Ruin

Jericho

Did we honestly never have a post about the great TV show Jericho so far? Pffshh Jesus, I thought that's why we're here! Jericho was running in only two seasons in 2006 and 2008 and got canceled for good after the very short second season. It's about a small town in the aftermath of a nuclear war and after several bombs detonate over large American cities, disrupting the country.

One of my favorite scenes from that season is posted above, I'm really sorry for spoiling it all if you don't know the show yet (if that's the case don't watch the video, he he). High points in the series are around the climax of season 1, when all-out-war with another community ensues.

Alas, Babylon, 1959

Alas, Babylon is a novel by American writer Pat Frank, first published in 1959. It takes place in small community in Florida which is spared the nuclear bomb attacks and subsequent fallout. This novel leaves out a few of the more grueling effects, namely radiation disease and nuclear winter, but what's more important is the depiction of life in the small town after it's separated from the rest of the country, and there the novel really shines. (Jericho and Battlestar Galactica, we caught you copying huge portions of the plot here.) This comes from the same period as A Canticle For Leibowitz and On The Beach, both of which are also excellent.

In Fort Repose, a river town in Central Florida, it was said that sending a message by Western Union was the same as broadcasting it over the combined networks. This was not entirely true. It was true that Florence Wechek, the manager, gossiped. Yet she judiciously classified the personal intelligence that flowed under her plump fingers, and maintained a prudent censorship over her tongue. The scandalous and the embarrassing she excised from her conversation. Sprightly, trivial, and harmless items she passed on to friends, thus enhancing her status and relieving the tedium of spinsterhood. If your sister was in trouble, and wired for money, the secret was safe with Florence Wechek. But if your sister bore a legitimate baby, its sex and weight would soon be known all over town.

Survival vehicles

Jalopnik readers created a nice list with the best survival vehicles. It has some good suggestions but most of these will not be easy to come by when in a pinch. Therefore, I will stick to the trusted Unimog, which is easily available (if you know where to look).

The Ten Best Post-Apocalyptic Survival Vehicles - Buffalo - Jalopnik

Anatomy of a disaster movie

Popular Mechanics takes a look at the making of a specific scene of Roland Emmerich's movie 2012. The process of creating those hybrid real-life / CGI scenes is quite interesting, and the scene in question really leaves you breathless (even though it is not in the Youtube clip above -- that one's bit cut down).

Popular Mechanics: The Anatomy of a Disaster Scene in the Movie 2012

The Road new clips

Two more short clips from The Road. C'mon, stupid movie, be out now, dammit! The Road will be in cinemas on November 25.

See What Life Was Like Before Viggo Hit "The Road" - The Road - io9

Nuclear recollections

Dr Bruce Blair recounts his past as a missile operater for nuclear ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles). It's strong, scary stuff.

It's nerve-wracking because it's easy to make a critical mistake. If we decoded a message incorrectly and dialed a single wrong digit into the computer that targeted our missiles, we might attack and destroy cities instead of rural missile silos in Russia. We could have easily killed millions of civilians by mistake.

We were usually still processing checklists when a warble tone signifying an incoming missile attack would be heard on our loudspeaker. We would hurriedly, sometimes frantically, strap into our chairs. In the real world, we would expect a violent shaking of our capsule mounted on giant shock absorbers. But in the mock run we were blasé and continued to race through the checklists.

We knew there was a system to the madness. The drill led us inexorably up the ladder of escalation, from a minor fire or incident to a full-blown order to unleash all 50 missiles. We had been conditioned, like Pavlov's dogs, to expect certain war orders to flow in a certain sequence, culminating in the launch of all 50 missiles. It was classic conditioned reflexes with absolute psychological certainty that it would all end in a hypothetical all-out nuclear war.

Nuclear Recollections - Bruce Blair's Nuclear Column - CDI

Perimetr

Wired magazine run an extremely interesting article about the Russian doomsday device called Perimeter (or Perimetr). It's a system that's designed to launch a nuclear strike back at the enemy even if there's no one left to actually start the missiles. Autonomous ground sensors would record the devastating blow of a nuclear attack and retaliate automatically.

