During the original outbreak of the Rage Virus, Don, his wife Alice, and four other survivors hide in a barricaded cottage on the outskirts of London. They hear a terrified boy pounding at their door, and let him in. A few minutes later, they discover that the infected have followed the boy to them. The infected attack and kill most of the survivors, while Don, Alice, and the boy are chased upstairs. Don is separated from Alice and when the boy is seen hiding in the closet. Alice rushes to get the boy, while Don tells her to just leave him. Soon the infected break into the room and after Alice pleading with Don to "help us", he decides to leave, abandoning them. Don desperately sprints to a nearby motorboat and narrowly escapes.
12-year-old Mark Evans (Elijah Wood) has recently experienced the death of his mother, Janice (Ashley Crow). Having been assigned for a business trip out of the country, Mark is taken by his father, Jack (David Morse), to stay with his uncle Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly) and aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson) in Maine. Mark is re-introduced to his extended family, including his cousins Connie (Quinn Culkin) and Henry (Macaulay Culkin). Mark and Henry get along at first, and Henry seems to be nice and well-mannered. In discussing the death of Mark's mother and that of Henry's baby brother Richard, however, Henry expresses an abnormal fascination with death, making Mark uneasy.
While visiting the (fictional) Ventana nuclear power plant outside Los Angeles, television news reporter Kimberly Wells (Fonda), her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) and their soundman Hector Salas witness the plant going through an emergency shutdown (SCRAM). Shift Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) notices an unusual vibration while grabbing his cup of coffee which he had set down. He then finds that a gauge is misreading and that the coolant is dangerously low (he thought it was overflowing). The crew manages to bring the reactor under control and can be seen celebrating and expressing relief.
Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes shake Japan. Firestorms burn beautiful Japanese cities to the ground. A weather survey group discovers that the Japanese Archipelago is moving towards the Japanese Trench, which if left to continue on its collision course, would bring the whole island of Japan under the sea.
Submersible pilot Toshio Onodera wakes up pinned inside his car in Numazu after an earthquake wreaks havoc in the city and nearby Suruga Bay. As aftershock triggers an explosion, a rescue helicopter led by Reiko Abe saves him and a young girl named Misaki.
Columbia Air Lines' Flight 409 is a Boeing 747-100 on a red-eye route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. Scott Freeman, meanwhile, is a New Mexican businessman flying his private Beechcraft Baron to an urgent sales meeting in Boise, Idaho. However, an occluded front has the entire West Coast socked in, with Los Angeles reporting zero visibility. Columbia 409 and Freeman's Beechcraft are both diverted to Salt Lake City International Airport.
Gary King (Simon Pegg), a middle-aged alcoholic, tracks down his estranged schoolfriends and persuades them to complete "the Golden Mile", a pub crawl encompassing the 12 pubs of their hometown of Newton Haven. The group attempted the crawl as teenagers, but failed to reach the final pub, The World's End.
The film opens with a series of photographs of the Stella Maris College's Old Christians Rugby Team. Carlitos Páez explains that the pictures were taken by his father and points out several members of the team, including himself as a young man, Alex Morales, Felipe Restano, Nando Parrado and the team's Captain Antonio Balbi. Carlitos then reflects on the accident in a brief monologue, speaking of heroism, the gravity of the situation and of solitude and faith.
Lee Dae-ho (Kim Sang-kyung) is a single father and manager of the 120 story luxurious landmark building complex, Tower Sky in Yeouido, Seoul. He is an earnest employee liked by his colleagues and is secretly in love and secretly even wanted to marry with Seo Yoon-hee (Son Ye-jin), a restaurant manager. The owner of the complex, Mr. Jo decides to hold a "White Christmas" party for tenants and VIPs on Christmas Eve, with helicopters circling above with huge lights attached below them, sprinkling snow onto the party. Dae-ho has promised to spend the day at an amusement park with his daughter Ha-na, but had to cancel when he is needed at the party. However, the building has faulty water sprinklers due to frozen pipes, but Mr. Cha, the Tower Sky's safety section head, is more concerned for the party than any possible architectural errors within the building, despite warnings from his fellow employers about these errors. (One example of their warnings is when cook Young-cheol (Jeon Bae-soo) accidentally leaves a stove on for too long and causes a minor fire.) Young-cheo is in love with a receptionist within the building named Min-jung, and even sneaks out of the kitchen while on duty to make her an ice cream. Meanwhile, Lee Seon-woo (Do Ji-han) is a rookie fireman entering the Yeouido Fire Station. When he gets accepted, he learns that many of the firefighters get more breaks than actual firefighting. In a prank to fool Seon-woo, the other firefighters ring the fire alarm for the squad to assemble while he takes a shower, causing him to appear in front of his entire team naked, much to the other firefighters' and even his own pleasure as they put his helmet on him for the first time.
