A 2001 apocalypse movie, Ever Since the World Ended, is being released on DVD tomorrow.
Says the NYT, “This mock-documentary imagines the possible outcome after a strange and virulent virus sweeps the world, killing the vast majority of the Earth’s population and reducing the city of San Francisco to only 186 people.”
The movie seems to cover some of the ground between the excellent day-after of 28 Days Later and the blurry long-term aftermath of 12 Monkeys.
A manifestation of unusually long-term thinking is taking form on the Arctic island of Svalbard: a “doomsday” seed bank meant to contain every kind of agricultural seed on the planet.
The high-security vault, almost half the length of a football field, will be carved into a mountain on a remote island above the Arctic Circle. If the looming fences, motion detectors and steel airlock doors are not disincentive enough for anyone hoping to breach the facility’s concrete interior, the polar bears roaming outside should help.
Given how little thought is given to a whole range of serious threats, this project is remarkably proactive:
The “doomsday vault,” as some have come to call it, is to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe — the go-to place after an asteroid hit or nuclear or biowarfare holocaust so that, difficult as those times would be, humankind would not have to start again from scratch.
Planners even examined what is likely to happen to Svalbard if global warming picks up, and how it would fare in the event of serious cooling due to a Gulf Stream collapse.
There is a a little-known futurist movie precedent: the odd 1971 environmentalist-in-space film Silent Running (rating on FatM — it is rated 64th of 118 movies). The Earth has been transformed — it is now 75 degrees everywhere — and the last forests and flowers exist only on a small fleet of space ships in orbit near Saturn. One man is trying to preserve them for the future, and goes to extremes to do so.
A “psychic” has predicted a tsunami-generating comet — as in Deep Impact — for Thursday, May 25th. His site is unavailable, but the warning is reproduced here and discussed at length by Bad Astronomy.
We must admire the fellow in one regard: he gave himself only a very small window before he was proved delusional, or a fraud.
The US government is finalizing plans to respond to a flu pandemic, the Washington Post reports. The plans include everything from increasing Internet capacity to handle mass telecommuting to having other nations print American currency if US mints are unable to operate.
An unfolding pandemic has not been fully depicted in film. The closest movies have come is Outbreak, but that differed from likely flu scenarios in a number of ways.
On the positive side, flu is never 100% fatal, and typically has quite low mortality rates. (Avian flu is thought to have much higher than normal mortality, but there is some uncertainty about this.) On the negative side, the disease in that movie was confined to one small town, while a flu outbreak will almost certainly be widespread.
The plans under discussion anticipate “an 18-month crisis” that in the “worst-case scenario could kill 1.9 million Americans.” Anywhere near that level of mortality would strain economic and social systems, as any contact with other people could put one at risk of death. One Homeland Security official suggests that the National Guard might be needed in areas facing “insurrection.”
LiveScience recently offered a handy list of 10 ways to destroy the planet. The author won’t tolerate merely making it unpleasant or uninhabitable; only outright destruction is good enough. (Note: in a futurist’s attic I once saw an old 1970s document of possible megaprojects people could pursue. One of the bullet points was “Destroy the moon.”)