Wired.com: Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

UPDATE: I found another, similar article in Slate from 2007 which goes even more in-depth about the system, called Perimetr here. Even more interesting are the references to Dr Bruce Blair's Nuclear Recollections, more of which I will be posting soon.

Did the Soviets really build a "doomsday machine"? - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine

Earth Abides, 1949

One of the great novels set in a post-apocalyptic world, George R. Stewart's Earth Abides, first published in 1949, has been harvested for ideas countless times. Among the most striking examples of works inspired by this book are The Stand by Stephen King and the movie Quiet Earth.

Earth Abides tells the story of Ish Williams, one of the very few survivors of a deadly epidemic that wipes out nearly the whole human population. He and the group he starts building ("The Tribe) have to decide which course to take in the new world they are facing, in which most technological and civilizational skills cannot be maintained by a humanity that turns back to bow-shooting and superstitious cult religion.

Just as he pulled himself up to the rock ledge, he heard a sudden rattle, and felt a prick of fangs. Automatically he jerked back his right hand; turning his head, he saw the snake, coiled and menacing. It was not a large one, he noted, even at the moment when he raised his hand to his lips and sucked hard at the base of the index finger, where a little drop of blood was oozing out.

“Don’t waste time by killing the snake!” he remembered.

He slid down from the ledge, still sucking. At the bottom he saw the hammer lying where he had left it. For a moment he thought he would go on and leave it there. That seemed like panic; so he stooped and picked it up with his left hand, and went on down the rough trail.

The Road clips

Five New Clips From "The Road" Are Disturbing, Religious - The Road - io9

Self-made fallout shelters

GOOD magazine shows some pictures from the book Waiting for the End of the World by photographer Richard Ross, who spent five years traveling and photographing the interiors of bomb shelters.

Picture Show: Waiting for the End of the World | GOOD

Mothership Zeta

Shit, you would think the last thing the thoroughly savaged post-apocalyptic Earth of Fallout 3 would need is an alien invasion, but here comes Mothership Zeta, the fifth and last downloadable add-on scenario for the game, due out on 3 August 2009.

Fallout: Welcome to the Official Site - Mothership Zeta

The Book of Eli trailer

First offical trailer for the post-apocalyptic movie "The Book of Eli", starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, set for release in January 2010.

The Book Of Eli's Pages Are Stuck Together With Awesome Blood, Judging From The Trailer - The Book Of Eli - io9

Dollhouse Epitaph One clip

Here's a very short clip from the 13th "lost" episode of Dollhouse titled Epitaph One. It's supposedly set in a post-apocalyptic world of 2019, and will be available on the Dollhouse DVD and Blu-Ray out later this month.

The creator of the series Joss Whedon says about the episode:

"It has a very different structure and feel from what we do on Dollhouse, so it would have been ridiculously startling to have aired it the week after the season finale as just this insane coda," he says. "And it is a little bit insane, except that we sort of follow everything through to its logical conclusion. As always, it's logical to conclude that people are terrible and will try to destroy each other."

YouTube - Dollhouse Season 1 - Epitaph One Sneak Peek !

A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1960

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, published 1960. Considered one of the classics of apocalyptic fiction, it focuses on the abbey of Saint Leibowitz 600 years after the Third World War. The novel continues to two more settings, hundreds of years in the future, but the most compelling part of the book is the first chapter. Picture the monks in the abbey conserving what little remains of pre-war knowledge, copying blueprints, memos, conversation logs and other random data labourously by hand. Essential apocalypse reading.

Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.

Never before had Brother Francis actually seen a pilgrim with girded loins, but that this one was the bona fide article he was convinced as soon as he had recovered from the spine-chilling effect of the pilgrim's advent on the far horizon, as a wiggling iota of black caught in a shimmering haze of heat. Legless, but wearing a tiny head, the iota materialized out of the mirror glaze on the broken roadway and seemed more to writhe than to walk into view, causing Brother Francis to clutch at the crucifix of his rosary and mutter an Ave or two. The iota suggested a tiny apparition spawned by the heat demons who tortured the land at high noon, when any creature capable of motion on the desert (except the buzzards and a few monastic hermits such as Francis) lay motionless in its burrow or hid beneath a rock from the ferocity of the sun. Only a thing monstrous, a thing preternatural, or a thing with addled wits would hike purposefully down the trail at noon this way.

