crimson peak haunted house

Director Guillermo del Toro is known for creating movies filled with fantasy and horror, and the setting for his latest movie, “Crimson Peak,” is filled with a whole lot of both.

A run-down Gothic mansion in the English hills is the setting for most of the movie. Young Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is brought there after marrying Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) who also lives with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain).

However, after Edith gets to the Sharpe home, which is slowly sinking into the red clay it sits on, she finds that, along with living in a dilapidated home that has a giant hole in the roof and red clay seeping through the walls, there are creepy ghosts walking the halls.

The Sharpe mansion isn’t the ideal place to live in, but for the audience it’s one of the best parts of the movie.

Thomas E. Sanders , who was the production designer on the film, said the inspiration for the look of the house came from Edward Hopper’s “ The House by the Railroad, ” which was also Alfred Hitchcock’s inspiration for the Bates house in “Psycho.”

“After talking to Guillermo I printed out a picture of it immediately and we kept it on the wall,” Sanders told Business Insider.

Sanders said that he and del Toro knew they wouldn’t find a real location that could match their vision, so Sanders was tasked with designing the interior of the house in a sound studio.

(Kerry Hayes)

"I knew we were going to be on stage for a good six weeks, and that’s a long time to be on one set," said Sanders. "You’re usually in fifteen to twenty sets during that length of time, so we needed to build a set that could hold up that long."

To do that Sanders created a 5x5 model of the entire interior of the house, which over eight weeks was tweaked to del Toro’s specifications.

“I would point to a part of the model and say, ‘Okay, Guillermo, if we stand here we’ll be able to see this and this,’” Sanders said. “So you could look with a lipstick cam and figure out if a wall would need to be moved so the camera could get in that spot. It’s kind of backwards from most designers, who would draw things out and then maybe make a model, but I like to change the model organically as we’re building it.”

(Legendary Pictures)

With a three-dimensional blueprint to work from, the set was then built, which included all three levels of the house, tubes built into the walls for when the red clay needed to seep through, and a working elevator that’s used prominently in the film.

According to Sanders, very few computer graphics were used. The one exception is the ceiling of the house and its giant hole, where light shines down onto the foyer.

For Sanders, the experience on “Crimson Peak” is hard to find. The last time he worked on a movie with this many practical effects was with Francis Ford Coppola on “ Dracula ” in 1992.

He gives all of the credit to del Toro for making it possible.

“It’s because the director, me, and the DP, all of us, were on the same page and were able to push it in that direction,” he said. “It’s rare to have that on a movie, with everyone on the same page.”

“Crimson Peak” is now playing in theaters.

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Crimson Peak’s Production Designer on Creating That Jaw-Dropping Haunted House

Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures

While it may not have had enough narrative depth to satisfy some critics , there is one triumph of Crimson Peak that’s hard to deny: It’s a beautifully dark visual wonder, featuring what could easily become one of the most memorable haunted houses in movie history. This should be no surprise to anyone familiar with Guillermo del Toro’s singular imagination. And in this case, to help bring his vision for the film’s Gothic romance-inspired themes to life, he enlisted production designing vet Thomas E. Sanders ( Braveheart , Apocalypto ) .

I spoke with Sanders about what it was like working with del Toro, designing that house, and how he made all the blood just the right shade of crimson.

I know Del Toro has cited some of the Old Hollywood movies that inspired him during the making of this film: Dragonwyck , Rebecca , Jane Eyre . What specific elements from those movies or others did you incorporate into the design of the movie, and the house in particular?

For the house, he likes [ House by the Railroad , the Edward] Hopper painting, and that was the only thing that we went on for the house. I don’t do any film research when I’m working on a film, and I like to approach it really naive and work with the director and then just go for it and try to be fresh that way. So I didn’t watch a single film or refer to any film at all.

Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

Did he throw out any of those movies to you when he was describing the movie or when you read the script?

No—you know by the time I had gotten involved, once we’d read the script, he didn’t do too much. A little bit now and then, but we didn’t really refer to much on an ongoing basis. I think for a few discussions he brought up a few films, but after that we just went for it, and he was busy on another project [ The Strain ].

How much of the house’s design came from your ideas, and how much was informed by his direction and staging?

Well it’s kind of both: at every level I would get to on the house I would bring him in and see how he felt about it, and luckily we were on the same page most of the time. And then we did a lengthy process—it was a couple months—where, on any sets like these I build physical models of the sets. And in that process we’re looking at all the camera angles and we’re looking at all the views through the house … and we edit as we go, we change it as we’re going, and it just slowly morphs into a complete finished model of the set as it is.

