Posted on 11/23/2012 7:29:56 PM PST by EveningStar
If some fringe theorists have their way, Earth has just over a month to live...
While rumors fly online about the Dec. 21 date, Mayan apocalypse believers are hardly the first to imagine the world ending. Here are some of the inventive and terrifying post-apocalyptic futures ever portrayed in literature and film...
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
How about Metro 2033?
I’ll have to re-read that. It would have made a good miniseries. :)
Never heard of it. What's the background of the game?
Did they include modern day Detroit?
You are totally right on the miniseries. There must be 100 named characters in that book.
The reason it strikes me is that I did this around 2010, which would have been after the 2004 Indian Ocean event, but before the Japan 2011 tsunami.
My understanding of what a Tsunami could do was oddly skewed from my initial view point (2004) to my understanding now after the Japan 2011 event.
The footage of the Indian Ocean tsunami was very different from that of the Japan event, in my opinion.
Much of the footage of the Indian ocean wave had a lot of tourist and rural seacoast village/town viewpoints. Places where the sea looked like it belonged. When the waves came in, it was easy to see people mistaking it initially for a non-catastrophic even.
In Japan, it was different.
First, there was a lot more clear, well shot footage available in the Japan wave, from more angles. Secondly, it was often in the heart of an industrial country.
The ocean didn't belong there.
There were rows of neatly parked cars in well ordered, painted and maintained parking lots. Well made reinforced concrete seawalls. Earthquake resistant structures. Industrial buildings and all the infrastructure that goes with it. It was near the pinnacle of civilization's attempt to live safely in a dangerous natural environment. Wow, when you think about it. Typhoons. Earthquakes. Volcanoes.
Tsunamis.
And here they were. And when we watched in all these different angles of good quality, steady video, we saw a monster of immense power engulf all these bulwarks of man, It just boiled in like "The Blob" in that cheesy b-grade movie.
Except this wasn't campy. It was horrifying to watch on video. Like a living thing, the enormous mass of liquid came in over the top, around the sides, and underneath everything. It dug into the earth and undercut the very foundations of all those earthquake-resistant buildings, devouring the earth underneath until the very structures committed suicide, their own unstable bones collapsing in on themselves.
It churned and boiled, getting bigger and bigger, more swollen with debris until it reached a point of achieving a destructive viscosity, beginning to turn into a form of diluted sludge, where the sludge is debris, cars, telephone poles, and nearly every facet of an industrialized society. Even large ships. It gained more and more mass, until nothing could withstand before it. It ran out of energy when the laws of nature told it that was as far as it could go. It ran out of steam. But most eerily disturbing to me was the cars.
The cars in the parking lots. Trucks driving down a busy city street. You had to wonder...did they see? Then, when you could see their brake lights go on you knew they were aware. Were they watching in a detached astonishment, or were they frantically searching for a road, any road that would take them away?
Then, as you watch the cars float up and begin moving, you can occasionally see the shadowy figures of human beings inside. Japanese humans trapped in their cars. And when you see them wash into a wall of debris piling against a bridge, you know in your heart, they are doomed. As they get swallowed up and washed under, it isn't too hard to figure how that is going to end. Unbelievable.
Wow. You have a gift with words!
No Mad Max or Hell Comes to Frogtown?!?
Double bah!
On Dec 21st 2012, the last Twinkie on a store shelf will disappear. The entire Mayan end of world prophecy involves Twinkies. Really, that’s all.
I dunno....”A Boy And His Dog” had me reaching for the straight razor.
[but that might’ve just been because of Don Johnson]
;D
try reading the book...
I could not finish The Road. Way too depressing.
Shibumi-worthy post ping!
This list is a load of steaming horse-dung.
Especially listing the Bible as the reason for it all: “the desire for a clean slate motivates end-of-the-world imaginings.”
And where’s Waterworld? Terminator? The Matrix? I Am Legend? On The Beach? 1984?
As my daughters would say: “Buffy? Really? Seriously?”
Utter despair from beginning to end.
But that’s where the fun is. You see another person’s list and it inspires you to make your own. :)
Thanks, n&v. I think in this case, I feel that I can describe it because I understand what I saw.
I had a dream many years ago where I was in some oceanside town. I was walking along a boardwalk on the seawall. It was a wide, wooden boardwalk, and had fancy wrought iron light poles. People were dressed in suits, couples holding hands and so on.
Everyone became aware that in the harbor, you could see rocks sticking out of the water in places you had never recalled seeing them before. Everyone stopped in their tracks, looking out at the harbor and the horizon miles away.
The sailboats in the harbor were now resting on their sides at various angles, and you could see barnacles and starfish on the rocks now.
Then, a dark line appeared on the edge of the sea, far away. As far as you looked out to sea, from horizon to horizon, there was a dark shading.
It was a wave.
Everyone began to run. I ran towards a small hill and began to run up a paved trail, when I looked back and saw a wall of water washing over the board and coming right my way.
I ran for my life up that hill, and when new I couldn’t escape it, I jumped on a lamp pole and began to shinny up.
The water boiled around me.
Then I woke up...boy, I sure do remember how that raw terror felt. It was as if I knew EXACTLY what that would feel like, that fear. As I recall, I didn’t fall back asleep easily after THAT.
I think that was why the Japanese event had much more of an impact on me. I had seen a wave like that in my dreams, intruding on a world that looked a lot like the one I lived in. It was far less abstract to me.
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