One of my favorite scenes in The Empire Strikes Back is when Han Solo rescues Luke Skywalker on Hoth. When Han finds Luke stranded outside the rebel base, Luke’s been injured in a Wampa attack and is near freezing and delirious. To keep his friend alive until he can build their shelter for the night, Han uses Luke’s lightsaber to cut open his tauntaun (which had dropped dead from the cold just as Han found Luke) and secures his friend inside the animal.

Now, thanks to protocol droid C-3PO, who translates R2-D2’s calculations, we know that the odds of surviving the night in sub-zero temperature outside the Hoth rebel base are 725 to 1 (although, we don’t know if this is with spending the night in a shelter or just out there exposed to the elements). Considering the dire situation Luke was in, his odds of survival were even worse. That means that Han had to get that shelter built right away.

The folks over at Wolf Gnards wondered, as most of us have as well, how long could Luke have survived inside that tauntaun, especially since the animal had already died of severe hypothermia itself? According to their calculations, Han had about 56 minutes to build that shelter before Luke died of hypothermia.

Every year, we scatter looking for the best gifts and the best prices to complete our holiday shopping needs as soon as humanly possible. For some strange reason, many people still actually head out into the chaos that is the holiday shopping season, though it’s obvious that just hanging out at home is so insanely better, even if you have to pay a little more. Many sites online like to do their own holiday gift guides each year to help you find what you may be looking for, and we at Geeks of Doom are no different. Our own Tom Cheredar recently put together a fantastic guide for those of you looking for the best Wii sports accessories, and if you stay tuned, we will have a large gift guide with all of 2009’s best movies, games, and other goodies that translate into the best gifts!

Until that guide is complete, here is yet another to tide you over. This is a guide that really digs to the core for some of the best gifts out there for the true geek in all of us. The gifts in this guide come from perhaps the best website on the planet for strange and wonderful goodies, ThinkGeek. It includes gadgets, toys, apparel, and just pure geeky fun items; with price tags varying from cheap to hefty, but most things are pretty affordable. Most of you have probably heard of the site, and if you’re like me, you want to move in with them and play with everything they have…always…for ever and ever and ever. If you haven’t heard of them, you will definitely enjoy this introduction, but be warned: you WILL want everything.

Click on over to check out the list. We’ve included just a handful of our favorite geek-related gifts. If nothing here suits you, you can head to their site where you can find a whole lot more stuff from movies and also non-movie-related stuff that’s all equally fantastic. We have a few images here, but all gift ideas have plenty of images at their source and sometimes a video to show off what it does.

We at Geeks of Doom love Halloween. The smell in the air, the leaves changing color to mark the occasion, and all of the old edited horror movies playing over and over on your TV make it one of the most entertaining and exciting times of year.

Back in 2006, we compiled a list of some of the best geek costumes on the market for those of you who do not yet have an idea as to what you want to be. It’s already been three years now, so we thought it was about time to compile another epic list of costume options for the undecided (which includes myself).

While checking these costumes out, keep some things in mind — most importantly: pretty much every costume that you see will have multiple styles of varying price and quality. The majority of the ones we have here are in the $30-$50 range, but you can find really high-quality “Deluxe” versions of the costume that will run you in the $100-$200 dollar range. These are for the folks who have money to spare and love authenticity. If you’re out of your freakin’ mind, there’s even Batman and Darth Vader costumes that will run you $700+ dollars. If you don’t like the one we’ve linked to, just search the character and check out all of the others that exist. Most costumes have children’s versions available, too. We’ve included some great kids’ costumes, but if you find an adult one you’d like for the little ones, just search it out!

Also worth keeping in mind: a lot of these costumes have female counter-costumes that would be perfect for couples looking to match up. Oh, and it won’t be stupid like going as a plug and an electrical socket. Tee-hee.

Many, many costume options were found for men, women, children, and pets, so please continue on and check some of them out!

Once upon a time, someone somewhere created a sleeping bag re-creation of the Tauntaun corpse that Luke Skywalker used for warmth in that classic scene from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. This someone was greatest online store ever created (proclaimed by I, anyway), ThinkGeek, and it was actually just a little April Fools silliness. Well, the gag was so popular, that people were called, papers were rustled, and ThinkGeek was given permission by George Lucas and Lucas Films to actually produce the sleeping bag, and you…yes, YOU can go and own one soon.

The sleeping bag (seen above, click to go large) is made of a nice, soft Tauntaun fur, and the inside is over-flowing with the natural comfort of intestinal embrace. Better yet (and my personal favorite touch) is the inclusion of a little lightsaber zipper, that allows you to cut open your desperate escape from the freezing cold winter every single time you use it!

For many, Star Wars and its entire mythology may be considered a religion in itself. But what if Star Wars WAS actually a religion all this time, and many classic works of art had been created in celebration of it? As we all know, there are many easily recognizable works of religious art — most notably of them, of course, is The Last Supper. So who of us in the world of geekdom could resist the image of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, R2-D2, George Lucas, and many others sitting at that legendary one-sided table for a little womp rat feast?

In all, there are twenty images of parody. Along with the Last Supper images, you can also see things like Yoda as the Pope, Storm Trooper stained glass art, and Princess Leia as Mary, holding an infant Yoda. There’s a couple using newer characters from the movies we do not speak of, but they’re pretty cool as well.

Click on over to check out a few of the ones I enjoyed, and head to io9, who put together the gallery, to see all of the rest!