Brother Francis added a hasty prayer to Saint Raul the Cyclopean, patron of the misborn, for protection against the Saint's unhappy proteges.

Read the first chapter of A Canticle for Leibowitz

The Road trailer finally here

Just yesterday I was writing about the first review of the upcoming The Road movie, and lo and behold here's the trailer finally available. Very much like the Esquire review lamented, the trailer plays up like an action-packed apocalyptica thriller, with fast cuts, cannibal drums and catchy phrases like "RUN" and "HIDE". io9, who put up the trailer (of which you can see a few stills above), even goes so far as calling it a "terrible Roland Emmerich thrill-ride."

I know the purpose of theatrical trailers is to get everyone interested in the film, but I have a feeling this movie isn't the fast paced on the run from cannibals, fire storm, kaboom, pow! flick the trailer makes it out to be - and it shouldn't be. The story is, at its heart, about a man and a boy and holding on to their last shreds of hope while encountering the darkest sides of humanity. It is not an end of the world catastrophe flick that puts a father and son on a fast-paced adventure.

Catch the trailer at the io9 web site, and make up your own mind. The Road will be in theatres in October.

io9 - The Road Trailer Plays Like Terrible Roland Emmerich Thrill Ride - The Road

Lucifer's Hammer, 1977

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1977, is the mother of all end-of-the world stories. A comet impacts on Earth and modern civilization is ruined by the resulting natural disasters. The novel follows a large cast of characters and details the discovery of the comet, the resulting panic and media hype, impact (so-called "Hammerfall") and the aftermath in various scenarios.

Reading this book and Cormac McCarthy's The Road alongside, you can't help noting the striking similarities in the setting of both novels: The Road could easily be a sequel to Lucifer's Hammer, taking place a few years or decades after Hammerfall, with stockpiled provisions running out and cannibals and madman all over the place. All of these story elements are referenced in Hammer, and "road" becomes a fixed term for the inhabitants in the gathered community called the Stronghold: individuals who are not useful for the society or have committed a crime are punished by "putting them on the road", i.e. throwing them out of the safe camp, so it becomes a constant worry for everybody: "The road was always there, and nobody ever forgot it."

Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets.

Chaos was a local thickening in the interstellar medium. Its mass was great enough to attract itself, to hold itself, and it thickened further. Eddies formed. Particles of dust and frozen gas drifted together, and touched, and clung. Flakes formed, and then loose snowballs of frozen gases. Over the ages a whirlpool pattern developed, a fifth of a light year across. The center contracted further. Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center of the storm, collapsed to form planets.

It formed as a cloud of snow, far from the whirlpool's axis. Ices joined the swarm, but slowly, slowly, a few molecules at a time. Methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide; and sometimes denser objects struck it and embedded themselves, so that it held rocks, and iron. Now it was a single stable mass. Other ices formed, chemicals that could only be stable in the interstellar cold.

It was four miles across when the disaster came.

Read Lucifer's Hammer

The Road movie first review

Esquire has already reviewed The Road, scheduled for opening this fall, and lauds it as "the most important movie of this year":

The terror of it is in a normal world made vacant. There is a surprising terror in a landscape of farmhouses full of possessions that have no function, a remarkable danger in a pile of old hammers, in the possibility of forgetting what things were once for.

The Road Movie Review - Inside Movie of the Road - Esquire

Prepare for the future

If you haven't yet succumbed to the extreme addiction of the game Fallout 3, you can catch a glimpse of the game art and style at the fine promo site Prepare For The Future. It's made up like a Radiation King television set as can be found in the game world, with 9 channels to choose from, each introducing some elements from the game, be it some of the mutated enemies you encounter, weapons, some locations from the virtual Washington D.C., or other game elements.

Prepare For The Future - Fallout 3

Pandemic II

Create your own lethal disease to wipe out the human race in this addicting browser game. Pandemic II lets you customize the symptoms, transmission type and environmental resistance of your agent. Then you can watch your progress as you spread to more and more countries, while the governments frantically try to close borders and airports but too late humans. Finally start kicking up the lethality with symptoms like kidney damage and encephalitis and laugh at the foolish efforts of man to develop a vaccine. Total fatality ensues!

Pandemic II - CrazyMonkeyGames.com