Each of the rooms has a distinct personality, between the kitchen, the basement, the bedroom, and so on. How did you decide what kind of moods you were going for in each of those rooms?

It’s kind of daunting doing a haunted house for a movie, and we were going to be in the house really a lot of shoot days, so I wanted every room [to] be completely different. So I had a different bent on it when we did the bedroom of the parents, just because the parents had lived in it, and that had a certain amount of layers. …We did [consider] the themes that were playing out in each room and what those rooms meant in the history of the house as well.

We felt that the clay is the blood of the earth, and it’s also the blood of the house, and that the house was a living thing that embodied the family over all those years.

The kitchen shows that there was once a huge staff, and it was very much a country kitchen from the neo gothic times … And then the great hall, which we felt was maybe part medieval and part they had redone it—all these houses were redone so many times through history, and that gave us a bunch of great layers to play with as well.

The basement especially is visually striking. I don’t know how I would describe it exactly, but the giant circular design—

Yeah, it’s like a half-tunnel. I don’t know where that came from. I mean I did some early drawings of it and Guillermo really liked it, that it was an arched room.

You’re bringing back memories for me now of when we were designing it, you know. For me it’s such an organic process, and as a sculptor that’s why I do the models.

We got a pre-painted, pre-plastered model detailed of everything in the house before we even built the house. And it was a four-foot-high house and interior, and we could take walls out of the model, which we could take out on the set. 

Was the house constructed from scratch for the movie, or did you find a house that had the right atmosphere and create it out of that?

No … we knew we would never shoot in a real house. And in fact, there’s not a detail in the house that was real—it was taken out of the research in my head, and pretty much everything was invented for the set. And once we started building on it, [Del Toro] liked [Hopper’s] House by the Railroad , which was just like a two-story Tudor house that’s all lonely on this stretch of track—it had a great proportion. And then the other thing he wanted that was really important was that he wanted to feel the whole house when you walked in the front door, so the minute you walk in you’re in a big foyer and you can see all the way through to the great hall in the back and you can see all the way upstairs, so we wanted to establish this whole big house and the geography right off the bat.

One of the other things that was really fascinating to me was how perfectly red the blood was. I’m curious: how did you make the red goo crimson red?

Guillermo is… super, super color-oriented. We did a lot of color samples for him—and I’m very color oriented too—and it ended up [being that] a lot of them were based on corrosion and just weird things that really happen, and we really pounded that color until we felt that it was the perfect color for the movie. 

And then also we have the issue of, you don’t want the set to outdo the costume, you want the costume to show up first… So when we had Edith in the house, we wanted her to be the butterfly in the house, but if you notice the other costumes, they almost match the house. You know they were in the same tones as the house, but we brought the tones back so their tones would be just a little bit brighter and a little bit better.

How did you get the snow to bleed red for that final scene?

Well some of it was underneath the snow already, because we laid down red earth, but for the last bit it was a CG takeover of the red. At the premiere the other night was the first time I’d seen it, and I was blown away at how it finished, because when we’re through working on it there’s still a lot of added painting that gets done with the movie and they really nailed it, it was really great to see.

You’ve been nominated twice for an Oscar, for Saving Private Ryan and Dracula , but you haven’t won yet. Is there any behind the scenes campaigning for technical awards in the same way that there is for acting and directing awards?

I’m sure there is, but I’m not aware of it. To me I feel, I mean I love what I do, and to us it means you’re recognized and your pay may go up or whatever, but there’s no active campaigning. I think the studios may do a little bit of it and push it, and you know they put ads out, but … I don’t have a publicist or anything. It’s just kind of for us, at least for me, it’s just kind of a Whatever, if that happens—great.

You’ve done a gothic haunted horror with this and with Dracula , and you’ve [just completed the upcoming] Star Trek sequel, which is futuristic. Is there any artistic mode that you’d love to work in that you haven’t yet?

That’s a good question. You know I’ve done Mayan, I’ve done war, I’ve done medieval. You know for me if I see something that has either never been done before, like Apocalypto , when I read that it was the first time a Mayan movie was going to be made. I still like to be really frightened when I start a movie, like, you know, How the fuck am I going to do that? And I think what keeps me really full of energy is fear. When you see something like that, like working with Guillermo—that was daunting! … And to do a haunted house for Guillermo, it’s like Wow, I better do good on this . So I have that energy—I’m 62, but I still have that energy, I love to start something that I haven’t done something like it before.

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Here's how the creepy haunted house in 'Crimson Peak' was created

Legendary Pictures

"Crimson Peak."

