor, possibly fatal decisions in a disaster scenario. Staying calm and cool is perhaps the most important thing you can do in the aftermath, but you can't just decide to be calm. You have to train yourself to be cool while in line at the DMV, dealing with the "customer service" of your cell phone provider, or whenever you visit your in-laws.
• One Step at a Time - What do you do when you find 100 zombies staggering through a corn field toward your isolated farm house? Lock the doors, barricade the windows, and find a gun. Seems simple, but could you clearly think through and prioritize those steps under such circumstances? This is a skill that you can use in your everyday life, whenever you feel totally overwhelmed by work and other responsibilities. Decide which one thing is the most efficient and important thing for you to do right now, then do it. Then do the next thing. Practice that and it will come naturally when the inevitable zombie apocalypse comes.

Gonzales offered many other excellent survival tips in his article, but I'm baffled at his complete failure to mention any zombie survival scenarios. Image by: underexposed949.

Deep Survival with Laurence Gonzales. [National Geographic Adventure]

The Sun is obviously the biggest reason we're alive today — without it Earth would be a lifeless, frozen lump of rock at best. The same is probably true of the oceans, Earth's distance from the Sun, and so on. But Earth's magnetic field doesn't get enough credit (apart from a few terrible movies like "The Core") as being just as important as any of those ingredients for keeping life on Earth. Without it, highly energetic particles from the Sun would fry life, shatter life-giving molecules floating in the air and water, and strip away most of our atmosphere (witness Mars, whose thin atmosphere has been ravaged by solar winds).

In just a few centuries that may be a reality. Even if the field doesn't disappear entirely, in a weakened state it could let enough radiation in to cook the vast communications networks and power girds that have sprung up around the planet in the last century. But searching through ancient copper mines in Israel and Jordan has turned up some interesting new evidence. By looking at layers of metal slag that aligned themselves based on the magnetic field that was present as they cooled thousands of years ago, scientists at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and UC San Diego have managed to reconstruct the field's strength. What they found was startling: about 2,000 years ago Earth's magnetic field peaked in strength, and it's been weakening ever since.

The field itself isn't going away any time soon — it's powered by oceans of molten metal churning at the center of the planet — but for reasons we don't quite understand, every quarter million years or so it reverses polarity. Each time it does this, there's a period of a few days to a few hundred years where the field becomes so weak that it's almost non-existent, and that's what we seem to be heading for.

What does this mean for life on Earth? Bottom line is we don't know. Some scientists have argued that mass extinctions line up with field reversals in Earth's past, while others say that when the field flips it flips too fast — maybe over the course of a week or less — to do anything more than cause a glitch in your cell phone reception.
The one thing we can take comfort in is that the decline has so far been slow and steady, so humans alive today probably won't have to worry much.

But our fuzzy understanding from the geologic past suggests that as the field weakens further, it's polarity can wander all over the place, flopping back and forth like a fish out of water. If that's true, in a couple of generations global warming from CO2 in the atmosphere might be the least of our worries.

Source: Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Explaining these satellite photos, NASA reps say:

Flood water can be difficult to see in photo-like satellite images, particularly when the water is muddy. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue.

On April 15, rivers and lakes are sharply defined against a backdrop of vegetation and fallow agricultural land.... The wetlands near the shore are a deep blue green. Cyclone Nargis came ashore across the mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast. The entire coastal plain is flooded in the May 5 image. The fallow agricultural areas appear to have been especially hard hit. For example, Yangôn (population over 4 million) is almost completely surrounded by floods. Several large cities (population 100,000-500,000) are in the affected area. Muddy runoff colors the Gulf of Martaban turquoise.

Myanmar's Delta Waterworld [DotEarth]

Wild animals are the most likely bearers of the next plague — 60% of epidemics are from "zoonoses," diseases that jump from animals to humans living in close proximity. The more that human populations spread into previously-uninhabited areas, the more likely we are to rub up against some viruses that the local fauna are resistant to, while we are not.

