cnn

After a impressively terrible 2014, Don Lemon starts off the year right by hopping in CNN's specially-equipped "Blizzardmobile" and reporting from the streets of New York. The one problem of course being that New York City's snow estimates were way off and nearly all of it is gone as of Tuesday morning.

Viewers noted that the Blizzardmobile was routinely passed by such anti-winter assault vehicles as the Toyota Prius and by all appearances was just a regular van. If only this had happened instead:

Twist: Don Lemon's Blizzardmobile rounds a corner and discovers, on an empty Manhattan street, the missing plane.

— Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) January 27, 2015

This is CNN, and this… is the end of the world.

That's probably the last thing you will hear right before this video is aired on live television, as the the zombies tear through your neighborhood, the aliens blast through the White House or a giant asteroid crashes into the Earth's surface.

Jalopnik writer Michael Ballaban, who used to be an intern at The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, has unearthed this "Doomsday Video" that CNN will reportedly play at the end of the world. He found it on their database one day with a note to "HFR [hold for release] till end of the world confirmed."

Regarding their final broadcast, CNN's founder Ted Turner once told The New Yorker:

"Normally, when a TV station begins and ends the broadcast day, it signs on and off by playing the national anthem. But with CNN — a 24-hour-a-day channel — we would only sign off once, and I knew what that would mean. So we got the combined Armed Forces marching bands together — the Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force bands — and took them out to the old CNN headquarters, and we had them practice the national anthem for a videotaping. Then, as things cranked up, I asked if they'd play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' to put on videotape just in case the world ever came to an end. That would be the last thing CNN played before we — before we signed off."

In a note on the site, Ballaban says they won't disclose any details about who actually leaked the video to them.

"It's not something we've been sitting on since I was an intern in 2009. While I've been aware of its existence since then, it was only acquired after I came onboard here at Jalopnik," he writes.

Anderson Cooper, silver fox, CNN anchor and king of on-air giggle fits, was surprised by his staff this week, when he realized the "Ridiculist" segment was about himself.

He began the piece thinking that he was about to discuss workplace annoyances, but the camera then revealed his own desk with a lit, basil-scented candle that apparently everyone else on his staff hates.

"Somebody told me I smelled," he said in response. "So that's why I got the candle."