A Gothic run-down mansion in the English hills is the setting for most of the movie. Young Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is brought there after marrying Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) who also lives with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain).

However, after Edith gets to the Sharpe home, which is slowly sinking into the red clay it sits on, she finds that along with living in a dilapidated home that has a giant hole in the roof and red clay seeping through the walls, there are creepy ghosts walking the halls.

YouTube/Universal Pictures

Thomas E. Sanders , who was the production designer on the film, said the inspiration behind the look of the house came from Edward Hopper's " The House by the Railroad, " which was also Alfred Hitchcock's muse for the Bates house in "Psycho."

"After talking to Guillermo I printed out a picture of it immediately and we kept it on the wall," Sanders told Business Insider.

Sanders said that he and del Toro knew they wouldn't find a real location that could match their vision, so Sanders was tasked with designing the interior of the house in a sound studio.

Kerry Hayes

To do that Sanders created a 5x5 model of the entire interior of the house, which over eight weeks was tweaked to del Toro's specifications.

"I would point to a part of the model and say, 'Okay, Guillermo, if we stand here we'll be able to see this and this,'" Sanders said. "So you could look with a lipstick cam and figure out if a wall would need to be moved so the camera could get in that spot. It's kind of backwards from most designers, who would draw things out and then maybe make a model, but I like to change the model organically as we're building it."

According to Sanders, very few computer graphics were used. The one exception is the ceiling of the house and its giant hole, where light shines down onto the foyer.

For Sanders, the experience on "Crimson Peak" is hard to find. The last time he worked on a movie with this many practical effects was with Francis Ford Coppola on " Dracula " in 1992.

Columbia Pictures

"It's because the director, me, and the DP, all of us, were on the same page and were able to push it in that direction," he said. "It's rare to have that on a movie, with everyone on the same page."

"Crimson Peak" is now playing in theaters.

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Behind the Scenes of Crimson Peak

Director Guillermo del Toro takes us behind the scenes of his haunting gothic romance.

The bloody, beating heart of Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro ’s ____ Edwardian romance–slash–haunted house thriller, is a decrepit estate crushed beneath a low English sky. Nicknamed for the red clay that has a tendency to rise to the surface of the grounds like puddles of blood, Crimson Peak all but spells doom for Edith, the film’s heroine ( Mia Wasikowska ), from the moment she arrives. “The house is a monster,” del Toro says. “But not in the way that haunted houses normally are. It breathes, but it also suffocates life by trapping inside it all the things that weigh upon the characters: ancestry, family, marriage.”

Crimson Peak—or Allerdale, as it’s properly known—is run by orphaned siblings: the forbidding Lucille ( Jessica Chastain ) and her dark, dashing brother Thomas (Tom Hiddleston), who woos Edith, a spirited young American woman of means and literary ambition. (She’s—uh-oh—an aspiring author of ghost stories.) After Edith marries Thomas under rather tragic circumstances, she comes to live at Allerdale, only to discover that the once-grand manor, much like the siblings’ good name, has gone to seed. “I told the production designer we needed to make the house feel like a rotting corpse,” del Toro explains. “It’s funereal”—a harbinger of the secret history that Edith will soon uncover.

Edith grows more fearful with each revelation, and del Toro’s production design amplifies her fright (and ours) by making her look and feel small: The furniture becomes increasingly oversize, threatening to swallow her. Even a teacup suddenly appears enormous and weighty. Only Lucille, who is as cold as Allerdale in winter, seems to feel right at home. “Every time Lucille loses her temper, or when she’s jealous, the fireplace flares up,” del Toro says. “The house is part of the storytelling.”

Photos: Behind the Scenes of Crimson Peak

“I’m in the cellar of the house with Mia Wasikowska, who plays Edith, filming one of the last scenes. This staircase goes from the red-clay mines to the grounds outside, where there’s a winter storm. The movie is incredibly baroque, textured, and detailed, so I wanted it to end in a white limbo of snow.”

Courtesy of Kerry Hayes/Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

“The characters I relate to most are the bad guys. Jessica Chastain (above) plays Lucille, who to me is a very, very sad character. You’re afraid of her, but at the end of the day you understand her. Courtesy of Kerry Hayes/Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

Tom Hiddleston plays Thomas, who is incredibly tortured and does horrible things, but you still also feel for him.” Courtesy of Kerry Hayes/Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

“The decorated ceiling in Edith’s bedroom (above) is based on a detail taken from actual Victorian houses. I love that it looks like thorns, because we wanted it to feel as if the house were about to pin the characters down. This house has teeth; the motif of eyes and mouths runs throughout.” Courtesy of Kerry Hayes/Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

Courtesy of Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

STARRING: Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam. OPENS: October 16.

