CNN 'Doomsday Video' Leaked

"We won't be signing off until the world ends," Ted Turner vowed when CNN was launched in 1980—and he had a video prepared for just that occasion, according to a former intern. At Jalopnik, that former intern, Michael Ballaban, reveals the clip he unearthed in the CNN archives under the name "TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO." People thought Turner was joking when he said the network would play "Nearer, My God, to Thee"—which survivors said the Titanic's band played as the ship went down—before fading to black, Ballaban says, but that's exactly what the clip contains, with a brass band playing the hymn.

According to Ballaban, there's a stern warning in the CNN database to hold the clip for release "till end of the world confirmed," which he says raises some puzzling questions. "If this is the last CNN employee alive, in the last CNN bureau on Earth, who do they confirm it with?" he wonders. He tells the New York Daily News that there's no particular reason he released the clip now, but he has heard from several other former CNN employees who knew about it and he's surprised it has taken so long to emerge. CNN reps, meanwhile, declined to confirm or deny the clip's authenticity to the Daily News. (If the Apocalypse does arrive, a key ingredient of miso soup is now safe in the "Doomsday Vault.")