Word: doomsday
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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates flies around the world to war zones and allies, to China and Russia and Suriname, on a Cold War relic called the Doomsday Plane. Forged in the 1970s by Boeing, it was designed to stay aloft even in the midst of nuclear war. It's an airborne Pentagon. The plane is so heavy that it needs refueling in midair on long flights. The Air Force crew aboard told me that on occasion, the fuel nozzle from the floating tankers has smashed through the pilots' windshield like an angry space creature...
...India: it's slated to become the biggest Hollywood grosser of all time in the country. The 3-D extravaganza, also released in 2-D and dubbed in three local languages, has already grossed $15 million across the country, and is expected to edge out Columbia Pictures' doomsday epic 2012, which has made $20 million since its opening on Dec. 18. What's more, in a rare show of heft, the film continues to draw crowds despite the release of Bollywood's 3 Idiots two weeks later. It grossed $60 million to surpass the all-time record for an Indian...
...Americans are invited to experience the end of the world as we know it on the silver screen every year. This year is no exception—the highly touted apocalyptic vision “2012,” hitting theaters soon, puts a Mesoamerican twist on the conventional doomsday script. Yet though “2012” promises little in the way of a groundbreaking storyline, it promises nevertheless to be a box office hit—for, like all disaster movies, it portrays some of our culture’s most pressing philosophical concerns through its apocalyptic...
...admitted sucker for these sorts of movies, I choose to believe that Americans devour them year after year because they continue to capture our imaginations in the same way a skilled raconteur could millennia ago. Doomsday prophecies are a part of nearly every society on the globe; whether they involve Mayan calendars, judgment days, or doctors named Strangelove, people love to speculate about how such a complex and diverse ecosystem as Earth could suddenly succumb to the powers that...
Musing over the prospect of a doomsday forces us to consider the possible parameters of such an event. Would we want to know the exact date, or live in blissful ignorance until the day of reckoning? If the former, how would we prioritize our lives accordingly? If we survive the catastrophe, what would we do with our lives? And would we want to survive it anyway...