It’s hot. Skin meltingly, eye-searingly, hot. While all sane
people are moaning about this and complaining that they have to do anything
except lie naked in a bath full of ice, there’s always a few smug people who
say “It’s nice to get a bit of sun! It’s no big deal! It’s not the end of the
world!” These people somehow think that being soaked in the radiation of a
gigantic ball of nuclear fire is somehow okay just because it’s there every
day. Well those sun drenched fools are wrong, and these stories prove it!
This story about a mad missionary walking a post-apocalyptic
Earth takes place in a world where the sun has expanded and the planet has been
singed to a crisp. Cities have burned and the seas have boiled away, while
survivors scrabble about on the dusty ocean floor. The only greenery to be
found here is at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
The Midnight Sun
One of the bleakest episodes of The Twilight Zone (a series
not afraid of going extremely bleak when it’s in the mood). The Earth has come
off its axis and is drifting closer and closer towards the sun, resulting in a
deadly heat for the people that live there.
There’s no adventure here, no hope, just a woman alone in a
flat while the world melts around her. You can probably relate.
Doctor Who
The world has ended twice in Doctor Who, and both times it
was for the same reason. The first time is in The Ark, in which
the TARDIS lands on a generation ship fleeing an Earth that is falling into the
sun, and the second time is in The End of
the World, when the sun finally expands and blows the Earth to smithereens.
Even before then though, the sun has had it in for the
planet. The
Ark in Space (not to be confused with The Ark), The
Sontaran Experiment and much later, The Beast Below,
all depict a future where mankind has had to flee the planet to avoid solar
flares.
In this 1961 movie it’s a nuclear blast that sends us
hurtling towards the fun, with orange infused footage going somewhere to make
the film feel as hot and sweaty as, y’know, reality is right now. It being the
sixties they decide that the solution to the problems created by all these
nuclear bombs is more nuclear bombs, but by the end of the film we never find
out if the Earth is saved or doomed (although it has to be said, very few
storytellers leave the ending ambiguous when they intended for something really
good to have happened).
A film I originally only knew about thanks to a trailer on
the Super Mario Bros. VHS that I owned, because I liked the film. There, I said
it. The plan is pretty much identical to that of Sunshine (which doesn’t make the list because the sun is going cold
in that one) – go to the sun and drop enough nukes on it that a solar flare
will point away from the planet.
I’ve not seen this yet, but one day I plan to make it part
of a Nicholas Cage apocalyptic double bill with Left Behind. A kid can predict the future. The future is a solar
flare going to roast the planet. That’s all I know about this one. I bet
Nicholas Cage is great in it though.
Chris Farnell is the
author of Dirty Work and Mark
II. He is writing this blog as a terribly exploitative way of drawing your
attention to the newly released timetable for the Apocalypse track at
this year’s Nine Worlds Geekfest, where there will be panels discussing
post-apocalyptic survival, zombies, and how useful our stories are going to be
when an actual apocalypse hits. Come along and bring plenty of sun cream.
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