Al Gore will scare you with looming nuclear threats now

Not content with exposing the terrifying environmental death spiral that inevitably awaits us, Al Gore set his sights on another potential grizzly end: nuclear annihilation. IFC breaks the news on Gore's latest documentary, Countdown to Zero which premiered in New York last Wednesday. (They dub it a "scareumentary" and we suspect more clever names will follow):

Taking its structure from an excerpt from JFK's "nuclear sword of Damocles" speech to the U.N. in 1961, "Countdown to Zero" examines the various way we could arrive at nuclear annihilation via "accident, or miscalculation, or by madness." "Accident," as in the incidents when nuclear missiles were erroneously loaded onto bombers that then flew over the country, or dropped, with failed parachutes doing nothing to cushion their fall. "Miscalculation," as in the apparently many times we almost escalated to nuclear war with the U.S.S.R. over misidentified scientific research rockets or faulty computer chips. "Madness," by far the most troubling, as in terrorism.

Just like the feminine silhoutte and modern furniture, Cold War hysteria is sexy again. Though, it is troubling that uranium is as easy to come by as molasses. (Not that easy to come by, but still too readily available.)