The movies warned us...

[Debi]

So many of the movies from the past have given us warnings about the future!
Terminator and its Skynet are often mentioned now with the advent of AI.

What other movies seem to have given us warnings that now appear to apply to today's world?
Which ones scare you the most?​

 

[GoneWestUtah]

So many of the movies from the past have given us warnings about the future!
Terminator and its Skynet are often mentioned now with the advent of AI.

What other movies seem to have given us warnings that now appear to apply to today's world?
Which ones scare you the most?​

It doesn't really scare me, but it's been in the back of my mind since 1971...

 

[GoneWestUtah]

So many of the movies from the past have given us warnings about the future!
Terminator and its Skynet are often mentioned now with the advent of AI.

What other movies seem to have given us warnings that now appear to apply to today's world?
Which ones scare you the most?​

This one, too.

They aren't from Mars, but have solved the infection thing. And we won't last as long as the feature film, if it ever came to that.

 

[ozentity]

With all the viruses around, World War Z.

 

[Lynne]

The escaped virus on is pretty scary but the one that really scares me is anything that could knock out our electrical Grid, like a solar flare, or bomb of some sort. It would be extreme chaos everywhere.

 

[Stevedog]

One that held a specific fear for me was the book Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. It did get a movie adaptation but I didn't care for the film as it strayed pretty far from the book. I have kind of a love/hate thing for Tom Clancy books because, having been in the US Army in a Military Intelligence unit where I worked with CIA, DEA and once even Border Patrol agents I like the accuracy and attention to detail the books have for how government spy agencies really work. At the same time this makes the books much scarier as everything sounds very realistic and very plausible.

Anyway, in the book Sum of All Fears a terrorist group gets its hands on an old nuke that got lost during the 6 day war in Isreal. They reconfigure the nuke so it can be put in a van and detonated at a preset time and date. Their plan is to disguise the van as a news van and park it right at the main entrance to Denver's Mile High Stadium so it can detonate during half time of the Super Bowl. This freaked me out because at the time I was reading the book my wife and I had just moved to Colorado. In fact I was working in downtown Denver and passed Mile High Stadium during my commute everyday. At this time Denver was building a new football stadium so I got to see the old Mile High Station torn down a demolished, which was an added unnerving visual that I got to go along with the events in the book.

 

[Duke]

One that held a specific fear for me was the book Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. It did get a movie adaptation but I didn't care for the film as it strayed pretty far from the book. I have kind of a love/hate thing for Tom Clancy books because, having been in the US Army in a Military Intelligence unit where I worked with CIA, DEA and once even Border Patrol agents I like the accuracy and attention to detail the books have for how government spy agencies really work. At the same time this makes the books much scarier as everything sounds very realistic and very plausible.

Anyway, in the book Sum of All Fears a terrorist group gets its hands on an old nuke that got lost during the 6 day war in Isreal. They reconfigure the nuke so it can be put in a van and detonated at a preset time and date. Their plan is to disguise the van as a news van and park it right at the main entrance to Denver's Mile High Stadium so it can detonate during half time of the Super Bowl. This freaked me out because at the time I was reading the book my wife and I had just moved to Colorado. In fact I was working in downtown Denver and passed Mile High Stadium during my commute everyday. At this time Denver was building a new football stadium so I got to see the old Mile High Station torn down a demolished, which was an added unnerving visual that I got to go along with the events in the book.

And although it was not made into a movie, "Debt of Honor," a sequel to "Sum of All Fears," featured a 747 being flown into the US Capitol. The book was published several years before 9/11.

I agree with you about Clancy's level of and eye for detail, especially compared to his contemporaries in the techno-thriller genre. Don't know if you ever read anything by Dale Brown, but his books were full of inaccuracies and mistakes.

 

[Paintman]

With all the viruses around, World War Z.

That book was fantastic ! Written by Mel Brooks' son Max. It was written in the style of Chicago's very own Studs Turkle's " The Good War." WW2 thru the eyes of the people doing the less than glamorous work. Nurses, cooks, regular Army jobs.

 

[Stevedog]

And although it was not made into a movie, "Debt of Honor," a sequel to "Sum of All Fears," featured a 747 being flown into the US Capitol. The book was published several years before 9/11.

I agree with you about Clancy's level of and eye for detail, especially compared to his contemporaries in the techno-thriller genre. Don't know if you ever read anything by Dale Brown, but his books were full of inaccuracies and mistakes.

The other Clancy book that shook me was Rainbow Six, where the plan was to release a modified version of ebola during the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. Then everyone would go home and infect their countries. To make things worse the company that did the research to modify the virus also created two vaccines, one that protected against the virus and a fake one that infected the person. Thus this one company had total control over who would live and who would not.

I recognize the name Dale Brown so I may have read one of his books. I know that I have read some horribly inaccurate techno-thrillers. I read one where the protagonist was in a small plane, like a Cessna or Beachcraft, where he rolled down the window and fired a rocket launcher at another plane that was alongside them. When the very next paragraph did not start explaining that this idiot killed the pilot and destroyed his own plane from the back blast I simply closed the book and stopped reading. Or the one book where the protagonist is described as being nearly 7 feet tall, almost 300 pounds of solid muscle with a physique like a competitive bodybuilder, but who also perfectly blends into any crowd of people because he's so ordinary looking. Ugh.

 

[Stevedog]

That book was fantastic ! Written by Mel Brooks' son Max. It was written in the style of Chicago's very own Studs Turkle's " The Good War." WW2 thru the eyes of the people doing the less than glamorous work. Nurses, cooks, regular Army jobs.

I love that book. Max Brooks wrote another, almost companion book, called The Zombie Survival Guide. My daughter found my copy when she wa 9 or 10 and read it several times. To this day she points out when someone is dressed appropriately or not for a Zombie apocalypse.