2012 Ice Age (2011) TV movie

2012 Ice Age from 2011 has to be one of the worst disaster TV movies ever made. A massive series of volcanic eruptions in Greenland causes an ice shelf to detach and head to North America "really really fast." Those pesky glaciers seem to have a mind of their own. Canada gets hit first by this icewall turned glacier that seems to disobey the laws of physics every minute. The scientist father of the family, played by Patrick Labyorteaux, can't seem to figure things out. His stock answers to questions from his wife and son about what's happening around them are phrases like "I don't know", "maybe", "it's possible". This TV movie is so bad it's actually worth watching, from the giant triangular pieces of glacier blown up by missile strikes from jet fighters that mostly land point first to the dreadful small plane flight with the computer-generated icing of its wings, a sad tribute perhaps to the 2012 movie with John Cusack. There are also echoes in here of The Day After Tomorrow.

The Mist (1980) novella

Stephen King's 1980 novella The Mist, originally published as a short story of the same title and later a 2007 movie, contains a far bleaker ending than what was depicted in the movie, though that too was pretty horrific. The movie pretty well follows the novella up until the point at which the group of characters including the "hero", David Drayton, leave the supermarket to try and escape. The impression you are left with in the novella is that The Mist has enveloped all of Massachusetts and possibly even more of the New England states so that the end of the world may very well be at hand. The Mist is in many ways a precursor to Stephen King's epic novel Under the Dome (2009), except in the latter there are no extra-dimensional monsters. Quoting Stephen King, the Wikipedia entry on Under the Dome notes that the novel "concerns itself with how people behave when they are cut off from the society they've always belonged to." This is exactly what happens in both the novella and movie versions of The Mist.

Seattle Superstorm (2012) TV movie

A Soviet Union Cold War experiment gone bad may spell not only the end of Seattle, Washington, but also the world in the 2012 apocalyptic thriller Seattle Superstorm. First broadcast in Canada on April 7, 2012, this TV movie gives new meaning to the phrase, The family that fights the apocalypse together, stays together. Not only were the effects about as believable as those in many 1950s and 1960s mutant monster movies from Hollywood and Japan, but the plot was atrocious and the acting just passable. Not to give away too much, but how was it that the key Soviet scientist involved in the experiment just happened to turn up in Seattle the day the orbiting craft carrying a substance that triggered the near-apocalypse re-entered the atmosphere and was shot down by a U.S. Navy battleship?

Flood (2009) novel

British author Stephen Baxter's 2009 novel Flood sets the stage for a stunning apocalyptic nightmare: a global flood of Biblical proportions that covers nearly the entire world, turning it into a water world not too unlike the film Waterworld starring Kevin Costner. This novel sets the stage for a sequel titled Ark (2010).

The End of the World (1998) book

Edited by Lewis H. Lapham with Peter T. Struck, The End of the World (1998, c1997) is an anthology of essays, memoirs, and extracts from historical writings about events that were considered apocalyptic at the time of their occurrence. The first of these is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh from around 3000 BC. The book is divided into three parts:

1. The Ruins of Empires


2. The Fall of Nations


3. The Twentieth Century: The End in a Void

The last part includes reference to and information from the Rapture Index.

There is also an "End Times" table with predicted dates for the end of the world. This table does not include the supposed Mayan calendar prediction of the world's end in 2012 AD.

Bring on the Apocalypse (2008) anthology

George Monbiot's anthology Bring on the Apocalypse: Essays on Self-Destruction (2008) is a collection of his scathing commentaries on the ways we're heading into the toilet tank of mutual, self-assured destruction.

NYC: Tornado Terror (2008) TV movie

New York City gets destroyed by a tornado-like storm cell that's likened to the superstorm on Jupiter that creates the Red Spot and is also reminiscent of, ok, actually it was ripped from the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow in which tornadoes destroyed Los Angeles. That's the premise of the 2008 TV movie NYC: Tornado Terror broadcast on Canada's Showcase network on January 14, 2010.

Category 7 (2007) novel

Bill Evans, a real-life meteorologist (weatherman, not an expert in meteors), and collaborator Marianna Jameson, bring their combined expertise to the novel Cateogry 7 (2007), in which a killer hurricane destroys New York City.

Kim Stanley Robinson doomsday ecothrillers (2004-2007)

Kim Stanley Robinson published this triology of doomsday ecothrillers between 2004 and 2007:

1. Forty Signs of Rain (Bantam Books, 2004)


2. Fifty Degrees Below (Bantam Books, 2005)


3. Sixty Days and Counting (Bantam Books, 2007)

Path of Destruction (2005) TV movie

Nanobots unleashed after an accident on an oil drilling platform threaten to destroy the world by producing bad weather, bad acting and bad special effects in the 2005 TV movie Path of Destruction. Somehow the United States military is also to blame, but then they've always been an easy target.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) movie

The Day the Earth Caught Fire, a 1961 British movie, was co-written, directed and produced by Val Guest, better known for his movie The Quatermass Xperiment. The film's doomsday scenario has the Soviet Union and the United simultaneously exploding nuclear bombs with devastating consequences: the Earth's axis is not only tilted to produce bizarre weather patterns due to the shift of the equator, but the Earth's orbit is also changed and it's sent on a path towards the Sun. The movie, in glorious black and white, is notable for the red tinted sequences to simulate the heat of a truly scorched Earth. The film also has some great effects of a dried up Thames River in London, England.

Waterworld (1995) movie and novel tie-in

On a future Earth the polar icecaps have melted and civilization has vanished, with most land being submerged. Pockets of people exist on relics of floating vessels and whatever parts of land are above the waves. In the 1995 post-apocalyptic movie Waterworld and the novel tie-in by Max Allan Collins, Kevin Costner stars as a drifter in a trimaran who aids a woman and a young girl who are trying to find a mythical place called Dryland.

Fuel computer game

The computer game Fuel is set in a future North America modeled on parts of the Pacific Northwest, California and possibly Nevada. Global warming has wreaked havoc with weather systems and vast territories have been abandoned in the face of environmental disasters. Youthful drivers have taken over these areas and race a wide variety of vehicles, including muscle cars, motorcycles, ATVs (called quads in the game), monster trucks and SUVs. Somehow, there's always another cache of fuel around the next tree or bush or on the top of the many abandoned buildings.

The Drowned World (1962) novel

Science fiction authors on occasion mimic catastrophes of Biblical and scientific proportions by projecting from current conditions and imagining, as J.G. Ballard did in his 1962 novel The Drowned World, a global flood and extreme weather conditions caused by melted icecaps induced by solar radiation. The novel was expanded from a novella published in a magazine the same year.

History Lesson (1949) short story

Venusians visit an Earth in the far future that is still experiencing a devastating, global ice age. What they discover hidden atop a mountain cave that has survived the glaciers will both stun and amuse you. Arthur C. Clarke's 1949 short story "History Lesson" is a true gem.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004) movie

Remember the lesson of this movie: send your kid to the public library in times of global catastrophe and tell him to wait for you. Of course that's not what actually happened in doomsday megahits director Roland Emmerich's 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow. While some people think that global warming will lead to another ice age, the other probability is that we'll have a hothouse planet. In this movie the ice age seems to impact only the northern hemisphere, so it's not as bad as it sounds.