Nothing About Chickens Or Flying Cities Today
I do like to keep switching things around, just so you don't get bored. Rather than deal with folklore or polymath scientists, today we are going to look at the metaphor of the sky falling in, as it applies to the residents of Krim and Sevastopol, which are the two oblasts in that peninsula. Art!
Minas Tirith, Gondor
Why do we have a Tolkeinberg as our first illo? O I thought you'd never ask! Hilariously, the orcs infesting Sevastopol like to call their city 'Minas Tirith' as they are both delusional and free from the consequences of defamation and libel. They like to believe they are the White City, when in fact they are more akin to Minas Morgul, the fallen sister city ensconced in the Vale Of Morgul. Art!
Sevastopol Harbour on Navy Day
I bet the OSHA would absolutely blot them with fines if they carried out an inspection. Probably have a pretty small electricity bill thanks to all that bio-luminescence.
ANYWAY Conrad will now consider Sevastopol to be 'Minus Tirith' alongside Saint Petersbug and Barad-Duh.
Let us now return to the matter of the sky falling down, in the form of Ukrainian drones that are reigning chaos and destruction across the peninsula of Krim. I am indebted to 'Suchomimus' over on Youtube for providing screenshots for some of the 38 (!) targets hit overnight in Krim by the Kozaky's angry birds. Art!
From upper port these are: a control tower, a power station, a radome and an electrical sub-station.
These strikes did not come out of nowhere. For a couple of years now, Ukraine has been repeatedly and consistently targeting the orc's SAM and radar systems across Krim, leaving them increasingly blind and unable to intercept incoming Firepoint 1 and 2 drones. Allow the Tweeter 'Dronebomber' to illuminate the process - Art!
It's anyone's guess how many drones actually headed for Krim, as Ol' Droney's paths are deliberately approximate and vague, but at least 38 got through. One orc posted a tragic vlog of how the lack of fuel is causing businesses to close down and lay employees off, so now they lack an income in addition to the lack of fuel, power, trains, planes, buses and food.
Here the sky is indeed falling down, and bringing the Berlin 1945 experience home to the Ruffians. Art!
Having set up the Intro for our third session dealing with '20 Best Human Extinction Movies', let us now proceed and see if the sky, does, indeed, fall down.
"THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008)": Stopping all vehicular activity across the globe is hardly an extinction-level event, especially with the alien power doing the stopping ensuring that all airplanes land safely. Art!
That's GORT, the Giant Nano-Mallet behind Klaatu. At the film's climax it disintegrates into a voracious cloud of nanobots that eat their way out of confinement and proceed to devour all mechanical artefact in their path. That's more like it! Art?
Also any Hom. Sap. who get in the way. The swarm is initially confined to Virginia and gets de-activated before it gets to more of South Canada. So, the Septics got a good shoeing whilst everyone else got off scot-free. Works for me, and once again, NOT an extinction.
"INTERSTELLAR": Yes, I've seen it several times and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially as it tries to base itself on real-world physics and principles, rather than warp drives and anti-gravity coils. Art!
Matt about to unfreeze a 'corpsicle'.
At the beginning of the film, we are treated to an Earth in decline, where food production is very much more important than the latest jet fighter or supercomputer, but this is nowhere near extinction. Just saying. Nolan seems to be re-imagining the Okie dust-bowl of the Depression, with sarcastic robots to boot. No, really, the robots are a deadpan hoot. Art!
This is 'TARS', which Conrad fondly imagines means 'Total Autonomous Robot Sarcaster'.
ANYWAY the film ends up with our protagonists returning from their decades-long sojourn in space - courtesy of getting too close to a black hole for chronological stability - to orbital environments around Saturn that mimic Earth as it was before the impending ecocide. Art!
ONCE AGAIN 'Top Movies' is reaching, the distance in this case being over five miles. Hom. Sap. has NOT undergone extinction, quite the opposite, they are thriving. What you have here is abandonment, not apocalypse.
"I AM LEGEND (2007)": FINALLY! Yes, another definite extinction level event film, where Will Smith's character is the Last Man On Earth. Or perhaps that should be 'Last Human On Earth', as everyone on the East Coast of South Canada has been transformed into a CGI zombie. SORRY! - neo-vampire or somesuch. Art!
As a remake the title doesn't make much sense. In the original 1964 'Last Man On Earth' Doctor Morgan is up against a functioning society of vampires, that see him as the monster, the creature of legend, whom is dedicated to tracking down and destroying them. There is no such ethos or creed in the 2007 version as the 'Darkseekers' are a howling mob of bloodthirsty - literally! - naked savages. Art!
If I looked like that I'd seek the dark, too.
The statistics definitely back this one up on being an ELE, with 90% of Hom. Sap. being killed by the virus, 9% turning into Barkeepers and 1% of humans surviving thanks to immunity.
Shall we keep going? Yes let's!
"THE TERMINATOR": This one falls into two camps: the non-extinction bit set in the present-day, where Hom. Sap. blithely goes about it's business, entirely unaware that the future brings a fall from grace. Second camp is the brief vignettes we get of the post-apocalyptic future, in which Hom. Sap. is definitely an endangered species, as informed by Reese, where humanity was in danger of being utterly obliterated by Skynet. Art!
From what we know in T2, the Northern Hemisphere was nuked into mutual oblivion, with probably 95% of the population being turned into glowing charcoal flinders. However - that word again! - his does leave about 60 million survivors, although they would be scattered and initially defenceless against Skynet and it's metal minions. So yes, an ELE movie without a doubt. Art!
Don't mention drones!
"ARMAGEDDON": At which point Your Humble Scribe pretty much decided that this whole list had been created, curated and commented upon by AI, rather than Hom. Sap. DO YOU WANT SKYNET? BECAUSE THIS HOW YOU GET SKYNET! 'Armageddon' is quite possibly the poster child for 'Blockbuster' and a summer tentpole film, with an ensemble cast, orange filter, slow-mo walking and science they got off the back of a packet of Fruit Loops. Art!
It features howlers as in 'O man! Who brings a gun to space?' when both the 'Armadillo' vehicles mount a Vulcan cannon rotary-action weapon. As well as 'He must be suffering from Space Madness' which you'd expect from a 'Ren and Stimpy' cartoon.
Once again, beating you over the head with it, THERE IS NO EXTINCTION. In fact, when Bruce Willis shows up you know the asteroid on a collision course is doomed. Doomed, I tell you!
O and about that asteroid. 'It's bigger than Texas'. Except no it's not. All the large asteroids have been mapped and measured and none are bigger than Texas in any dimension, so there's that. Nor is that all. An asteroid that large would be ridiculously easy to track in space, to such an extent that it's orbit could be predicted accurately for years ahead. The idea that it could 'sneak up on' Earth is, once again, truly worthy of Ren and Stimpy. Art!
Bruce tries to recall if it's the Blue or Red button he presses
Okay, we've now covered 15 of the 20 on the TM list. Conrad now has to work up an Intro for the last 5. I bet you can hardly wait.
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