Screen Rant

Crimson peak true story: it happened to guillermo del toro.

Crimson Peak is a fantastical gothic ghost story from Guillermo Del Toro, but some of it was inspired by real events that affected his family.

Guillermo Del Toro has repeatedly proven himself to be a master of genre filmmaking and fantastical storytelling, but Crimson Peak , his gothic horror film, pulled from some unexpected places for inspiration.

There are few filmmakers who have as eclectic of a resume as renowned writer/director, Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro's films have included intimate body horror stories, epic comic book adaptations, and hauntingly beautiful dark fairy tales. He's a director that's been able to make the "kaiju" subgenre mainstream and his sea creature love story, The Shape of Water , even took home an Academy Award. Guillermo Del Toro's star only continues to rise and it's extremely exciting that regardless of the project, his works always incorporate touches of horror in various ways.

Related: Crimson Peak’s Original Cast Would Have Made A Much Different Movie

Guillermo Del Toro is someone who tends to mix genres in his films, but if any of his movies is unabashedly a horror film, it's 2015's Crimson Peak . Crimson Peak is Del Toro's inspired take on the haunted house film, but he injects the subject matter with sprawling elegance as he cultivates a Victorian gothic aesthetic to compliment all of the terrifying apparitions that fill his haunted house. Crimson Peak pushes some very creative ideas and pays homage to other classic haunted house epics like The Shining and The Haunting , but Del Toro's own life also contributed to the film in unexpected ways.

Crimson Peak’s Opening Scene Was Inspired By Events That Happened To Del Toro’s Mother

In spite of Crimson Peak’s supernaturally gothic content, Guillermo Del Toro admits that the opening scene to the movie is actually inspired by a real-life supernatural incident that affected his mother. Del Toro reveals that when his mother was a child, she was convinced that she was visited by the apparition of her deceased grandmother. Del Toro's mother could hear her silk dress moving through the hallway and could vividly smell her perfume. To go even further, Del Toro's mother told her son that she heard the springs in her bed creak and depress, as if her grandmother had decided to lay down on her bed with her.

Understandably terrified, Del Toro's grandmother ran from the room in fear, but this traumatic event not only sparked Del Toro's story with Crimson Peak , but also is included in the sensory experience of the film. Whether his mother's story ignited Guillermo's initial fascination with ghosts and the paranormal or not, he's had an obsession with the subject matter since he was 11 years old. Del Toro has turned that passion into remarkable filmmaking that elegantly captures his respect for the uncanny. If a heightened ghost story like Crimson Peak can be drawn from a story that’s so deep in Del Toro's past, then hopefully others will be inspired by their own real life experiences with the paranormal to continue elevating this sometimes forgotten sub-genre.

More: Why Guillermo Del Toro's Mountains Of Madness Movie Never Happened

‘Crimson Peak’ Trailer: Guillermo del Toro Made the Haunted House Epic You’ve Always Wanted

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The first Crimson Peak trailer is here and it showcases a side of director Guillermo del Toro that we haven’t seen in far too long. Before Pacific Rim and Hellboy and even the dark fantasy of Pan’s Labyrinth , he made horror movies. Now, del Toro has returned to the genre where he made his name and the first footage from the resulting film looks as gorgeous and creepy as you’d imagine.

The trailer is light on plot, but heavy on atmosphere. Here’s what we do know: Mia Wasikowska’s Edith is swept off her feet by Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), who takes her back to his family’s estate. But Edith soon finds plenty of problems beyond the presence of Thomas’ creepy sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain). Crimson Peak is the kind of house where things go bump in the night ... and then try to kill you.

Del Toro famously couldn’t get his adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness made because studios balked at financing a massively expensive, epic horror movie. So he seems to have responded by making a different, massively expensive epic horror movie. This is a genre that has spent the past decade living in a land of low budgets and lower expectations. To see a filmmaker as talented and distinguished as del Toro make a horror movie that looks this lavish is a real treat. The last time we got a haunted house movie with this kind of pedigree may have been Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining . Hey, no pressure Guillermo.

There is plenty to love in this trailer. The cast of terrific actors. The unsettling tone. The romantic (in the traditional sense of the word) atmosphere. That gothic set design. That creepy cover of “Red Right Hand.” The trailer talks a big game by calling this del Toro’s “ultimate masterpiece,” but there’s nothing here to suggest that he won’t deliver the goods. If Crimson Peak is half as good as del Toro’s  The Devil’s Backbone , it will still be a major horror event. Here’s the official synopsis:

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds ... and remembers.

