The Greatest Clouds of Destruction
A Survival Guide to Ultimate and Irreversible Annihilation
By Geek Tyrant, Alan Trehern
After intense research within the library here in the Trehern ivory tower, I have finally discovered some of the most deadliest and caustic plagues that come from the sky above. However, although each of these “clouds of destruction” has the same result, they differ in their lethal methods. Hopefully, this tutorial will serve as a survival guide if the inevitable should ever happen; if your cloud of destruction isn’t on here, then good luck, brother, 'cause you’re on your own. Let’s begin!
The Cloud of Anti-Matter from Crisis on Infinite Earths
You guys know I love this story; it’s one of the greatest graphic epics, second only to the Book of the Dead. I won’t bore you with the entire storyline, but multiple worlds, a penultimate villain and a cloud of destruction are involved. A cloud of antimatter, to be exact. Worlds perish as a Time and Space destroying storm sweeps through the universe, but its terrifying effects are quickly silenced to great, white nothingness as anything that crosses its path is erased from total existence. The only way to prevent it? Travel to the beginning of time and take it out at the source before it consumes your timeline like a snake eating its own tail.[1]
The Galactus Cloud from Rise of the Silver Surfer
Well, the first movie kind of sucked, and the second movie could have shaken a nation had the story been a cosmic odyssey instead of a children’s bedtime story. In any case, FF2: TROTSS was one of the better movies (in my opinion, anyway) of the summer of 2007 and told the story of the Fantastic Four and the impeding doom of Earth by the planet eater, Galactus. Although Galactus has taken many forms, his most classic (silhouetted below) was not featured prominently in the film, much to my dismay. However, he was portrayed as Norrin Radd saw him, a massive earth consuming cloud (OF DESTRUCTION!!). Thinking about saving YOUR planet from the cosmic being known as the Gah Lak Tus??? You better draft a surfboard toting renegade herald on your team, or else your planet is gonna get “F’ed in the A”, for lack of a better phrase.
Well, the first movie kind of sucked, and the second movie could have shaken a nation had the story been a cosmic odyssey instead of a children’s bedtime story. In any case, FF2: TROTSS was one of the better movies (in my opinion, anyway) of the summer of 2007 and told the story of the Fantastic Four and the impeding doom of Earth by the planet eater, Galactus. Although Galactus has taken many forms, his most classic (silhouetted below) was not featured prominently in the film, much to my dismay. However, he was portrayed as Norrin Radd saw him, a massive earth consuming cloud (OF DESTRUCTION!!). Thinking about saving YOUR planet from the cosmic being known as the Gah Lak Tus??? You better draft a surfboard toting renegade herald on your team, or else your planet is gonna get “F’ed in the A”, for lack of a better phrase.
Alright, so many of you may not know what I am talking about here. Kingdom Hearts was a video game back in the day (ca 2002) that featured characters from the Final Fantasy Universe and the “Disney-verse” ©. Anyway, the main character, Sora (named emo-Japanime character #1), and his totally emo-Japanime friends live on a deserted paradise island, named by the creators…uh, Paradise Islands. To make a long story short, there are other worlds out there that the emo-Japanime children are isolated from, and when Riku (emo-Japanime character #2) sacrifices himself to the Heartless (not to be confused with the Nothing), he beckons the utter annihilation of his home to a definite cloud of destruction. Check out the video for the whole dark, cloudy, destructivey and emo-Japanime-y goodness. Ring any bells yet?
NOTE: Some may confuse ominous clouds of destructions with multi-destructive storms of fury. In that case, here are some storms that sha-lacked.
The Storm from The Odyssey
Homer’s classic unravels the tale of the great Greek war hero Odysseus as he attempts to travel home from the Trojan War. Little did he know that he had totally pissed off some of the gods of the old world
The Storm from The Odyssey
Homer’s classic unravels the tale of the great Greek war hero Odysseus as he attempts to travel home from the Trojan War. Little did he know that he had totally pissed off some of the gods of the old world
and that his journey home would take ten years. One of the gods angered by his arrogance was Poseidon, great ruler of the sea, and in an effort to devastate Odysseus, sent great storms upon his ship and crew.
“But King Poseidon, who was returning from the Ethiopians, caught sight of Odysseus a long way off, from the mountains of the Solymi. He could see him sailing upon the sea, and it made him very angry, so he wagged his head and muttered to himself, saying, “Heavens, so the gods have been changing their minds about Odysseus while I was away in Ethiopia, and now he is close to the land of the Phaeacians, where it is decreed that he shall escape from the calamities that have befallen him. Still, he shall have plenty of hardship yet before he has done with it.”
I don’t want to ruin it, so read it while you’re still young…[2]. And if you were wondering? Cloud of destruction.
The storm to end all storms in The Day After Tomorrow AND The Perfect Storm, from uh…The Perfect Storm
These storms wrecked the sh*t out of Dennis Quaid and George Clooney, respectively. In TDAT, multiple storms threatened to consume the earth’s population like Noah and the Genesis Deluge, but Dennis Quaid defeated those storms like man-orexic swimming pool dwellers and showed Jake Gyllenhal a thing or two about acting, in a totally non-gay way. Wait, wrong movie.
These storms wrecked the sh*t out of Dennis Quaid and George Clooney, respectively. In TDAT, multiple storms threatened to consume the earth’s population like Noah and the Genesis Deluge, but Dennis Quaid defeated those storms like man-orexic swimming pool dwellers and showed Jake Gyllenhal a thing or two about acting, in a totally non-gay way. Wait, wrong movie.
In the Perfect Storm, New England fisherman set out to make the biggest return on fishery in the history of mankind and fishing. I’m talking bigger than the Phonecians[3], but little did they know that huge clouds (OF DESTRUCTION!!) loomed over the horizon. Only goes to show that the only person you can trust is the Gorton's Fisherman. It is an intense tale of adventure, the high seas, loss and maritime massacre. Add it to your Netflix queue immediately.
Well, readers, don’t get too scared now, because I’m only predicting a 50% chance of clouds of destruction in the near future. Until then, keep your loved ones close and your copy of this GT article even closer, because we’re your only chance of continued existence in an unavoidable post-apocalyptic world.
Safe journey, cloud chasers, wherever you are…
Works Cited
[1] “Stephen Hawking in particular has addressed a connection between time and the Big Bang. He has sometimes stated that we may as well assume that time began with the Big Bang because trying to answer any question about what happened before the Big Bang is trying to answer a question that is meaningless as those events would have been part of a different time frame and different universe outside of the scope of the Big Bang theory.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time#Time_and_the_Big_Bang
[2] http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html
[3] Phoenician civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean between the period of 1550 BC to 300 BC. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia]