An alarmist correspondent recently wrote to a daily paper foretelling the collapse of the earth by reason of the constant drawing out of her vital fluid in the shape of oil! This theory is a novel one, and deserves a word of explanation here. According to the writer, the interior of the earth is liquid oil, and if this is drawn out the outside crust must give way. Each country, urges the terror−stricken individual, should pass a law constituting it a criminal offence to draw a drop of liquid oil out of the earth.

In his imagination he sees cities and towns engulfed in vast chasms, and mountains shifted from their bases, while millions of human beings, old, young, rich, and poor, each with their different lamps, are marching on to destruction, sitting by their funeral pyre, the burning lamp, while smoke, fire, darkness, horror, confusion, cover the face of all things. Truly, a dire disaster, but one which we cannot take quite seriously.

Pearson's Magazine (1900)

Crack in the World

If freezing or roasting the Earth isn't enough for you, how about cracking the globe open like an egg?  None of that messy possibility of survivors wandering about underfoot here.  Just peel away the outer layers and let that good old internal pressure leave the human race literally without a place to stand. 

That's basically what happens in the 1965 feature Crack in the World.  Or rather, that's the teensy little side effect of a British project in east Africa that uses a nuclear warhead to blast a hole through the Earth's crust and release the magma to provide the world with unlimited power and a literal geyser of valuable minerals.  Mind you, the fact that it splits the planet down the middle is soon recognised as something of a drawback and the scientists who caused the problem, in a burst of selfless duty and an eye on future lawsuits, use another bomb to stop the crack from completing its nastiness.  Partial success is achieved when only a sizeable chunk of the Earth's crust is blasted into space and a man, a woman, and two squirrels survive the holocaust.

Don't ask.

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