Volcano Blast Zone as Apocalyptic Movie Set

Thinking about seeing The Road, the new movie based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy?  Take note of some of the locations they filmed in, as they utilized existing devastated areas to serve as the cataclysmic setting.

Windy Ridge, which is on the east flank of Mt. St. Helens in Southern Washington, still looks like a wasteland nearly 30 years after the volcano erupted in a lateral blast.  The filmmakers took advantage of the naturally creepy vistas that sweep around the formerly lush environment.

“They wanted locations that represented devastation,” Ludvigsen said. “The areas they liked were where trees were uprooted and root wads were showing, trees where the tops were snapped off from the eruption.”

It also helped that portions of Forest Road 99 had been washed out during recent flooding.

The crew spent a good portion of the day in that location, filming stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. In this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, Mortensen plays a father leading his young son through a landscape torn apart by some unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and most life on Earth.

Link | Photo: Joel W. Roger/CORBIS