The Red Cross is all about preparedness, and often we are discussing how to prepare for big catastrophic event. These days we can start to visualize how these types of events would unfold, thanks to modern filming techniques including computer graphics, advanced miniatures, and new developments in pyrotechnics. If a picture can tell a thousand words, a video of landmarks collapsing can tell millions of words. And- make millions of dollars in the box office.

The science and technology news blog io9 collected the most famous of these ‘money shots’ from disaster movies, and came up with a list of their top 30. Remember when the White House was destroyed in Independence Day? Or how about when Los Angeles became too ‘hot’ to handle in Volcano?

Portland tends to escape the Hollywood disaster movie treatment. In fact, S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse book series, the video game series Fallout, the film Alien Apocalypse, and the film The Postman all feature the philosophy that a worldwide post apocalyptic situation would feature Oregon as a center for rebuilding society. Then again, Portland likely has the most realistic disaster film with “A Day Called X”.

Photo: io9