Unheeded Warning SCI-FI: Stories in which dire Warnings about future Disaster are ignored — leading to tragedy. In Science Fiction, vital knowledge may come through previous Experience, Science, Visions of the Future, or even Time Travel. The Hero must race against time to avert Calamity … or find a way to help others survive in the Aftermath.
Aliens — (1986)
Aliens is a SCI-FI action film written and directed by James Cameron, starring. Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, and Carrie Henn
Storyline
Ellen Ripley(Sigourney Weaver) has been in stasis for 57 years aboard a shuttlecraft after destroying her spaceship, the Nostromo, to escape an Alien creature that slaughtered her crew. Ripley is rescued and debriefed by her Weyland-Yutani Corporation employers who doubt her claim about Alien eggs in a derelict ship on the exomoon LV-426, now the site of a terraforming colony.
After contact is lost with the colony, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Colonial Marine Lieutenant Gorman ask Ripley to accompany them to investigate. Still traumatized by her Alien encounter, she agrees on condition that they exterminate the creatures. Ripley meets the Colonial Marines aboard the spaceship Sulaco but distrusts their android, Bishop, (Lance Henriksen)because the Nostromo’s android, Ash, had betrayed its crew to protect the Alien on company orders.
A dropship lands the crew on LV-426, where they find the battle-ravaged colony and two live Alien facehuggers in containment tanks. The only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt.(Carrie Henn) The team locates the other colonists beneath the fusion-powered atmosphere processing station and heads to their location, descending into corridors covered in Alien secretions. At the station’s center, the marines discover opened eggs, dead facehuggers, and cocooned colonists serving as incubators for the Alien embryos. The marines kill a newborn Alien after it bursts through a colonist’s chest, rousing several adult A(liens who ambush the marines, killing or capturing many. When the inexperienced Gorman panics, Ripley assumes command and rams their armored personnel carrier into the nest to rescue Corporal Dwayne Hicks,(Michael Biehn) and Privates Hudson and Vasquez. Hicks orders the dropship to recover the survivors, but a stowaway Alien kills the pilots, causing the dropship to crash into the station. Low on ammunition and resources, the survivors barricade themselves inside the colony facility.
Ripley discovers that Burke ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship containing the Alien eggs, intending to profit by recovering them for biological weapon research. Before she can expose Burke, Bishop reports that the dropship crash damaged the power plant’s cooling system, and it will soon overheat and explode, destroying the colony. Bishop volunteers to travel to the colony transmitter and remotely pilot the remaining dropship to the surface.
Asleep in the medical lab, Ripley and Newt awaken to find themselves trapped with the two released facehuggers. Ripley triggers a fire alarm to alert the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. She accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers to implant her and Newt with Alien embryos to smuggle them through Earth’s quarantine. The power is suddenly cut, and Aliens attack through the ceiling. In the ensuing firefight, the Aliens kill Burke, subdue Hudson, and injure Hicks; the cornered Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves to avoid capture. Newt is separated from Ripley and taken by the creatures. Ripley takes Hicks to the dropship but refuses to abandon Newt and arms herself before descending into the processing station hive alone to rescue her. During their escape, they encounter the Alien queen amid dozens of eggs. When one opens, Ripley burns the eggs and blows up the queen’s ovipositor. Pursued by the enraged queen, Ripley and Newt reach the dropship and escape with Bishop and an unconscious Hicks moments before the station explodes, consuming the colony in a nuclear blast.
Aboard the Sulaco, the queen, stowed away in the dropship’s landing gear, attacks the group. The queen rips Bishop in half and advances on Newt, but Ripley battles the creature using an exosuit cargo loader, expelling it into space through an airlock while the damaged Bishop shields Newt. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop then enter hypersleep for their return trip to Earth.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day — (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an American SCI-FI action film directed by James Cameron, Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick and Edward Furlong.
Storyline
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000—an advanced, shape-shifting prototype Terminator (Robert Patrick) made of virtually indestructible liquid metal—back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor (Edward Furlong) when he is a child. To protect John, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, (Arnold Schwarzenegger) a less advanced metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue.
In 1995 Los Angeles, John’s mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent “Judgment Day”—the prophesied events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will gain sentience and, in response to its creators’ attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. (Criminal psychologist Dr. Silberman considers her story to be delusional and recommends that she stay in maximum security for another six months.) John, living with foster parents, also considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 intervenes, coming to John’s aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-800 deduces that the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it to kill people and orders it to save Sarah from the T-1000.