‘Crimson Peak’ opens on October 16, 2015. Now you all officially have Halloween plans. Until then, here’s the official poster, and a few images from the film:

CRIMSON PEAK: Go Inside Guillermo del Toro's Haunted House in New Featurette

'Crimson Peak' opens October 16th.

Hopefully you've been following along with our Crimson Peak coverage, especially during Comic-Con . That's where we got a great look at Guillermo del Toro's latest horror picture, a Gothic romance that places Mia Wasikowska , Tom Hiddleston , and Jessica Chastain inside a haunted house with a twist. Now, thanks to a new behind-the-scenes featurette, you get a chance to take a peek inside this house as well.

If you're not already looking forward to this one, make sure to take a listen to del Toro's own words on his latest project. He calls it one of the top three favorite films he's ever made and already touts it as the most gorgeous. That's high praise, even if it's from a filmmaker talking about his own work. You can decide for yourself when  Crimson Peak opens October 16th.

Watch this new behind-the-scenes featurette for  Crimson Peak :

Here’s the official synopsis for Crimson Peak :

When her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak.   From the imagination of director Guillermo del Toro comes a supernatural mystery starring Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Charlie Hunnam.

Take a look at some of our recent  Crimson Peak  coverage below:

• Guillermo Del Toro Talks CRIMSON PEAK, Its Literary Influence, PACIFIC RIM 2, and More
• CRIMSON PEAK Cast Talks about Their Characters, Tumblr, and More at Comic-Con
• Guillermo del Toro Talks CRIMSON PEAK, PACIFIC RIM 2, THE HOBBIT, and More
• Watch CRIMSON PEAK Director Guillermo del Toro Play “Save or Kill” at Comic-Con
• CRIMSON PEAK Comic-Con Panel Recap: Tom Hiddleston Talks “Testing Limits”

Crimson Peak review

Simply red....

GamesRadar+ Verdict

A curious hybrid of grim fairytale and gory horror, del Toro’s ninth feature is striking but sorely lacking in surprises. Great ghosts, but del Toro is capable of so much more.

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Guillermo del Toro’s recent movie history is haunted by so many half-formed projects, it’s become something of an event whenever he gets a film into cinemas.

His last, 2013’s Pacific Rim , offered blockbusting robots vs. monsters thrills, but only after the Mexican auteur had stumbled around Hobbiton for two years before exiting without a movie to show for it – small wonder he then almost lost his marbles At The Mountains Of Madness , a project that’s still in limbo. And with Pacific Rim 2 now in a holding pattern, Crimson Peak should be a cause for celebration.

Sadly the party’s only half warranted, even if del Toro’s ninth feature sees a welcome return to horror. Over a decade on from Pan’s Labyrinth and Cronos , there’s been much talk of this being the director’s first adult movie in the English language (no robots fighting monsters here).

For all its unforgiving violence, gothic romance and haunted house hijinks, though, Crimson Peak struggles to match the vigour of the director’s Spanish-language films. At times it’s almost phantasmal in comparison, an insubstantial echo of those superior efforts.

Still, del Toro effectively sets out his goth stock early on. We meet the waif-like Edith (Mia Wasikowska) stumbling through a snow storm, beaten, ghostly pale, her hands smeared scarlet. A flashback invites us into her childhood, where her mother’s sinister spectre hisses a warning: “Beware of Crimson Peak.” Between the gorgeous, rain-soaked cinematography and textured production design, these early, period spook scenes contain compelling nods back to del Toro’s great ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone .

Somewhat boldly, a sharp first-act tonal shift (signalled by a shot of a storybook opening in classic Disney style) quickly sweeps Crimson Peak into the ballrooms and creaky mansions of grim fairytales. Before her snow storm walk and now in her 20s, wannabe author Edith may have a father (Jim Beaver), but she’s ostensibly a bookish Cinderella, mocked by clownish socialites, mooned over by Charlie Hunnam’s strapping doctor, and dreaming of a life removed from turn-of-the-century New York. Oh, and she sees dead people.

That her Prince Charming is waxen inventor Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) is a neat twist, but his romantic gestures inspire narrative stutters. It can be no mistake that Edith balks at her publisher’s suggestion she add a love story to her manuscript – Crimson Peak is the first time del Toro has tackled romance face on, and the result is stilted, hampered by hammy dialogue and a sped-up timeline that gives the relationship little room to breathe.

A midpoint shift into haunted house territory doesn’t help. The big problem is the film’s mystery. Centred around the shadowy pasts of Thomas and his brooding sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain channeling Norma Bates), the twists are signposted early on, the surprises bogged down in cliché and melodrama.

