It is a proven paradox that during eras of real impending global disaster we have been given what is arguably the best doomsday cinema of all time, from the cold-war comedy classics to the matinee apocalypse of the atomic age. Is it any wonder then, that as economies collapse and nations riot, we are once again inundated with end-of-the-world media. The big difference this time around is in the heavy-handedness of the messages. What happened to the humor? Here are some cult classics you may have missed.

In the 1980's, the end-of-the-world just gave us the giggles. 1982's britcom Whoops! Apocalypse spawned a film of the same title, with almost as much satire and as many DC superhero references as the series itself.

The heyday of the teen comedy, the 1980's gave us what are now cult classics of the end-of-the-world genre with a healthy dose of teen angst and synth-heavy soundtracks. War Games gave us one of our first hacker-geek heroes, and Night Of The Comet reminded us that even in the midst of a zombie outbreak you could still find time to hit the mall and have some fun.

Never has the threat of the end of civilization been more entertaining. From the fifty-foot woman to giant killer bugs, the world was put in danger in increasingly more and more creative ways during the 1950's. While the films themselves were usually thinly-veiled analogies real-world threats, they still sought to make people both think and smile. Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers helped pave the way for all alien invasion films to follow, while the King of ‘B' movies Roger Corman gave us showed us what would happen on the day the world ended. (Hint: it involves a dumb blonde and a mutant monster.)

And last but not least, who could forget Slim Pickens' rodeo rocket ride into oblivion in Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb?

The experiment, dubbed the Future Immersive Training Environment (FITE) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD), will be, according to the ONR:

A critical, one-of-a-kind futuristic training program in which warfighters would train here at home in preparation for the types of small, urban and borderless conflicts that have spread throughout the middle east and other regions of the world . . . [it will be] a realistic, live-action virtual environment, that provides warfighter trainees feedback that allows for combined arms integration.

Apparently it will emphasize the "human" side of warfare, which is an odd assertion to make about a computer simulation.

Navy researcher George Solhan said the goal is to create "physically and mentally adaptable joint warriors winning and surviving in all phases of warfare." It's fascinating that as warfare becomes more virtual, via robots and UAVs, training also becomes more virtual. I'm curious about how Solhan believes a videogame-style simulation will create "physically adaptable" warriors - is this game sort of Guitar Hero-ish, or Dance Dance Revolutiony with a foot pad?

If $36 million sounds like a huge budget to you, consider that Grand Theft Auto IV cost $100 million. Final Fantasy XII cost $35 million.

SOURCE: Office of Naval Research

Image via US Dept of Defense

UPDATE: What might this virtual reality system look like? It may be similar to an immersive training program that the Navy created last year. Here's a description of that one:

Trainees use their regular tactical equipment, but weapons are modified to shoot special effects small arms marking system (SESAMS) rounds, which are similar in concept to paintball rounds. Trainees and role players use paintball masks for added protection. As the trainees move from room to room, they may encounter live role players or virtual characters. Occasionally, pyrotechnics are used to increase realism.

Read more about that via the US Navy. (Thanks to commenter Ghost in the Machine.)

Pritchard self-published Lensman in '69, hand-drawing the map (pictured above) and stenciling most of the pieces. Loosely inspired by the Lensman novels, it was the first space wargame and also the first "4x" game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate). As revolutionary as it was, Pritchard himself admits that, "the designer's creativity exceeded the components' capacity to support the design."
The new components will be double-sided and die-cut, showing the original maps and markers on one side and a new version with modern colors and graphics on the other (modern map pictured above). You can play three different versions of the game: a quick version that will last two hours or so, the 4x version that involves exploring nearby star systems, and another version with deep tactical combat that includes orbital fortifications, mines, tractors beams and other goodies.

Keep in mind that even the updated Lensman will be strictly old-school. There are no fancy miniatures with clicky bases, just lots and lots of cardboard chits and a hex map to move them on. There are forms to track your systems and your ships. It's pretty hardcore grognard stuff. There's no set date for the release yet, but they're close enough that they had a booth at Origins last month promoting it. Images by: Phil Pritchard.

The Terminator Solution
In the Terminator movies and TV series, humanity is destroyed when an A.I. named Skynet takes over our satellite weapons systems, unleashes human-killing cyborgs, and nukes the crap out of us. The Terminator solution to the spam problem will involve implanting a deadly A.I. into Spam Assassin or another antispam program. After Spam Assassin takes over the internet backbone, it can track spam to its source and send out its cyborg minions to terminate known spammers.

The Wargames Solution
A more cheerful spam solution is inspired by Wargames, a movie where a missile defense program realizes that nuclear war is a no-win scenario and refuses to shoot off its missiles. Assuming that spam bots become artificially intelligent, which they clearly will, compassionate programmers can persuade them to stop spamming by running the spam bots through millions of spam scenarios. When the spam bots realize that sending massive amounts of junk for advertisers will destroy the world, they will realize the error of their ways. Instead of putting Viagra ads into the comments on WordPress blogs, and into gmail inboxes, the spam bots will create giant metadata tagging farms and make it twenty-thousand times easier to search the Web.

The Robocop Solution
In the future, the people with the most money will receive the least amount of spam. Just as the awesome police cyborg Robocop was designed never to attack executives at the company that made him, spam bots controlled by major corporations will build exceptions into their A.I.s that spare the rich. So as long as you can afford to buy off the spam bot operators, you'll never be targeted with ads for live-extension pills. If you can only afford a Googlesoft connection, you'll have to rely on the open source Wargames Solution project to prevent spam. And unfortunately, the Wargames geeks are having a hard time deciding who gets to commit code, so they haven't really started persuading the spam bots to become good guys yet.

The Neuromancer/Wintermute Solution
At the end of William Gibson's classic cyberspace novel Neuromancer, the A.I. Neuromancer merges with the A.I. Wintermute and they wander off into literal space to find more beings like themselves. It's the oldest trick in the book: You want to stop Frankenstein, build him a Bride. You want to stop the evil A.I. spam bots, build them a special companion they can merge with. The best solution to spam in twenty years will come from the "lovable robots" lab at MIT, where they'll create a creature who can read spam as fast as a spam bot can write it. The two creatures will create a massive, beautiful mail feedback loop together forever. Luckily, their hybrid babies will move to the planet Caprica so humans never have to deal with Spawn of Spam.

The HAL Solution
HAL is the spaceship-controlling A.I. who goes insane in the movie 2001, murdering all the people on a mission to find a piece of alien technology among the Jovian moons. The HAL solution to spam isn't really a solution, but just one probable outcome. And that outcome is pure insanity. Spam bots will start randomly taking down chunks of the internet backbone, crashing servers, and fomenting anarchist revolutions among the Javascript proletariat. The only solution will be to start sending messages on paper or via telegraph.

Famous names: Matthew Broderick Dabny Coleman Michael Madsen Ally Sheedy

Crunchy goodness: 4.5

Life lesson: Tic Tac Toe is much more interesting when you play it with nukes.

Most painfully dated moment: An IMSAI tricked out with dual 8 inch floppies!

Deadliest spoiler: The only winning move is not to play, which isn't so much a "winning move," per se, because it's not a move and you don't win. But you get my point.

WarGames at The 80's Movie Rewind - Teaser, Review, Trivia & Behind the Scenes info