25 best apocalypse movies

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Stanley Kubrick originally intended to make a straight adaptation of the Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, but soon found that the black absurdity of Mutually Assured Destruction would best suit a "nightmare comedy."

When a rogue general orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, the Russkies respond by revealing that they have a Doomsday weapon that'll automatically respond with a massive nuclear retailation. By the end of the film, the titular Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers) is suggesting that the political and military elite hide themselves away in disused mines – "with a ratio of ten females to each male" – preparing to repopulate the world.