These narrative shortcomings are particularly frustrating given the strength of del Toro’s vision. No matter what the script’s doing, feverish creativity fills every frame, not least when Edith, newly betrothed to Thomas, moves to Cumberland, England to live with him and his sister.

Here, she discovers the crumbling ruin that is Allerdale Hall. She’s soon visited by tortured, blood-red apparitions, and they are the film’s spectral treat; an artful, unnerving blend of real and CGI puppetry. Meanwhile, the mansion set – constructed at Pinewood Studios in Toronto – is a marvel of horror movie engineering; grand, claustrophobic, a groaning monster that consumes its occupants.

There’s invention, too, in the clockwork precision of del Toro’s efforts behind the camera. While Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen lenses Allerdale Hall in swampy greens and fiery reds (a tribute to Italian filmmaker Mario Bava), some of Crimson Peak ’s most effective tension-cranking scenes are scored not by composer Fernando Velázquez, but the monotonous pumping of an industrial clay machine.

If ghosts really are, in Edith’s words, “a metaphor for the past,” the metaphor gets somewhat confused in Crimson Peak . Is this a story about the past coming to bear on the present? Of love conquering all? The industrial revolution? It’s never really clear, and while Wasikowska is a solid heroine, Hiddleston and Chastain are shackled by roles made frustratingly opaque by the clunky mystery. Del Toro’s artistry is definitely something to celebrate, but there’s one thing about Crimson Peak that’s unforgivable – it’s just not scary.

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.  

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Planetary Defense

Remembering the Chelyabinsk Impact 10 Years Ago, and Looking to the Future

On Feb. 15, 2013, the people of Chelyabinsk, Russia, experienced a shocking event, and yet it was a small fraction of the devastation an asteroid on a collision course with Earth could yield. As NASA’s Planetary Defense experts reflect on the Chelyabinsk impact 10 years ago, they also look forward to the future and all that the agency has since accomplished in the field of Planetary Defense.

Harmless meteoroids, and sometimes small asteroids, impact our planet’s atmosphere daily. When they do, they disintegrate and create meteors or “shooting stars” and sometimes bright fireballs or bolides. Such was the case on Feb. 12 when a very small asteroid impacted Earth’s atmosphere over Northern France soon after discovery, resulting in a spectacular light show for local onlookers. Much more rarely, a larger asteroid that is still too small to reach the ground intact, yet large enough to release considerable energy when it disintegrates, can do significant damage to the ground. On Feb. 15, 2013, one such bolide event garnered international attention when a house-sized asteroid impacted Earth’s atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, at a speed of eleven miles per second and exploded 14 miles above the ground. The explosion was equivalent to 440,000 tons of TNT, and the resulting air blast blew out windows over 200 square miles, damaged buildings, and injured over 1,600 people – mostly due to broken glass. Due to the asteroid’s approach from the daytime sky, it was not detected prior to impact, serving as a reminder that while there are no known asteroid threats to Earth for the next century, an Earth impact by an unknown asteroid could occur at any time.

Coincidentally, negotiations sponsored by the United Nations were finalizing formal recommendations for the establishment of Planetary Defense-related international collaborations – the International Asteroid Warning Network  (IAWN) and the  Space Missions Planning Advisory Group  (SMPAG) – when the Chelyabinsk impact occurred. Since then, NASA established the agency’s  Planetary Defense Coordination Office  (PDCO) in 2016 to oversee and coordinate the agency’s ongoing mission of Planetary Defense. This includes acting as a national representative at international Planetary Defense-related caucuses and forums, such as IAWN and SMPAG, and playing a leading role in coordinating U.S. government planning for response to an actual asteroid impact threat if one were ever discovered. The PDCO also funds observatories around the world through NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program to find and characterize NEOs – asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth – with a particular focus on finding asteroids 460 feet (140 meters) and larger that represent the most severe impact risks to Earth. To help accelerate its ability to find potentially hazardous NEOs, NASA is also actively developing the agency’s NEO Surveyor mission , which is designed to finish discovery of 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters in size or larger that can come near Earth within a decade of being launched.

In 2022, working together with the Italian Space Agency, NASA’s   Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully demonstrated the world’s first-ever test for deflecting an asteroid’s orbit. Launched in 2021 , DART successfully collided with a known asteroid – which posed no impact threat to Earth – demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection technology using a kinetic impactor spacecraft. Since DART’s impact, Planetary Defense experts have been continuing to analyze data returned from the mission to better understand its demonstrated effects on the asteroid, which contributes to the understanding of how a kinetic impactor spacecraft could be used to address an asteroid impact threat in the future if the need ever arose.

