The second Lego movie includes a memorable scene in Apocalypseburg, an homage to the final scene in Planet of the Apes, complete with a Beyond Thurderdome-style settlement in Lady Liberty's tilted shadow; this is now immortalized as a $300 Lego set. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest
Last year, when 45 was elected to office, Amanda Palmer told The Guardian that "frightening political climates make for really good, real, authentic art," and that "Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again."
Well, she was right.
Blondie's new music video for its song "Doom or Destiny" is a great example. It features Debbie Harry and Joan Jett as cunt mug-carrying anchors for news of the "impending apocalypse:"
Described by Debbie Harry as, “The most openly political video Blondie has ever done,” the cut and paste punk tribute was directed by friend of the band Rob Roth and inspired by the current state of the world. “In trying times we try harder,” adds Blondie co-founder Chris Stein, “politics have become the new pop culture phenomena."...
As well as endless feminist slogans and an appearance from a familiar-looking sock puppet President, a delightful weather report for the rest of December includes soaring temperatures coinciding with an asteroid impact on the 29th, seven plagues on the 30th and thermonuclear war in time for NYE, before things spiral into total nuclear winter with lows of -27 before we steadily move into a state of post history. Oh well. Nasty women unite!
The song is from Blondie's most recent album, Pollinator.
Thanks, Simon! Read the rest
Numerous residents of a Spokane, Washington suburb reported hearing unsettling trumpet sounds overnight on December 14. Listen to a recording of the noise below. Non-believers suggest that it may have been the sound of many snowplows scraping the concrete roads or train rails creaking in the cold. One news outlet's "science expert" commented that "temperature does affect the speed of sound, which can make certain things sounds different than what we are used to hearing."
Of course, we all know the truth: It is the seven trumpets as described in the Book of Revelation. The apocalypse is nigh, and it's starting in Spokane.
"Strange sound in Spokane Valley has thousands of people talking" (KHQ via Mysterious Universe)
In this episode, we take on a doomsday future: all the active volcanoes in the world erupt. At the same time. Kaboom. This is not good for us. What happens to humans and our planet? Who survives? How?
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We talk about the basics of a volcanic eruption, what makes something an active volcano, and all the terrible things that would happen if all 1,500 active volcanoes erupted at once.
British maker and video host Colin Furze dug up his backyard and built a fantastic underground bunker under his lawn to save himself from the apocalypse or at least hide out and play videogames, rock out on his drum kit, and chow down on canned goods.
"There are more things to add such as air filtration and different power source but it's a great space," Furze says.
Behold, how the mighty have fallen. Read the rest
Watch Jim Berger's hilarious edit of televangelist Jim Bakker recalling his recent End Times dream. Read the rest
The leader of the Christian organization eBible Fellowship warns that October 7 "will be the day that God has spoken of: in which, the world will pass away. It’ll be gone forever. Annihilated.
"There’s a strong likelihood that this will happen. Which means there’s an unlikely possibility that it will not," says eBible Fellowship founder Chris McCann.
From The Guardian:
The expectation of the world ending this fall stems from an earlier prediction by Harold Camping, a Christian radio host who was based in California. In 2011 Camping used his radio station, Family Radio, to notify people that the world would end on 21 May of that year. When that turned out to be incorrect, Camping revised his prediction to October 2011. That also turned out to be incorrect, and Camping retired from public life soon after. He died in 2013, at age 93.
McCann believes that Camping’s 21 May 2011 prediction did have some truth, however. That day was declared to be “judgment day” because it was actually the day God stopped the process of selecting which churchgoers will survive Wednesday’s massacre, McCann said.
Following 21 May 2011, God turned his attention to deciding which non-churchgoers to save, according to McCann. The eBible Fellowship believes that God said he would devote 1,600 days to this task – bringing us to 7 October 2015.
"Christian group predicts the world will be 'annihilated' on Wednesday" (The Guardian) Read the rest
The ongoing war in Syria has led researchers to make the first withdrawal of seeds from a "doomsday" vault in an Arctic mountainside, to protect global food supplies. Read the rest
I love Cynthia "Thea" Rodgers' fantastic contribution to a 2012 challenge to draw comic characters in post-apocalyptics scenarios. Read the rest
Over the past decade or so, gritty, apocalyptic worlds were the favored setting of popular video games, and machinelike cyber-dystopias were a reliable aesthetic before that. But No Man's Sky, a highly-anticipated upcoming world, is infinite and hopeful. Read the rest
The self-described Crazy Russian Hacker of Youtube demonstrates in eye-watering detail a method for tool-free can opening: just grind down the can's rim on a handy block of concrete, then squeeze. The stunt is repeated several times, just to be sure you've absorbed the technique in all its complexity. It's all framed in post-apocalyptic terms, naturally: a kind of Russo-Survivalist Youtube version of Three Men in a Boat.
How to Open a Can without Can Opener - Zombie Survival Tips #20
(via Neatorama) Read the rest
Once again, Earth has not been destroyed in a fiery apocalypse. But, someday, our luck will run out. Be prepared! At The Guardian, Ian Sample and Alok Jha helpfully explain how our universe will one day (finally) be destroyed. The good news: By the time that happens, you'll already be dead. [Watch Ian Sample demonstrate different scenarios for the destruction of Earth] [Watch Alok Jha describe the ultimate fate of the universe] Read the rest
What could possibly make a 1960s-era nuclear war worse than you'd already assumed it would be? How about being packed like sardines into a fallout shelter with 13 of your soon-to-be-closest friends?
Frank Munger is a senior reporter with the Knoxville News Sentinel, where he covers Oak Ridge National Laboratory—a nearby energy research facility that previously did a lot of civil defense research. Munger turned up this, and several other photos, of mockup nuclear shelter arrangements tested out in the basement at ORNL when the facility was trying to establish best practice scenarios for surviving the Apocalypse.
They look ... less than pleasant.
That said, though, they may not have been meant as long-term arrangements. Munger linked to an Atlantic article that makes an interesting case related to these photos: If what you're talking about is one relatively small nuclear bomb (as opposed to massive, hydrogen bomb, mutually assured destruction scenarios), the idea of "Duck and Cover" isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. If you could get these 14 people out of the way of the fallout for a couple weeks, their chances of survival would rise exponentially. Fallout shelters were not meant to be "the place you and your people live for the next 50 years."
Read the restThe radiation from fallout can be severe -- the bigger the bomb, and the closer it is the the ground, the worse the fallout, generally -- but it decays according to a straightforward rule, called the 7/10 rule: Seven hours after the explosion, the radiation is 1/10 the original level; seven times that interval (49 hours, or two days) it is 1/10 of that, or 1/100 the original, and seven times that interval (roughly two weeks) it is 1/1000 the original intensity.
