# How else would you like to see the world end (or nearly end) on screen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 24, 2006, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781 "2006-07-24T05:26:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/1 "2006-07-24T05:26:04Z")
We’ve seen asteroid strikes, alien invasions, AI takeovers, plague, nuclear wars, ice ages, genetic engineering run amok and even a few zombie apocalypses on the big screen. There’s been plenty of movies about economic or societal collapse for a variety or reasons including a new movie (Children of Men) about a society that’s become infertile. In a 2008 remake of When Worlds Collide, we’ll see the Earth destroyed the old fashioned way - by colliding another planet into it… So what method of ending the human race do we want to see on the big screen next? Supernova and black holes are always crowd-pleasers. Maybe a world slowly covered in a grey goo of tiny Von-Neuman machines? Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/2 "2006-07-24T05:37:52Z")
Giant, Earth-eating weasels. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/3 "2006-07-24T05:45:49Z")
chocolate volcano explosion or naked man avalanche Or both could happen at the same time…but that would be better in real life than on screen. ---
**Author:** ![Autumn\_Almanac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d26b3c/32.png) [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/4 "2006-07-24T13:07:57Z")
As much as I’ve avoided the _Left Behind_ books like the plague (heh), I’d love to see a ultra-budget end-of-the-world movie about the biblical End Times and second coming of Christ. That would be sweet. A remake/reimagining of _The Day After_ with modern special effects would be chilling. ---
**Author:** ![dmatsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3be4f8/32.png) [@dmatsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dmatsch)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/5 "2006-07-24T16:03:54Z")
I would like to see a movie about the Earth getting demolished for a new hyperspace bypass. Only two people would survive by barely escaping the destruction by hitch-hiking a ride on one of the very ships that demolished the planet. Is that irony or what? These two “Galactic Hitchhikers” would then enjoy action, adventure and possibly comedy by meeting weird, wacked out aliens. Oh wait. Star Trek already did this. Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/6 "2006-07-24T16:11:10Z")
Evolution – with a new dominant species. Of course, that would probably run too long. We’d have to wait for the directors cut. Everyone could become so addicted to VR that we just simply die off. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/7 "2006-07-24T16:31:25Z")
Superman knocks the planet to smithereens with about a dozen well-placed punches. Moments beforehand he says, “Yeah, I sure had you guys fooled, didn’t I?” ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/8 "2006-07-24T16:37:12Z")
The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief… ---
**Author:** ![Star\_Female](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@Star\_Female](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Star_Female)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/9 "2006-07-24T16:39:50Z")
> [@wm--](#): > > A remake/reimagining of _The Day After_ with modern special effects would be chilling. That movie’s too enjoyable to be spoiled by a remake. ---
**Author:** ![Autumn\_Almanac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d26b3c/32.png) [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/10 "2006-07-24T17:01:30Z")
> [@Star Female](#): > > That movie’s too enjoyable to be spoiled by a remake. I don’t know if “enjoyable” is the right word… it’s certainly effective. I don’t consider it a hallowed movie though. The dialogue and acting are pretty workmanlike and stray into cheesy soap operatics more than once. What the movie does right is show the effects of the war uncompromisingly, and truly believable visual effects would make the destruction seem that more real (like the first scenes of _War of the Worlds_). As long as a remake was still willing to kill off main characters and could avoid tacking on some kind of happy ending, I think it could really work. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/11 "2006-07-24T17:07:22Z")
Worldwide kung-fu riot. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/12 "2006-07-24T18:26:08Z")
Nearby gamma-ray burster. No warning at all, just all of a sudden, half the planet is sterilized down to the bare rock, and most of the rest finds itself with a toxic, opaque NO[sub]x[/sub] atmosphere. Similar premise to _Inconstant Moon_, but more final, as the survivors on the shadowed side figure out what happened, and that there’s no hope for them, either, past a few days. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/13 "2006-07-24T18:35:52Z")
> [@dmatsch](#): > > I would like to see a movie about the Earth getting demolished for a new hyperspace bypass. > > Only two people would survive by barely escaping the destruction by hitch-hiking a ride on one of the very ships that demolished the planet. Is that irony or what? > > These two “Galactic Hitchhikers” would then enjoy action, adventure and possibly comedy by meeting weird, wacked out aliens. > > Oh wait. Star Trek already did this. Dammit. Hey, what if these hitchhikers had some sort of book that told them everything they need to know about the galaxy- almost a guide of sorts? You could call it…um…“Everything you wanted to know about the universe, but were afraid to ask.” ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/14 "2006-07-24T19:01:42Z")
> [@Star Female](#): > > That movie’s too enjoyable to be spoiled by a remake. Who makes Steve Guttenberg A STAR…we doooooo…we doooooo… ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/15 "2006-07-24T19:21:07Z")
I’d like to see something like Greg Bear’s ‘The Forge Of God’ where hydrogen bombs are detonated (I think) between the tectonic plates and a chunk of antimatter explodes at the center of the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/16 "2006-07-24T19:26:02Z")
How about a story of a King in a far away land that decides he must have something no other king has ever had… something beyond rain or snow or hail that falls from the sky. He summons his royal magicians, who convene into a cave far way and call up this new presence in the skies. When the king awakes the next morning, he sees the newly falling substance, and is quite pleased with himself. But like something out of the Twilight Zone, it quickly turns ugly. The new stuff, which we shall call… oh, I don’t know, maybe oobleck, is sticky beyond anything stickiness known to man. It sticks birds to trees, hands to ropes and lips to bugles. Bart, the loyal servant boy, tries to save the world, and struggles against the oobleck and the king’s pride. Hmm… maybe I’ll write this as a short story or something. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/17 "2006-07-24T19:32:53Z")
> [@Skald the Rhymer](#): > > Superman knocks the planet to smithereens with about a dozen well-placed punches. Moments beforehand he says, “Yeah, I sure had you guys fooled, didn’t I?” Well, he _is_ a mean drunk. St. Crispin’s day is forgotten. Then _pfft!_ ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/18 "2006-07-24T19:38:19Z")
A [gray goo catastrophe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo). Better yet, two different colors of competing goo, fighting it out — but with humanity the guaranteed loser all the same. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/19 "2006-07-24T19:38:53Z")
Perhaps something derived from the old story _A Pail of Air_, where Earth is tossed into interstellar space by a passing star/planet and freezes solid, air and all. How about a vampire movie where we see what would _really_ happen, if vampirism existed and worked like it does in fiction ? Vampirism explodes exponentially, like the zombie moves - except vampires aren’t stupid, weak zombies. Pretty soon they take over, keep expanding - and outnumber us, their food supply. Then we see a series of ever growing, ever more destructive vampire wars over an ever shrinking supply of humans. Another : The Age of Technology ends, as magic returns - and almost everyone dies when all the trucks, farm machinery, refrigerators, medical equipment and so on stop working. The survivors are killed or enslaved by the returning mythical creatures, and the occasional human occultist whose magic now works. Yet another : An escaped bioweapon kills all non-human life, and humanity collapses into mass cannibalism, until we eat ourselves out of existance or just starve. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781/20 "2006-07-24T19:39:19Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > There’s been plenty of movies about economic or societal collapse for a variety or reasons including a new movie (Children of Men) about a society that’s become infertile. I’ve been imagining something similar, except that one out of ten (or maybe one out of a hundred) people would still be fertile, so the overpopulation problems would be solved not by killing off most of the population, but by attrition. And perhaps the infertility might be caused by a virus introduced by environmental activists, but not discovered until the process is well underway. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-else-would-you-like-to-see-the-world-end-or-nearly-end-on-screen/365781.md?page=2)