The Chelyabinsk impact was a spark that ignited global conversation in Planetary Defense, and much progress in the field has occurred since then. However, there is still more work to be done, and NASA is actively at the forefront. In addition to building NASA’s NEO Surveyor to find the rest of the population of asteroids that could pose a hazard to Earth, the agency is considering a “rapid response reconnaissance” capability to be able to quickly obtain a more detailed characterization of a hazardous asteroid once it is discovered. NASA is also considering sending out a reconnaissance spacecraft to study an asteroid making a close approach to Earth in 2029.

“A collision of a NEO with Earth is the only natural disaster we now know how humanity could completely prevent” said NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson. “We must keep searching for what we know is still out there, and we must continue to research and test Planetary Defense technologies and capabilities that could one day protect our planet’s inhabitants from a devastating event.”

Learn more about  NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office

Keep up to date on NASA’s Planetary Defense efforts by following Asteroid Watch on twitter

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Chelyabinsk meteor: Ten years on from 'wake-up call', how safe are we from a potentially catastrophic strike?

A decade on from the Chelyabinsk meteor, and our planet has come a long way in detecting the threat of interstellar objects potentially hurtling into the atmosphere. But has the risk been completely eliminated - and exactly how prepared are we for another dramatic impact?

By Tom Acres, technology reporter

Wednesday 15 February 2023 06:26, UK

It wasn't quite the day the Earth stood still, but those who witnessed a fiery asteroid briefly outshine the sun as it soared towards the Russian city of Chelyabinsk will almost certainly never forget it.

Comparable to the size of a house and travelling at a scintillating 11 miles per second, what was quickly dubbed the Chelyabinsk meteor arrived unannounced in a manner reminiscent of a science-fiction disaster film. It was an unnerving spectacle.

Dashcam footage from the morning of 15 February 2013, in the central Russian city close to the Ural Mountains, shows the small asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere before it exploded with 30 times more force than the US atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in the Second World War .

Windows shattered, buildings were damaged, and hundreds of people were injured - but Chelyabinsk got lucky.

"Had it been directly over the city, the damage would have been worse," warns NASA 's planetary defence officer Lindley Johnson. "It was definitely a wake-up call."

'We've never seen anything like it since'

Working with partners like the European Space Agency, Mr Johnson's department warns of any impacts to Earth by comets and asteroids and guides the response.

A standard test case was a "shooting star" asteroid that soared above the English Channel this week , which was tracked and publicised in advance, so people could see it for themselves.

Chelyabinsk was no standard test case.

"We've never seen anything like it since we started working in this area," says Mr Johnson, whose office inside the US space agency was only established in 2016.

"It was daylight, clearly visible in the daytime sky, and that doesn't happen very often.

"It came in on the daylight side of Earth, and we had no chance of being able to detect it ahead of time with the ground-based observatories that we used to find these objects at that time."

What are the chances of another Chelyabinsk?

Mr Johnson was in Vienna, Austria, on the day of Chelyabinsk's arrival, attending meetings of UN members of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

It didn't take long for recommendations on how to protect the Earth from such events to be endorsed, including an international asteroid warning network.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, of Queen's University, Belfast, is an expert in these so-called near-Earth objects, and a committed member of the "planetary defence community".

"We're very open about what we find and our current state of knowledge about potential impact risks," he says. "All asteroids that are detected are announced on public websites.

"Technology has come a long way in terms of how well you can detect asteroids, even as small as Chelyabinsk, but there's still the chance that one could sneak through. And it's quite likely that the next significant asteroid we have would be unannounced."

How are we protecting ourselves?

Chelyabinsk was considered a small asteroid - that and its arrival during daylight is why it was hard to see coming.

"We're still vulnerable to those that are coming from the sun," admits Mr Johnson.

"Most of these objects come from a main belt of asteroids out between Mars and Jupiter, and when they're coming inbound into the inner solar system, we can find them in the night sky. But when they loop around the sun and come back out, that's when we're vulnerable."

The key to being able to expect the unexpected, he says, is space-based observation.

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NASA is working on the $1.2bn (£985m) Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor for launch in 2028, which will be the first space telescope specifically designed to hunt asteroids and comets that may be potential hazards to Earth.

Even then, Chelyabinsk was far smaller than the asteroids NEO will focus on. Amy Mainzer, NEO Surveyor's principal investigator, says it will prioritise "finding the one asteroid that could cause a really bad day for a lot of people".