Yoon Young-hwa (Ha Jung-woo) was once a top news anchor, but gets demoted due to an unsavory incident. Pulled from primetime TV news and recently divorced, he is now the jaded and bitter host of a current affairs radio program. One day during his morning show, Yoon receives a peculiar phone call threatening to blow up the Mapo Bridge, a major bridge that crosses the Han River and connects Mapo District and Yeouido, Seoul's main business and investment banking district; it is also just outside Yoon's studio building. At first, Yoon takes it as a joke or prank call and tells the terrorist to proceed. He watches in shock as the caller follows through on the threat and detonates explosives that cause Mapo Bridge to collapse, killing innocent people and trapping others.
In 1961, the Soviet Union launches its first ballistic missile nuclear submarine, the K-19. The ship is led by Captain Alexei Vostrikov, aided by executive officer Mikhail Polenin. Polenin, the original captain, and the crew have served together for some time but Vostrikov's appointment is alleged to have been aided by his wife's political connections. During his first inspection, Vostrikov discovers the submarine's reactor officer to be drunk and asleep on duty. Vostrikov sacks the officer and orders Polenin to request a replacement. The new reactor officer, Vadim Radtchenko, arrives direct from nuclear school having just been fresh from the naval academy, annoying Polenin who thinks Vostrikov was too punitive on the former reactor officer who was competent despite his momentary lapse of judgment. Also, during the preparation period for the sub's launch, the ship's medical officer is killed when struck by an oncoming truck, and is subsequently replaced by the command's foremost medical officer, an army officer who has graciously offered himself in the submarine's time of need, but also privately admits to Vostrikov that as an army officer he has never been out to sea and suffers from motion sickness. During the K-19's official launch, the bottle of champagne fails to break when it strikes the bow; the sailors nervously glance at each other due to this customary sign of bad luck.
In 2056 AD, Earth is in ecologic crisis as a consequence of pollution and overpopulation. Automated interplanetary missions have been seeding Mars with atmosphere-producing algae as the first stage of terraforming the planet. When the oxygen quantity produced by the algae is inexplicably reduced, the crew of Mars-1 investigate; a crew consisting of Quinn Burchenal (Tom Sizemore), an agnostic geneticist, Bud Chantillas (Terence Stamp), an aging philosophical scientist and surgeon, systems engineer Robby Gallagher (Val Kilmer), commander Kate Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss), pilot Ted Santen (Benjamin Bratt), and terraforming scientist Chip Pettengill (Simon Baker).
Bartleby (Affleck) and Loki (Damon) are fallen angels, banished for eternity from Heaven to Wisconsin for insubordination after an inebriated Loki (with Bartleby's encouragement) resigned as the Angel of Death. When the trendy Cardinal Glick (Carlin) announces that he is rededicating his cathedral in Red Bank, New Jersey in the image of the "Buddy Christ", the angels see their salvation: Anyone entering the cathedral during the rededication festivities will receive a plenary indulgence; all punishment for sin will be remitted, permitting direct entry into Heaven. They receive encouragement from an unexpected source: Azrael (Lee), a demon, once a Muse, also banished from Heaven (for refusing to take sides in the battle between God and Lucifer); and the Stygian Triplets (Barret Hackney, Jared Pfennigwerth, and Kitao Sakurai), three teenage hoodlums who serve Azrael in Hell.
A privately owned luxury Boeing 747-100, Stevens' Flight 23, flies invited guests to an estate in Palm Beach, Florida, owned by wealthy philanthropist Philip Stevens, who also owns the jetliner. Valuable artwork from Stevens's private collection is also on board the jetliner, to be eventually displayed in his new museum. Such a collection motivates a group of thieves led by co-pilot Bob Chambers to hijack the aircraft.
Kathie Rauch (Ruth Schudson), a psychic from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sends a letter to the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. claiming the Hindenburg zeppelin will explode after flying over New York. In the meantime, Luftwaffe Colonel Franz Ritter (George C. Scott) boards with the intention of protecting the Hindenburg as various threats have been made to down the airship, which some see as a symbol of Nazi Germany.