The T-800 and John intercept Sarah as she is making an escape attempt, but Sarah flees in horror upon seeing that the T-800 looks identical to the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984. John and the T-800 persuade her to join them, and they escape the pursuing T-1000. Although distrustful of the T-800, Sarah uses its knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor, being developed by Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, will be crucial to Skynet’s creation. Over the course of their journey, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs while encouraging it to become more human-like.
Sarah plans to escape to Mexico with John, but a nightmare about Judgment Day convinces her to kill Dyson. She attacks Dyson in his home but realizes she cannot bring herself to kill a person and relents. John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 convinces Dyson of the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals that his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and severed arm of the 1984 Terminator. Believing that his work must be destroyed, Dyson helps Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, cornering them in a steel mill.
Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 and briefly deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah’s appearance and voice to lure out John, but Sarah intervenes and, along with the reactivated T-800, pushes it into a vat of molten steel, where it disintegrates. John also throws the 1984 Terminator’s arm and CPU into the vat. The T-800 explains that it must also be destroyed to prevent it from serving as a foundation for Skynet. Despite John’s tearful protests, the T-800 persuades him that its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah, having come to respect the T-800, shakes its hand and lowers it into the vat. The T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it is incinerated. As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing that if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.
Jurassic Park — (1993)
Jurassic Park is an American SCI-FI action film directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough. (written by Michael Crichton and David Koepp, based on Crichton’s 1990 novel).
Storyline
Industrialist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has created Jurassic Park, an animal theme park of cloned dinosaurs, on the island of Isla Nublar, near the coast of Costa Rica. After a Velociraptor kills a handler, the park’s investors, represented by lawyer Donald Gennaro, demand a safety certification. Gennaro invites chaotician Ian Malcolm,(Jeff Goldblum) and Hammond invites paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler(Laura Dern). Upon arrival, the group is shocked to see living Brachiosaurus and Parasaurolophus. At the park’s visitor center, the group learns that the cloning was accomplished by extracting dinosaur DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber. DNA from frogs, among other animals, was used to fill in gaps in the dinosaurs’ genome.
To prevent breeding, the dinosaurs were made female by direct chromosome manipulation. The group witnesses the hatching of a baby Velociraptor and visits the raptor enclosure. During lunch, the group debates the ethics of cloning and the park’s creation. Malcolm, a specialist in Chaos theory, warns of the implications of genetic engineering (his dire warnings are scoffed at by Hammond) while Grant and Sattler express uncertainty over the ability of humans and dinosaurs to coexist. Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex and Tim, join the others for a park tour while Hammond oversees them from the control room. Most of the dinosaurs fail to appear, and the group encounters a sick Triceratops. The tour is cut short as a tropical storm approaches. The park employees leave for the mainland on a boat while the visitors return to their railed-electric tour vehicles, except Sattler, who stays behind with the park’s veterinarian, Doctor Harding, to study the Triceratops.
Jurassic Park’s disgruntled lead computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, was previously bribed by Lewis Dodgson, a man working for Hammond’s corporate rival, to steal frozen dinosaur embryos. He deactivates the park’s security system to access the embryo storage room and stores them inside a container disguised as a Barbasol shaving cream can. Nedry’s sabotage cuts power to the tour vehicles, stranding them as they near the park’s Tyrannosaurus rex paddock. Most of the park’s electric fences have also been deactivated, allowing the Tyrannosaurus to escape and attack the group. After the Tyrannosaurus overturns a tour vehicle, it injures Malcolm and devours Gennaro while Grant, Lex, and Tim escape. On his way to deliver the embryos to the island’s docks, Nedry gets lost in the rain, crashes his Jeep Wrangler and is killed by a venom-spitting Dilophosaurus.
Sattler helps the game warden Robert Muldoon search for survivors; they find Malcolm just before the Tyrannosaurus returns and chases them away. Grant, Tim, and Lex take shelter in a treetop and encounter a Brachiosaurus herd. Back at the visitor center, Sattler convinces Hammond not to recreate the park, as his vision is beyond human control. Grant and the kids discover the broken shells of dinosaur eggs the following morning. Grant concludes that the dinosaurs are breeding, which is possible because of amphibian DNA—animals like West African frogs can change their sex in a single-sex environment, enabling the dinosaurs to breed. The three later encounter a Gallimimus stampede being hunted by the Tyrannosaurus.
