Destroy the Earth in the comfort of your own home

What with 2012, The Road, The Book Of Eli, Watchmen, Legion, Avatar, The Crazies, and, erm, BBC1's The Day Of The Triffids remake, late 2009 and the start of 2010 has become The Half Year Of Living Dangerously, in which viewers are hearteningly reassured that the world as we know it is about to come to an end and we're pretty much all going to die, horribly. Yeah, cheers for that. Our future may be uncertain and destined to be very short and feature lots of boiling lava blasts and homicidal angels, but one thing is certain: the end-of-the-world genre is currently booming like a nuked metropolis, and so we all might as well get in on the action. But how to do it? Simple! Just use the Guide's Random Filmpocalypse Plot Generator! Simply generate a four-figure number between 0000 and 9999, then pick out the relevant plot points from our four groups, which tell you why the world is going to end, the effect it will have, who's going to save the world and how they'll do it. (We could have used fancy drop-down menus here but - hey! - let's do it old school.) For example, choose 5523, and you'll find a computer nerd, played by Seth Rogen, saving innocent lives by sailing away from the cannibal packs that now roam on a water-free planet Earth. And, given that you can't sail away if there's no water, that already poses some fascinating narrative questions, don't you think? Have fun, film buffs, and remember, if the world does end, at least we're taking Roland Emmerich with us. WHY THE WORLD'S GOING TO END? 0 Melting ice caps causing desalination levels in sea 1 Sudden flurry of neutrinos heating up Earth's core 2 God is annoyed with us constantly messing up 3 Nuclear testing in the Pacific causing "side effects" 4 Just your basic common nuclear apocalypse 5 Earth's water supply runs out 6 All the bees on the planet suddenly die 7 It's 2012 and the Mayans say it's going to happen, and they're always right 8 We don't know, as Cormac McCarthy never actually explains it 9 Big fat frickin' meteor WHAT'S IT GOING TO DO TO US? 0 New ice age hits the northern hemisphere 1 Just loads of buildings falling down and shit 2 Gigantic mutant lizards invading metropolises 3 Invasion of homicidal angels 4 We all die of thirst and starvation 5 Near-extinction of species leading to roaming cannibal packs 6 Oceans boiling, plague of locusts … you know, biblical stuff 7 The Earth starts spinning in the opposite direction, with hilarious consequences 8 Severe disruption on several key London Underground lines 9 Screaming death in a hellish tidal wave of liquid fire WHO IS GOING TO SAVE US ALL? 0 A maverick climatologist with a troubled home life 1 A maverick geologist with no social life at all 2 A nerdy computer expert who rides a bike to work 3 A maverick zoologist with Asperger's 4 A rebellious angel who disagrees with God 5 Nobody – it is too late for us now 6 John Cusack 7 A maverick botanist, as if such a thing even exists 8 A peaceful alien race rendered in unconvincing CGI 9 Not the bloody US military, that's for sure HOW WILL THEY PULL IT OFF? 0 By just driving away from disaster in a VW camper 1 By journeying through the wilderness with a kid who asks stupid questions 2 By nuking Russia before they do us first 3 By sailing away on an enormous boat 4 By making Morgan Freeman president, on the understanding that he never dies 5 By blowing up whatever's threatening to kill us 6 By setting off a nuclear device in the Earth's core; that always seems to work 7 By handing control of Earth's affairs to the dolphins 8 By sodding off in a big spaceship to forcibly colonise a peaceful planet that looks a bit like Wales 9 By assassinating Roland Emmerich