Warner Bros. put out 29 official publicity stills from The Book Of Eli, which comes out January 15. It's the long-awaited next film from the Hughes Bros., who gave us Menace II Society and From Hell. And here's the official synopsis:

In the not-too-distant future, some 30 years after the final war, a solitary man walks across the wasteland that was once America. Empty cities, broken highways, seared earth—all around him, the marks of catastrophic destruction. There is no civilization here, no law. The roads belong to gangs that would murder a man for his shoes, an ounce of water...or for nothing at all.

But they're no match for this traveler.

A warrior not by choice but necessity, Eli (Denzel Washington) seeks only peace but, if challenged, will cut his attackers down before they realize their fatal mistake. It's not his life he guards so fiercely but his hope for the future; a hope he has carried and protected for 30 years and is determined to realize. Driven by this commitment and guided by his belief in something greater than himself, Eli does what he must to survive—and continue.

Only one other man in this ruined world understands the power Eli holds, and is determined to make it his own: Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the self-appointed despot of a makeshift town of thieves and gunmen. Meanwhile, Carnegie's adopted daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) is fascinated by Eli for another reason: the glimpse he offers of what may exist beyond her stepfather's domain.

But neither will find it easy to deter him. Nothing—and no one—can stand in his way. Eli must keep moving to fulfill his destiny and bring help to a ravaged humanity.

shi jinsong gun shape baby carriage [designboom via Geekologie]

Gun Shape Baby Cradle
Gun Shape Baby Cradle
Gun Shape Stroller
Gun Shape Stroller
Gun Shape Baby Walker
Gun Shape Baby Walker

[Josh Keyes via Nerdcore]

The awesome dance routine, of course, really comes from the very end of Radioactive Dreams, directed by the great Albert Pyun. Philip and Marlowe have been trapped in a fallout shelter for the past 15 years, with no entertainment other than classic noir detective stories — hence their names and their determination to be Bogart-esque. They have launch keys to one of the last remaining nuclear missiles, so in addition to the cannibals wanting to eat their uncontaminated bodies, they also have gangsters and "disco mutants" chasing after them. It's not much of a spoiler to say they prevail, and succeed in teaching all the mutants how to dance properly. And of course, this movie has classic 1980s post-apocalyptic mutants, with the punk hair and KISS makeup.

The more immaculate of these malls evoke the nation of ghost malls Cory Doctorow imagines in his recent book Makers, or seem ripe for zombies. But the decaying images offer possible glimpses of America's eventual ruins.

Ghosts of Shopping Past [Morning News via Boing Boing]

JC Penney, Dixie Square Mall, 2009
Belz Factory Outlet Mall, 2009
Rolling Acres Mall 1, 2008
Columbus City Center, 2009
Dixie Square Mall, 2008
Kentucky Fried Chicken, 2009

We've seen cities around the world ruined by radiation, pollution, political shifts, and depleted resources. At first glance, Zabbaleen looks like another set of modern ruins, a city crushed beneath our waste — a real-life version of Futurama's "Big Piece of Garbage."

But Zabbaleen is actually a thriving community built on the use and repurposing of waste. Residents of the city, which sits just outside of Cairo, collect trash from wealthier cities and use or reuse some 80 to 90 percent of it. Some of the waste is fed to livestock or burned for fuel; what can be repaired is fixed and sold. Much of their business consists of sorting and cleaning items and then selling them as scrap. Zabbaleen residents performed the service for the government, and now many waste management companies outsource their business to the city. But the citizens still live at poverty levels and amidst heaps and heaps of garbage.

Incredible ‘Garbage City' Rises Outside of Cairo [Inhabitat]

Huffington broke the news that there was a new Wachowski movie, and she was appearing in it, by tweeting a series of pictures showing "how I'll look in 90 years." Including the one above and this one:

And Huffington also tweeted that it's a "futuristic movie on Iraq." (Presumably looking back at the Iraq war, not just about the country in general.)

No further details were forthcoming, even on Huffington's own site. Speculation among film bloggers is that the Wachowskis are simply doing screen tests for their next project. Cinematical's Erik Davis points out, in an email to Slashfilm, that the Wachowskis did option David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas, parts of which take place in a post-apocalyptic future. In Cloud Atlas, a series of nested stories take us forward in time from the nineteenth century to the distant future. It's not clear right now if the Wachowskis are producing the film and reported director Tom Tykwer is still on board, or if the Wachowskis have taken over the directing reins.

Update: Chud insists, based on inside sources, that the Wachowskis aren't actually filming a new movie at all:

In fact, [Huffington]'s participating in tests for their next project. They're just shooting a couple of days this month, but it's all just test footage. As to what that next project is... well, I'm trying to find out. But in the meantime know that the Wachowskis are not shooting a secret movie... I should mention that these are likely camera tests. They're shooting on the RED.

