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Nightmare Fuel / The Core

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  • The opening pan shot in Boston with various people dropping dead out of nowhere due to pacemakers being affected by EMPs, some of whom were driving cars and crashing into various spots including a gas tanker turned on it's side and spilling all over the road.
    • Just the idea that anyone with a pacemaker suddenly dying from a random, invisible electromagnetic disturbance out of nowhere.
  • The scene where Keyes and Zimsky show the cabinet members exactly how the planet is going to get cooked by cosmic rays. Yikes.
  • The bird "attack" in London, which sends the city's commuters and tourists into complete panic. Some are covering their eyes as if they've been plucked out, while everyone is desperately evading the wayward traffic.
  • The destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge, as a tiny hole in the earth's layer caused one man's arm to instantly sunburn from being outside a car window. And then the bridge collapses in a way not unlike the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
    • Worse still, those caught in the central span could not escape their cars, or they would've simply been fried instantaneously. Simply put, anyone still in the path of the effect had no means of escape.
  • The lightning-storm that destroys Rome's monuments and even statically charges TVs and coffee machines enough to cause a shock just from touching them. Seeing such monuments like the Roman Colosseum explode without crumbling is very creepy.
    • What makes it even worse was that a similar storm was about to spawn right over the city of Paris, France just as the core was fixing itself. Heavily implying that had the heroes not fixed the core in time, Paris and it's monuments would have met the same fate as Rome due to the cities' close proximity, including a melted Eiffel Tower.
  • Project DESTINI. The idea of someone weaponizing earthquakes is a mercifully unrealistic prospect. It is ultimately the interference of DESTINI that triggers the entire crisis.
  • Serge's death. Being slowly crushed inside a metal compartment thousands of miles under earth AND under unrelenting amounts of pressure.
    • Even worse is that he could've been saved had Beck flipped the override switches which is what Keyes kept telling her to do, but she didn't...
  • The whole concept of being trapped in a giant cigar tube not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of miles underground, is nightmarish all by itself. Not helped by the fact that save for one improbable location, the entirety of the core appears to be utterly inimical to human life. Step outside Virgil for even a moment, lose one bulkhead or seal, and you'll be crushed, suffocated, or incinerated within seconds. And even if you could survive... you're still thousands of miles from the surface, without food or supplies, and no rescue team coming. Lovely.
  • Iverson's death, where just when it seems they are in the clear to continue with their mission a random shard pierces his helmet, leaving a trail of blood on his face as his expression becomes an empty stare, before his lifeless body falls and is consumed by magma.

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