It's Labor Day weekend and Dragon*Con is upon us again, the huge pop culture convention where tens of thousands of superfans from all over dress up, act out, and fly their geek flag proudly today through Monday.

The Con, as veterans call it, is always a precarious balancing act between the serious and the silly. "Apocalypse Rising," one of the Con's tracks - groupings of panels and events - shows off that spectrum.

On Saturday, a bloody tongue-in-cheek panel on "How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse" will probably attract an invasion of "real" zombies to spice things up, while on Sunday, Richard Alstatt, an actual rocket scientist, will lecture on the likelihood that Earth will get hit by a giant asteroid.

Other panels will deal with the apocalypse in religion (with the title "My God is Smitier Than Your God," the Con can be a pretty irreverent place) and modern pop culture, where it spreads like a killer virus through movies ("I Am Legend," "Children of Men," "The Road Warrior"), books ("The Host," "Left Behind," "The Stand") and TV ("Jericho," "The Day After").