Oh, and here's a picture of Huffington with Lana Wachowski and her parents:

[Slashfilm via Obsessed With Film]

Made by the great B-movie master Albert Pyun, Adrenalin: Fear The Rush was filmed in Slovakia but takes place in Boston, where a plague has the city walled off and quarantined. As Reelviews puts it:

Attention to detail is not exactly Adrenalin's forte, either. All of the police cars in Boston look like Yugos and have the word "Policia" stamped on them. Why "Policia" instead of "Police"? Who knows. Who cares. One character apparently comes back from the dead without a word of explanation. Other characters are still around, alive and kicking, after getting riddled with about a dozen bullets. If I tried to list all the holes, inconsistencies, and other obvious problems with this movie, it would take me the rest of the week to write this review.

Christopher Lambert and Natasha Henstridge are cops, investigating a slew of nasty killings. And then they discover that something is lurking in the sewers:

And here's a glimpse of Henstridge taking down the sewer mutant, in an awesome, bondage-escaping, gun-toting scene:

UK company Concrete Canvas created Concrete Cloth, a concrete-impregnated material that's flexible and becomes hard only when wet. The fabric can be molded into various shapes, letting people erect a sturdy building with little more time and effort than they would a tent. In addition to fulfilling your end-of-the world needs, the Concrete Cloth has current military and humanitarian uses as barracks, emergency shelters, and food storage.

Concrete Cloth won the Material of the Year Award from Material ConneXion, which supports innovation in materials science. But there were plenty of impressive runners up, including a superstrong biofiber made from carrots, a sponge that soaks up oil but not water, a 3D printer that can print objects made from multiple materials, and a lightweight fiber that can stop bullets.

Fishing Rods From Carrot Sticks and Canvas Made of Concrete?! Seven Amazing Materials [Fast Company via Neatorama]

In the "cosy catastrophe" genre, the end of civilization happens more gently, or is passed over altogether, and there's often some hope for the rebuilding of the world. The Guardian explains:

The phrase is attributed to the British author Brian Aldiss, who mentions it in his fascinating history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree, while talking about the author of Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham. While Triffids, with its blinded populace and sinister, stalking plants, could hardly be described as "cosy", it is an example of a largely non-violent, non-destructive doom. Wyndham also wrote The Kraken Wakes, in which an alien invasion gradually destroys civilisation by way of melting the ice caps rather than with death rays and war machines. The book chronicles the rebuilding of a massively de-populated world once the aliens have been despatched.

John Christopher is another British author who embraced the idea of a cosy catastrophe. While his novel, The Death of Grass – which so worried Sam Jordison when he was younger – does feature an ecological disaster that causes often violent social breakdown, Christopher (real name Sam Youd) also wrote The World in Winter, a very much more British version of Emmerich's movie The Day After Tomorrow, in which increasingly harsh winters drive the population of western Europe towards the suddenly more temperate African regions. And then there's JG Ballard, who employed ecological apocalypse in his debut novel The Wind from Nowhere, as well as in his more famous works The Drowned World, The Burning World, and many of his short stories.

Of course, there may be a bit of wish-fulfillment on the part of these authors, as the Guardian quotes author Jo Walton suggesting. The survivors of these catastrophes are often very middle class, and they get to wander around a suddenly depopulated world, with the working class wiped out in a guilt-free way. And then they get to rebuild the world along more civilised lines.

But leaving aside the classist undertones of the genre, who's to say that a collapse of civilization wouldn't be slow and relatively non-violent? And that we wouldn't pull together to rebuild afterwards?

Cover of Day Of The Triffids by Mark Salwowski. [Guardian]

Bender describes his collection of cleanly packaged, post-apocalyptic products as a comment on the way companies market to consumers and the eases with which buyers accept corporate messaging:

By presenting a fictitious worst-case scenario as genuine the Anarkon project questions the influence of corporate, branding and advertising power in a culture consumed by consumption. Its goal is to encourage citizens to examine their response to commercial messaging and to play a more active role in determining the limits of corporate power in American society.

Anarkon [okay beta via Lovely Package]

Call of Cthulhu RPG: Malleus Monstrorum. With the subtitle, "Lore of Things Beyond," you know this book won't steer you wrong. This is actually a revised edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG's Creature Companion. It collects all the statistics and background information on the many Lovecraftian horrors that have appeared in every published Call of Cthulhu book ever. From crazed cultists to tentacled things to elder gods your mortal mind can't even comprehend, Malleus Monstrorum has you covered.