Unable to decipher Nedry’s code to reactivate the security system, Hammond and chief engineer Ray Arnold decide to reboot the park’s systems. The group shuts down the park’s power grid and retreats to an emergency bunker while Arnold heads to a maintenance shed to complete the rebooting process. When Arnold fails to return, Sattler and Muldoon head over, discovering the shutdown has released the Velociraptors. Muldoon distracts two of them while Sattler turns the power back on before being attacked by the third and discovering Arnold’s severed arm. At the same time, Muldoon is caught off-guard and killed by a Velociraptor.
Grant, Tim, and Lex reach the visitor center. Grant heads out to look for Sattler, leaving Tim and Lex inside. The raptors appear and pursue Tim and Lex throughout a kitchen, but they escape, locking one in a freezer before joining Grant and Sattler. The group reaches the control room, and Lex restores the park’s systems, allowing them to contact Hammond, who calls for help. As they try to leave, they are cornered by the two remaining raptors, but the Tyrannosaurus appears and dispatches them while the group flees. Hammond arrives in a jeep with Malcolm and they board a helicopter to leave the island.
The Day After Tomorrow — (2004)
The Day After Tomorrow is an American SCI-FI disaster film conceived, co-written, co-produced, and directed by Roland Emmerich, (based on the 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber) starring Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, Emmy Rossum, and Ian Holm.
Storyline
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is an American paleoclimatologist, and as he and his colleagues Frank and Jason drill for ice-core samples in the Larsen Ice Shelf for the NOAA, the ice shelf splits away. At a UN conference in New Delhi, Jack discusses serious climate-related Warning Signs worldwide that could cause a new ice age. (He is ignored by US Vice President Raymond Becker, who dismisses his concerns.) Professor Terry Rapson, (Ian Holm) an oceanographer of the Hedland Centre in Scotland, befriends Jack over his views of an inevitable climate shift.
Tokyo is struck by a giant hailstorm, and astronauts from the International Space Station spot three gigantic superstorms above Canada, Europe, and Siberia. Rapson’s team in Scotland begin noticing severe temperature drops from multiple buoys from the North Atlantic realizing Jack’s theories were correct, but the climate shift is happening too fast.
Remnants of a hurricane spawn a destructive tornado outbreak over the L.A. Basin. Also, three helicopters sent to rescue the British royal family from Balmoral Castle crash in Scotland after they fly into their superstorm’s eye.
Jack’s and Rapson’s teams, along with NASA meteorologist Janet Tokada, build a forecast model based on Jack’s research discovering the impact of climate change will happen in 6–8 weeks (later discovered as being 7–10 days). Rapson notifies Jack that siphoned air from the upper troposphere flash freezes anything caught in the eyes of the cyclones with temperatures below −150 degrees Fahrenheit (−101 degrees Celsius) which explains the helicopter crash.
In New York City Jack’s son Sam, (Jake Gyllenhaal) along with his friends Brian and Laura, (Emmy Rossum) participate in an academic decathlon, where they make a new friend, J.D. The North American superstorm creates strong winds and rain that flood Manhattan in knee-deep water. All transportation halts, stranding the city population.
A massive storm surge inundates the city, forcing Sam’s group to seek shelter at the New York Public Library. While helping to rescue two French-speaking tourists in distress from a cab with a police officer, Laura badly cuts her leg. Sam is able to contact Jack and his mother Lucy, (Sela Ward) a pediatrician, through a working payphone. Jack warns Sam of the exacerbating superstorm and urges him to stay inside and warm and promises to rescue him. Rapson and his team succumb to the European storm. Lucy remains in her hospital caring for bedridden patients, where the authorities eventually rescue them.
Upon Jack’s suggestion, President Blake orders the populations of the southern states to be evacuated into Mexico, while those in the northern ones are warned by the government to seek shelter and stay warm. Jack, Jason, and Frank make their way to NYC. In Pennsylvania, Frank falls through the skylight of a mall covered in snow and sacrifices himself by cutting his rope to prevent his friends from also falling in.
In the library, most survivors set out to join the southern states’ refugees once the floodwater freezes, despite Sam’s warnings. In Mexico, Becker learns that Blake’s motorcade perished in the superstorm.
Laura develops sepsis from her injury, whereupon Sam, Brian, and J.D. scour an abandoned Russian cargo ship that drifted into the city before the water froze for penicillin and supplies. When they find them, they also encounter a pack of escaped wolves from the Central Park Zoo. The boys fend off the wolves and make it back to the library with what they need as the eye of the North American superstorm passes over and freezes Manhattan. Jack and Jason take shelter in an abandoned restaurant.
