I'm going to try to find the silver lining in this.
You cannot deny how ridiculous this mini-series is, however I'm honestly intrigued by the launch of Ultimate Comics.
This whole mini-series indulges in the morbid curiosity of *actually* killing off big-name characters in a crossover. Usually, there's just ONE BIG sacrifice (like Wasp in SI or Batman in Final Crisis) or its a bunch of red shirts (like the Titans in Infinite Crisis, Initiative cadets in SI).
Save for COIE, I can't think of a big comic book event that depicted the mortality rate as chaotically, as arbitrarily, as massively as this event. And to play devil's advocate, the universe reboots itself in COIE. It didn't linger on the destruction/rebuilding like I imagine this event could.
What I will look forward to when this event is over are the consequences.
I think Millar's work on the Ultimates is spectacular, and very compelling to read as a modern, realistic approach to the development of super-heroes. I look forward to that writer (hopefully) using that approach to a world filled with characters that have suffered a great loss. When Ultimatum is over, the survivors will have won only in the technical sense; too many needless casualties, including heroes who failed to save the day.
Ultimatum has shown the absolute worst-case scenario, and the survivors will now have to make sure that it never happens again. I like having those massive kind of stakes looming over the characters.
Granted Loeb's scripting/depiction of all this has been tacky, but hey - I said I was looking for the silver lining.