According to the Earth Institute at Columbia University:

In the new study, researchers from four institutions analyzed 335 emerging diseases from 1940 to 2004, then converted the results into maps correlated with human population density, population changes, latitude, rainfall and wildlife biodiversity. They showed that disease emergences have roughly quadrupled over the past 50 years. Some 60% of the diseases traveled from animals to humans (such diseases are called zoonoses) and the majority of those came from wild creatures. With data corrected for lesser surveillance done in poorer countries, "hot spots" jump out in areas spanning sub-Saharan Africa, India and China; smaller spots appear in Europe, and North and South America.

"We are crowding wildlife into ever-smaller areas, and human population is increasing," said coauthor Marc Levy, a global-change expert at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), an affiliate of Columbia University's Earth Institute. "The meeting of these two things is a recipe for something crossing over." The main sources are mammals. Some pathogens may be picked up by hunting or accidental contact; others, such as Malaysia's Nipah virus, go from wildlife to livestock, then to people. Humans have evolved no resistance to zoonoses, so the diseases can be extraordinarily lethal.

Scientists Make First Map of Emerging Disease Hotspots [Earth Institute]

Geophysics professor Gregory P. Waite published his work recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research. A summary of it explains:

Volcanoes don't always erupt suddenly and violently. The most recent eruption of Mount St Helens, for example, began in October 2004 and is still going on. It's what Waite and other volcanologists call a passive eruption, with thick and sticky lava squeezing slowly out of the ground like toothpaste from a tube . . . When a volcano such as Mount St Helens erupts, it can cause a series of shallow, repetitive earthquakes at intervals so regular that they've been called "drumbeat earthquakes."

The fluid in the crack most likely is steam, derived from the magma and combined with water vaporized by the heat of the molten rock. A continuous supply of heat and fluid keeps the crack pressurized and the "drumbeats" beating.

A Fresh Look Inside Mount St Helens [Michigan Tech]

The 1970s were obsessed with large-scale disaster movies, offering audiences everything from Earthquake to Airport were all about massive mayhem and destruction with massive casts featuring top stars of the day, and Meteor stands as the bookend to that obsession. What's really impressive about the movie (besides the cast, which also included Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda) was that it was based on an M.I.T. student science project called Project Icarus. If you've ever wondered how to stop a four-billion ton rock from hitting the Earth, then you might want to rent the movie, and pick up the book of the science project. Oh, and keep Sean Connery on your speed dial.

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.

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.

While we love Robert Carlyle, especially in Trainspotting and 28 Weeks Later, this movie unfortunately looks like an artifact from the days of Volcano, Twister, and Earthquake. Carlyle plays an engineer who worked on the Thames Barrier, which can't withstand the double whammy of high tide and a series of perfect storms that brew up enough water to bury Big Ben underwater.

Of course, Carlyle fights back against the water with some hokey science and cheesy melodrama, and the movie gets mired in relationshippy chatter as people prepare for the end, instead of buying a boat and getting the hell out of dodge. Still, we in the States are hankering to see it. Flood washed into the UK several months ago, but hasn't made it to our shores yet — except, apparently, on the "family friendly" ION network where it aired in December, got its advert ripped to YouTube, then ripped to our own Flash player. Still, you can really catch the fear on Carlyle's face through the pixelation, can't you?

Flood [Channel 4]

• 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.

Famous names: Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau, Chiwetal Ejiofor

Crunchy goodness: 5

The shit: In the far future of Serenity, prostitutes are treated like royalty. Inara, a main character in the TV show Firefly, is one such prostitute — she appears in Serenity as well, as the only high-class person on the movie's eponymous spacecraft.

Design breakthrough: Serenity successfully combined Western movie style with science fiction tech, giving us a gritty, brokedown future where outlaws roam remote worlds stealing cattle and everybody speaks a patois of Old West English mixed with Chinese.

Sight you'll never unsee: River, the government-created, psychic human weapon, gracefully smashes and kills her way through an outlaw bar after her "attack" switch has been activated by subliminal data embedded in an advertisement for something called Fruity Oaty Bars.

Can't Stop the Serenity