Days later, the superstorms dissipate. After finding people outside frozen to death, including those from the library who tried to escape, Jack and Jason reach the library, finding Sam’s group alive. Jack sends a radio message to US forces in Mexico.
In his first address as the new president from the US embassy in Mexico, Becker apologizes on The Weather Channel for his ignorance and sends helicopters to rescue survivors including Jack and Sam’s group in the northern states. On the International Space Station, astronauts look down in awe at Earth’s transformed surface, now with ice sheets extending across much of the Northern Hemisphere, remarking that the air never looked so clear.
Knowing — (2009)
Knowing is a SCI-FI thriller film directed and co-produced by Alex Proyas, starring Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury and Lara Robinson.
Storyline
In 1959, a Lexington, Massachusetts, elementary school celebrates its opening with a competition in which students draw what they believe will happen in the future. All the children create visual works except for Lucinda Embry. Guided by whispering voices, Lucinda fills her paper with a series of numbers. Before she can write the final numbers, the allotted time for the task expires, and the teacher collects the students’ drawings. The following day, Lucinda engraves the remaining numbers into a closet door with her fingernails. The works are stored in a time capsule and opened 50 years later when the current class distributes the drawings among the students. Lucinda’s paper is given to Caleb Koestler, (Chandler Canterbury) the 9-year-old son of widowed MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage).
John discovers that Lucinda’s numbers are dates and death tolls of major disasters over the past 50 years, including the Oklahoma City bombing, September 11 attacks, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as three more yet to happen. (John’s MIT colleague Phil ridicules his interpretation of the numbers, because each date is accompanied by numbers that do not seem to make any sense.) In the following days, John witnesses two of the three final events in person: a plane crash (where John, glancing at his car GPS, realizes the other numbers represent geographical coordinates) and a New York City Subway derailment. John becomes convinced that his family has a significant role in these incidents: his wife died in one of the earlier events, while Caleb was the one to receive Lucinda’s message. Meanwhile, Caleb begins hearing the same whispering voices as Lucinda.
John locates Lucinda’s daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) and her granddaughter Abby (Lara Robinson) to help prevent the last event. Diana becomes suspicious but eventually goes with John to Lucinda’s abandoned mobile home, where they find a copy of Matthäus Merian’s engraving of Ezekiel’s “chariot vision”, in which a great Sun is represented. They also discover that the final two digits of Lucinda’s message are not numbers but two reversed letter E’s, matching the message left by Lucinda under her bed: “Everyone Else,” implying an extinction-level event. During the search, Caleb and Abby, who were left asleep in the car, have an encounter with the beings who are the source of the whispers. Diana tells John that her mother had always told her the date she would die. He also visits Lucinda’s teacher, who despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, tells him of the scratching on the door left by Lucinda.
A copy of Matthäus Merian’s engraving of Ezekiel’s “chariot vision” (1670), which the film’s protagonists interpret as an announcement of the end of the world. The next day, Abby colors in the Sun on the engraving, which gives John a revelation. He rushes to the MIT observatory and learns that a massive solar flare with the potential to destroy all life will strike the Earth on the last date indicated by the message. As Diana and Abby prepare to take refuge in nearby caves, John goes to the school and finds the door on which Lucinda engraved the final numbers. He identifies them as coordinates of a place where he believes they may find salvation from the solar flare. The skeptical and hysterical Diana loads Caleb and Abby into her car and flees for the caves.
At a gas station, the whispering beings steal Diana’s car with Caleb and Abby inside. Diana pursues them but is killed in a crash. The beings take Caleb and Abby to Lucinda’s mobile home, where John encounters them shortly thereafter. The beings, acting as Extraterrestrial Angels, are leading children to safety on interstellar arks. John is told he cannot go with them because he never heard the whispering, so he convinces Caleb to leave with Abby. The two are taken away by the being, and the ark, along with many others, leaves the Earth.
The following morning, John decides to be with his family when the flare strikes and drives to his parents’ house, where he reconciles with his estranged father. The solar flare then strikes, vaporizing New York City, and then destroying the Earth. Meanwhile, the ark deposits Caleb and Abby on another world resembling an earthly paradise and departs, as do other arks. The two run through a field towards a large white mysterious tree resembling the Tree of Life.
Unheeded Warning SCI-FI shows how tragedy can result when Dire Warnings are ignored. Heroes overcome scoff and ridicule, taking action io avert Disaster or help survivors in the Aftermath.
They can inspire us to have an open mind in the face of Warnings that threaten to turn our lives upside down.
May we find courage to Heed them and take action … before it is too late.
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