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.

The Doomsday Key (2009) novel

The Doomsday Key (2009) novel by James Rollins seesaws between the past and present and a threat to mankind's existence locked within an artifact called the Doomsday Key

City of Ember (2008) movie

The tween novel City of Ember: The First Book of Ember (2003) by Jeanne DuPrau appears to have translated well into a movie adaptation starring Bill Murray as the Mayor of Ember, with the two young protagonists played by Saoirse Ronan in the role of Lina Mayfleet, a messenger, and Harry Treadaway as Doon Harrow, who works in the underground Pipeworks. Tim Robbins is the other big star and he plays Doon's father, Loris Harrow, an inventor of gadgets and contraptions.

I was particularly struck by the ominous, opening voiceover: "On the day the world ended the future of mankind was carried in a small metal box." The City of Ember reminded me throughout of the computer game Fallout 3 and the Vault where people lived and didn't know that there was a post-nuclear holocaust world outside.

Doomsday (2008) movie

The 2008 movie Doomsday is about a virus that's hit the United Kingdom and threatens the rest of humanity with extinction. Except for setting this in the future and giving it a science fiction spin, does this not sound a lot like 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), the zombie-laden horror films also set in the same location. Well, ok, they aren't really zombies in the latter two films, nor are there any in Doomsday, just very angry, sick people who have to be killed before they tear innocent, unaffected people apart.

The main plot of the movie, set in the year 2035, is about a woman soldier played by Rhona Mitra who leads a team back into Glasgow, the original vector for the spread of the virus, to try and find a cure for the virus that the politicians believe exists based on the satellite evidence of survivors first seen in 2032.

The Core (2003) movie

In the 2003 movie The Core, Earth's core has stopped spinning and within the geomagnetic force to which some forms of life have adapted, not only do mysterious catastrophes begin to occur but at least one geophysicist has figured out what's going on. Even more unbelievably, not only is there a device capable of reaching the Earth's core, an unlikely plan to restart its rotation by exploding nuclear bombs is devised. Since the United States Army had caused the Earth's core to stop rotating, it's totally up to U.S.A. technology and heroes to spin it up again save us all from doomsday.

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.

The Road (2009) movie

Based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, the 2009 movie The Road sounds like a cheerless vision of a post-apocalyptic world in which a father and son struggle to find a place they can call home.