13 Hollywood versions of the end of the world

There are countless possible theories of the end of the world. Some of them look very plausible and rely on a fairly serious scientific base, others are pure fiction. Of course, Hollywood screenwriters also did not ignore such a fertile topic and thought up a lot of their own scenarios. We offer an overview of the "damn dozen" of the most popular of them.

The plot of a virus that will turn all its victims into brainless and very bloodthirsty zombies, concentrating on devouring the remaining healthy people, is exploited by Hollywood with enviable diligence. Both films and TV series have been filmed and continue to be filmed on this topic. It is simply impossible to list the names of all zombie movies. The most colorful and expensive are, perhaps, last year's film "War of the Worlds Z" and the TV series "The Walking Dead", the release of the next season of which is eagerly awaited by thousands of viewers.

Another favorite plot that appeared on the screens as soon as the cinema more or less mastered the first special effects. Over its more than a century-old history, the Hollywood film industry has produced an incredible variety of paintings on this topic, ranging from naive and frankly boring, ending with luxurious creations in which there is both an exciting video sequence and an equally interesting plot.

The climate on our planet is changing all the time. But if earlier only narrow specialists talked about glacial epochs and interglacial periods, today everyone is talking about global warming. This topic began to gain popularity in the 70s of the last century, and in recent years the climate has been changing so rapidly that it is simply impossible not to notice a clear increase in temperature. Of course, Hollywood immediately created many colorful illustrations of almost all aspects of the complex and controversial theory of global warming. So, in the film "The Day After Tomorrow" all natural phenomena are shown with such realism that their excellent compliance with serious theories was noted by oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf from The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research).

Plants, according to the versions of Hollywood screenwriters, will attack the careless inhabitants of the planet in a very diverse way. In some movies, they turn into huge bloodthirsty monsters and swallow people like a dewdrop of flies. In others, they synthesize special toxins, inhaling which people go crazy and commit suicide.

After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it became clear to everyone that atomic weapons are capable of destroying not only civilization, but also life itself without any exaggeration. And when open sources got access to real photographs and scientific descriptions of how the nuclear apocalypse would happen, Hollywood immediately responded with a volley of colorful pictures in which giant explosions are shown in great detail and in exact accordance with reality.

Today, people proudly call themselves the dominant species on the planet. But it depends on what is considered dominance. For example, the number of chickens exceeds the "number" of Homo sapiens. And at the same time, chickens only eat and reproduce, and Homo sapiens diligently serves them (before eating). There are also much more rats and mice on Earth than there are people. And there is no need to talk about ants — they have bypassed people not only in numbers, but even in total weight. Even such a brainless abomination as the ascarids also significantly outnumber humanity, and in many southern countries they quietly devour a huge share of GDP. But this is all a boring reality. In Hollywood fantasies, animals (mostly monkeys, which, unlike thriving chickens, rats and ascarids, are now in danger of complete extinction) suddenly acquire intelligence and seize power over the world.

Whether vampires exist in reality is not known for certain. But in the movie, the threat to humanity from vampires is analyzed in the most comprehensive way. In "Warriors of Light", they fantasized to the situation when vampires so drained the Earth that they themselves began to die of hunger.

Science knows even less about what is happening at the bottom of the World Ocean (and its average depth does not reach 4000 m, and only in the Mariana Trench reaches 10,994 m) than about what is happening in space. There is nothing to be done — diving under water for 5 km is more difficult than climbing 430 km above the Earth (the maximum altitude of the ISS orbit). The lack of scientific data opens up space for fantastic guesses. And now Godzilla and Kaiju come out of the mysterious depths to earth one after another. And fantastically careless and constantly violating safety regulations, scientists in their laboratories revive fossil monsters that immediately break out into the busiest streets to have a good lunch.

The probability of such a scenario coming to life is by no means zero. And the recent fall of a meteorite in Chelyabinsk clearly showed everyone that the fall of even a very small meteorite can bring terrible misfortunes. Of course, in Hollywood, the topic of asteroids and giant meteorites is one of the most burning and bringing excellent box office receipts.

Films on this topic are not as colorful as about zombies, but they also occupy a fairly extensive ecological niche. In them, screenwriters and directors pay more attention not to the entertainment of the frame (although they do not forget about it), but to various social problems and relationships between people.

As you know, any algorithm undergoes a testing stage in the process of its creation. That is, roughly speaking, they wrote it, but we don't know what it will actually do. You need to try. Then the thought suggests itself — one day you will be interrogated to very big trouble. And the filmmakers are diligently fantasizing about this topic, going over the most incredible possibilities, but necessarily agreeing that as soon as artificial intelligence is created, the first thing it decides to do is to exterminate or enslave its creators.

The ability to have children is the basis for the continuation of the human race. And what happens if mass infertility suddenly engulfs people? Of course, they will die out pretty quickly. The film "The Human Child" just analyzes the situation, how it will happen. Serious critics liked it very much, but less serious viewers did not. As a result, the picture failed miserably, failing even to return the funds spent on its creation.

Also a very plausible assumption. The processes taking place in the star closest to us, on which we are entirely dependent, are too complex to understand, and their scale is too cyclopean for us to influence them in any way. We can only hope that there will be enough comfortable warmth for our century, and fantasize about the topic, and suddenly it will go out. The film "Hell" is just dedicated to this topic. The creators took a very serious approach to the development of the plot, and engaged the English physicist Brian Cox as a consultant.