Star Trek Roleplaying Game: Aliens. There are a lot of aliens out there, and some of them aren't even part of the Federation. In your explorations, you will likely encounter many of them. Therefore, it behooves you to know as much as possible about their abilities, habits and physiology. This sourcebook for the Star Trek RPG fills in all the details. Curious about Horta culture? Wondering how much to tip a Betazoid waiter? Most of these questions are answered here. This also makes a great companion piece to the Starfleet Operations Manual.

World of Darkness: Armory Reloaded. This is, essentially, a book of violence. Not only does it provide a list of efficient and brutal weapons to use in the battle against vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures (or on their behalf, if you swing that way), but it also amplifies the World of Darkness combat rules, making them…well, more violent. When I reviewed this book for Robot Viking a few months ago, I called out this paragraph from the intro, which perfectly exemplifies the approach taken throughout the book:

We want to emphasize here and throughout: combat is some scary business. Blood spattering in the mud, people screaming, the smell of cordite burning nostrils. Bombs blowing people to bits. A vampire's claws leaving a man with his guts hanging out and his wife standing ten feet away, crying so hard she breaks a rib.

Wow.

AD&D 2nd Edition: Van Richten's Guide to Vampires. They aren't here for you to fall in love with, they don't generally smell nice, and they sure as hell don't sparkle. In the many worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, vampires are universally evil. They're usually placed at the apex of the undead hierarchy (liches sometimes compete for the top spot), so you'll find them behind nefarious schemes as often as they're responsible for a rash of bloodless corpses. Van Richten has hunted and slain vampires of all kinds, so you'd do well to heed his advice. Don't bring garlic, bring an enchanted sword. Or, better yet, a Daylight spell.

Gamma World: Machines and Mutants. Gamma World has gone through so many editions and revisions it's hard to keep track. This is from one of the more recent incarnations of the post-nuclear apocalyptic setting. Imagine a world that's a little bit Logan's Run, a little bit Fallout, and that's pretty much Gamma World. This is perhaps the most bizarre manual on this list, as it documents all manner of weird robots and freakish mutants. No, I mean really freakish. Sentient, evil penguins. Genetically engineered fireproof bears. Exploding fish. My personal favorite is the Architect, a robot that's been continually building for decades, creating non-sensical road networks dotted with houses that will remain forever empty. Also, there are man-eating cars.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The series, created by Studio Lindfors, imagines how New York and Tokyo would be transformed by rising sea levels, and how residents might adapt to life in their watery cities. While it shares common themes with post-apocalyptic images, it's not an entirely dismal view of the flooded future.

More images from the series are available at BLDGBLOG.

Times Square at Night
W. 29th Street & Broadway
Garment District
5th Avenue & 53rd Street
5th Avenue & 35th Street

[Alexis Rockman via {feuilleton}]

Disney World I
Disney World II
Capitol Hill
Church and White
East 82nd St.
Gateway Arch
Hollywood
Hollywood at Night
Hotelscape
Manifest Destiny
Mount Rushmore
Miami
Vie en Rose
Washington Square

The Road leads you to post-apocalyptic Hell on Nov. 25. [Yahoo! Movies]

Imagine what would happen if prices rose, say, to $300 a barrel. Or higher. Not only would it become too expensive to drive unless absolutely necessary, but food would become prohibitively expensive to transport, goods from China would be too expensive to ship, and plastics, which come from oil, would be unaffordable. The cold turkey after more than a century of cheap oil would be painful indeed. For developing countries it would be fatal – many could not afford energy at those prices.

The Guardian quotes the International Energy Agency as stating the world needs to find an extra 64 million barrels of oil per day by 2030 — or around six times Saudi Arabia's production capacity — to meet demand. But nobody knows where that oil is going to come from. [Guardian]

During World War II, Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, fearing an invasion of his country, ordered the construction of roughly 750,000 bunkers throughout Albania. Though some have been destroyed, most of the bunkers remain today, abandoned relics of a disaster that never came.

A handful of the bunkers have, however, been converted for non-military use. At a beach resort in Golem, a plumber managed to turn one of the bunkers into a restaurant. Another serves as a makeshift church. The Concrete Mushrooms project seeks to reclaim the bunkers on a larger scale, turning them into a network of hostels, cafes, and shops, that could attract eco-tourists. According to the proposal, the project could not only boost Albania's economy, it could serve as a happy perversion of Hoxha's original intentions for the bunkers. After all, where the bunkers were once built to protect Albanians from invaders, they could now be used to welcome visitors from abroad.

Concrete Mushrooms [via Inhabitat]

You kind of have to love Def-Con 4, despite the silly title (Def-Con 4 is not when we launch nuclear missiles!) for moments like this one, where the grungy Paul Giamatti lookalike has very definite nipple preferences, even after the fall of civilization:

And this one. Check out the evil teen overlord's crazy corrugated metal vest!