How To: Stop a 500-Foot Monster (Think Missiles, Not Bombs)

How you deal with a rampaging five-hundred-foot monster in a crowded urban area? Now that Cloverfield has opened in the UK, it's time for DANGER ROOM to go to the movies and consider this utterly vital question. Link

Thanks Spencer!

Arctic 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens Doors For 100 Million Seeds

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) — The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened February 26 on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. With the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, the first deposits into the seed vault represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world. Link to rest of article.

Doomsday

Ok, ok. I know what you're thinking, but wait... give me a chance to sell it to you:

One: It's got some pretty nice vehicle action going on. I'm talking about the Sisu XA-185 and the scrap-rods, not the Bentley. How the hell did they get Bentley product placement in a Post-Apocalyptic movie, anyway? Who exactly is the demographic that they're after here? The Humungus? "Just walk away... from your idea of automobile luxury".

Two: It's freaking "Escape From Scotland"! Look closely at the map of the infected zone, it's Scotland. All of it! Although, I could understand all of the actors' English in the preview. They really missed their chance to go all Trainspotting cannibals with this. To say nothing of "The Duke of Edinburgh". A noomber 1!

Three: Malcolm Motherfucking McDowell. Can you even make a movie like this without him in it? I bet he just showed up and started acting in it. No one invited him or anything, they just let him be in it because he was already there on the set stealing craft service doughnuts and living in the prop room. This alone is worth the price of admission to me.

Bottom line, It's gonna suck. But, man is it gonna be a good kind of suck.

The Ten Best Post-Apocalyptic Survival Vehicles

There are some very bad things I would do to get myself a Unimog, but only hypothetically. Maybe I wouldn't outright kill someone for a Damnation Alley clone, but I will straight break someone's legs for a Dobbertin Surface Orbiter. Seriously... broken for real. Link

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. Link via Boing Boing via Digg

Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield: Freak Angels

The 5 Most Kick-Ass Apocalyptic Prophecies

There are a lot of apocalyptic scenarios looming out there, in various religious sects in the nooks and crannies of history. Though the scenarios are wildly different in method, you can rest assured that most will leave us all equally dead.
While we can't know which one is actually going to happen, here are the ones we're rooting for, along with the heavy metal album cover each most resembles. Link

Movies That Mangle the Statue of Liberty

If everyone in Hollywood is so patriotic, how come our nation´s symbol of freedom is always getting her ass kicked? Link

The Third Reich's Diabolical Orbiting Superweapon

Throughout the Second World War, the town of Hillersleben, Germany was home to one of the Third Reich's most crucial weapons research centers. At a sprawling facility nestled in the forested hills, a contingent of 150 engineers and physicists developed and evaluated all manner of experimental weapons, a substantial number of which were ultimately adopted by the Nazi war machine.

When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the scientists at Hillersleben were forced to abandon an assortment of death-bringing innovations at various stages of completion. Among these were a rocket-assisted artillery shell which had 50% more range than standard artillery, a 600mm mortar which fired one-ton self-propelled projectiles for up to three and a half miles, a modified Tiger tank which could fire 760-pound rockets up to six miles, and a chain-like projectile made up of small, linked rockets with a range of 100 miles. But the military masterminds' most sinister ambitions were embodied in their behemoth Sonnengewehr, or "Sun Gun" project– an orbital weapon intended to exact fiery punishment upon the enemies of the Third Reich, forever establishing their dominance over the genetically inferior Untermenschen of the Earth. Link

The NORTH Korean Godzilla!

Thanks Peter!

In the early 1970’s, Shin Sang-ok was one of South Korea’s most respected filmmakers— meaning, you understand, that he was pretty much unknown outside of East Asia except among a small group of hardcore movie nerds, but on his home turf he was a big deal. Nevertheless, he had a troubled relationship with his government (which, in its way, honestly wasn’t a whole lot less repressive than that of the North in those days), and it was looking increasingly like his career was pretty much over. That’s when Kim Jong Il, son of North Korean Great Leader Kim Il Sung, entered the picture. The younger Kim has always had a reputation as a movie nut, and has even written a book on the philosophy of communist filmmaking. In the 70’s, one of his jobs was overseeing the North’s popular culture, and it appears to have bothered him immensely that his own country didn’t have even a single director who could compare with Shin Sang-ok down south. So with Kim Il Sung’s blessing (or maybe it was the old man’s idea in the first place— I told you I’ve been having a hard time pinning down the details), Kim Jong Il had both Shin and his wife kidnapped and brought across the DMZ.

Link to the rest of the story behind the film. Via 1000 Misspent Hours