Apocalypse Now: CNN "Doomsday Video" Released Online

You’ve probably seen disaster movies where news anchors deliver eulogies for humanity just as the televisions go black for the final time, but did you know that CNN really has a tape ready for just such an emergency?

The CNN ”Doomsday Video” has been referenced as an urban legend and pop culture reference for decades; it’s supposedly the final video CNN would broadcast during the event of a nuclear war or some other apocalyptic event. Most people believed the video was simply bluster created by Ted Turner to go along with his statement that his news station would only stop broadcasting when the world ended.

It turns out he wasn’t kidding.

Jalopnik, a blog that normally covers car culture, released the footage of the final broadcast CNN will make in the event of the apocalypse on Monday. According to Jalopnik writer and former CNN intern Michael Ballabin, the short clip, optimized for older 4:3 television screens, has been lingering in the CNN internal database for decades. A screenshot of the video’s listing in the CNN internal database provided by Ballabin bars playing the video “till end of world confirmed.”

The clip Jalopnik airs shows the United States Army Forces Command band playing “Nearer My God to Thee,” the same piece that the band on the RMS Titanic was allegedly playing as the mighty ocean liner went down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. Seems fitting, doesn’t it?

Patch has reached out to CNN in an attempt to verify that the clip posted by Jalopnik is authentic. Once we hear back from them, we will update this story.

In case you won’t be able to watch CNN during the apocalypse, we’ve provided the full video below so you don’t feel like you’re missing out when humanity goes down for the count.