Also in the repertoire is the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft. During testing last year , it was deliberately crashed into an asteroid and successfully altered its orbit.

What if another one gets through?

Chelyabinsk's arrival showcased the importance of quick and effective communication - its arrival was rapidly documented around the world, Russian scientists shared their findings, fragments have been collected, studied, and found new homes, and the event informed international policy.

Prof Fitzsimmons says such transparency and coordination would again be vital, perhaps even more so in an age where misinformation can quickly spread.

Were such an asteroid to break through the atmosphere today, over a populated area, it would do so in a far more fragile geopolitical climate than back in 2013, with Russia's war in Ukraine and an escalating US-China row over the perceived threat of flying objects .

"When these kinds of events are determined to be of natural causes, the flow of information is pretty good even in today's environment," says Mr Johnson. "But there certainly is concern in knowing quickly that it's a natural event versus something that's human caused.

"The entry and detonation of these objects by the heat pressure in the atmosphere, to the human eye, can look very much like an attack, whereas sophisticated instrumentation rapidly discerns the difference."

'A long way to go to find them all'

At the moment, there are some 31,000 asteroids being tracked - up from around 9,500 in 2013.

It's a sign of how much more seriously the prospect of a dangerous impact has been taken since Chelyabinsk, which was the largest and best recorded asteroid impact on Earth since 1908. That was when an asteroid exploded over Siberia , flattening some 80 million trees in a blast equivalent to 15 million tons of dynamite.

Not being near a built-up area was again incredibly fortunate.

Russia's sheer size is all that's made it a relative hotbed of historic asteroid activity. With 70% of the Earth being covered by water, odds are that most asteroids - detected or not - end up in the ocean. An impact like Chelyabinsk is probably a once-in-a-century event, reckons NASA.

None of the 31,000 asteroids we know of are predicted to hit Earth in the next 100 years, says Prof Fitzsimmons, but there's still "a long way to go to find them all".

"But I'll reassure you - I still come into work and pay into my pension plan."

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5 facts about this amphibious 8-wheel Soviet monster car

This one-of-a-kind car was discovered in 2017  in the city of Chelyabinsk. One of the local VK.com users reported finding it at the old garage he purchased outside the city. The amphibious car has been dubbed Argo by the new owner. In spring 2019, it was on display in the Old-Timer Gallery in Moscow - an exhibition of unusual vintage cars. But who made it, and what for?

1. Self-made by professionals

This 8-wheeled amphibious all-terrain vehicle (AATV) was created by engineer Maxim Melnichenko. He worked at the Chelyabinsk tractor plant and created this masterpiece at the end of the 1960s. They say that Melnichenko was an avid hunter and often traversed the Ural forests. Apparently, he got together several like-minded coworkers to build this unusual car for traveling into the wild.

2. Experimental amphibious car

The most interesting thing in this construction is its articulated rotation mechanism, like you would find in tractors (after all, the vehicle was built at a tractor plant). The only door is in the front. In the rear section, there were plans to place an engine (probably from a GAZ M-20 Pobeda), as well as the hydraulic pump. However, that never came to fruition.

Argo is powered by a hydrostatic transmission. All the wheels are equipped with compact hydraulic motors. In fact, it has an 8-wheel drive, and on each pair of wheels, you can fit a caterpillar track. Good thinking!

3. Lightweight model

Argo seems huge, but it’s an illusion. In fact, despite measuring 4.53 m  in length 1.9 m in width and 1.49m in height, it weighs only 1.5 tons! 

The car consists of two sealed sections made of duralumin, a high-strength alloy of aluminum. The joints are designed in the shape of "gills", giving Argo its steampunk look.

4. Steampunk AATV

Russian media wrote (with reference to the plant’s employees) that only some people knew about Argo. Others speculate that no one at the factory actually knew which vehicle exactly the individual hydraulic motors on wheels were made for.

5. The project was never finished

All this time the car was stored at the Melnichenko’s garage in the Chelyabinsk Region. After his death, the garage transferred to his daughter, who decided to sell it in the 2010s. The new garage owner found Argo inside. After that, Argo changed owners twice, until it ended up in the hands of automobile historian Vladimir Kireev. He bought it in 2014, but only in 2017 was it possible to move it to Moscow.

As he told Russia Beyond, this construction has lots of weaknesses. "The idea itself was very interesting, but absolutely not viable and has a large number of insurmountable drawbacks. I think the designers realized this and decided to stop." His collection also includes dozens of old-timer cars, from such self-made vehicles to ceremonial ZILs – and many of them can be seen on display at Russia’s motor shows. In future, Vladimir plans to open a retro transport museum.  

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

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