The most melodramatic of all the kinds of armageddon scenario is the disaster apocalypse, where nature itself decides to flip the board into the air and start the game all over again. In Deep Impact, Armageddons less successful cousin of the same year, a comet actually impacts the Atlantic, causing a megatsunami that kills millions and wipes out coastal cities all across the world. Conversely, in Tank Girl, the comet causes a drought that makes fresh water a precious commodity. Meanwhile, The Day After Tomorrow sees climate change usher in a new ice age, while Waterworld presents a planet where the polar ice caps are melted and almost everything is underwater. And then theres 2012, where the entire world goes mental: neutrinos from solar flares cause the temperature at the earths core to increase, which causes the eruption of the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone Park, massive worldwide earthquakes that see entire continental shelves fall into the ocean and the resulting megatsunamis engulf the world. The disaster apocalypse is the ultimate in multiplex-friendly end of the world scenarios, with expensive-looking CG and ensemble casts already familiar to regular watchers of film and television. Its family entertainment, with very little in the way of blood or real violence, and usually with a message of hope that, despite the appalling damage to civilisation and our way of life, humanity will rebuild.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
