I cannot find English subs for this movie yet and am having a hard time understanding the accent. So, what is actually happening in this movie? Is the sun going to collide with Earth, or is there a meteor that is going to hit Earth, or has there been a bomb set off, etc.?
shareIt was a meteor crashing into Australia. Which makes me wonder who came up with this. If a meteor were to crash into Australia and make it a barren wasteland unfit for human life, what would be the difference? Seriously, how would you even notice?
shareThanx. Shortly after posing the question, I did read someplace that it was an asteroid/meteor. I think at the time it was starting to hit Australia, it had already destroyed the rest of the continents on Earth. Hopefully subs will be available soon so I can know all that is said in the very beginning.
shareTry watching it with the closed captions on.That way you can read along with the accent.
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The radio host narrator gives many of the details of the disaster -- impact in the North Atlantic, giving approx. 12 hours for Australians to enjoy their last breaths (or choose when to stop taking them).
The ending scene makes it clear that post-impact there was a rolling shockwave fireball spreading around the world as a result of the impact (hence the 12 hours estimate). And apparently it was gonna hurt.
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Chipping away at a mountain of pop culture trivia,
Darren Dirt.
I imagine that any remaining humans left after such a event would be any astronauts in orbit around Earth, or even better, maybe in colonies on Mars etc. However i'm not so sure about those in orbit around Earth either, its possible that some stray debris ejecting from Earth, or from the asteroid could pick them up as well.
shareAny astronauts orbiting the Earth would be too far away from the firestorm. And the firestorm would not reach beyond the atmosphere. I think the bigger problem for any remaining astronauts would be their landing or re-entry. No one to guide them down.
shareIt sure would be something to see from orbit though.
...then whoa, differences...
Yeah.... something terrifying. Not only would you have trouble coming to terms with losing billions of people through disintegration, you would wonder how you are going to cope in space for the time that you can stay there. For there would be no way you could breathe properly upon some miraculous safe return to Earth. I doubt that there would be oxygen sufficient for any person to breathe, even weeks after a firestorm. You would have to stay in space for weeks, in the hope that plant life survived somehow to try and rebuild a breathable atmosphere for the few humans alive (ie., those astronauts). Then there is the issue of finding food.
shareI think it went without saying that there wouldn't be a happy ending. Thanks though.
...then whoa, differences...
Fektthis to ask who would even notice a meteors impact in turning Australia into a barren land and what would be the difference, unless you were being sarcastic I suggest you read and look into Australian geography and it's diverse ecology and climates found in all states and territories.
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Oh dear. All I read about Australia is the gigantic spiders that want to take over. So that's a nope from me.
shareThe bigger question would be to wonder at how the firestorm survived 12 hours of travel, when it would have had to cross thousands of kilometers of ocean. I would have been confident that the firestorm could dissipated long before reaching Australia. The water would have been boiled to such an extent that it could douse the flame.
shareIt was a meteor (or asteroid) but it did not crash into Australia, the radio guy explicitly said that it hit onto the North Atlantic.
Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.share
Basically what happens is, if the object's big enough, molten rock gets flung out into the atmosphere and the Earth's crust gets peeled like an orange, and the impact travels like a wave of vaporized rock enveloping the Earth.
You'd notice because the sky would be on fire and it would rain lava.
Solar flare bell ends!!!
shareAs narrated by the presenter over the radio, it was a meteor which hit the North Atlantic ocean creating a massive fireball that slowly enveloped the world within 12 hours. Europe was the first to go, then the Americas, Asia, and it finally hit Australia.
shareIsn't 12h a little too slow for such a thing? I'd expect even a tsunami wave to move faster.
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I didn't say it was a Tsunami. It's just that we hear Tsunami wave travelling from the other end of the world in like 6h, I'd expect that wave of fire to move even faster.
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For it to take 12 hours, it sure took it's sweet time getting to Perth from the ocean scene. For it to go 1000km/h, it would take 12 hours to reach Perth from the North Atlantic. But I figure an initial impact would have dissipated long before then, and with the oceans boiling to help douse the firestorm, could probably be contained to one area of the world.
Deep Impact showed some degree of credibility, as it would have triggered a tsunami wave to impact the coastlines of adjacent landmasses. If this asteroid was large enough, it may generate some kind of firestorm, but nothing that would not dissipate within moments of impact.
For these sorts of things just think of it as movie physics and just a plot device as basically this film was about the peoples last moments not the moment itself.
shareA tsunami can travels at over 500mph in 15,000 feet of water but slows as depth decreases. The circumference of the earth is about 40,000km, assuming the meteor landed in the north Atlantic, i.e. approximately the other side of the earth, the wall of flame would have been travelling at approximately 1666.666 km/h.
The Blast wave from the nuclear detonations they were conducting in the 50s travelled at roughly the speed of sound i.e 1,235 km/h. Assuming that in either case their would be some deceleration, and though we're talking about a wall of fire rather than a standard detonation wave, I don't think the science here is particularly problematic.
Looks like it would have traveled around 9,000 miles in 12 hours. That puts the blast wave traveling around 750 mph which is just under the speed of sound.
shareEveryone interested should try this impact simulator:
https://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/
Gives actual answers for the various effects with more detail than you can imagine.
Would have been nice to see those in the movie, so it's more impending instead of just general doom and countdown. Like ground rumbling after an hour, a blast wave (still minimal damage) after 6 hours, then the tsunami a few hours after that.
At last someone who pays attention when watching a film.
shareThe time frame of ~12 hours is realistic for a moderately large meteor(ite) hitting the North Atlantic, but the reported "thousands of kilometres deep" devastation is not. If it was large enough to do damage this deep, the resulting blast would have traveled much much faster (just a few tens of minutes) due to the immense power of the strike, and the earth itself would have broken at the seams, with its structural integrity totally screwed up.
Only once in earth's history this has happened, when our newly born planet, whine it was a baby just a few millions years old, collided with a planet the size of the Mars, and as a result the moon was created. It's possible, however, that the "thousands of kilometres deep" quote was supposed to be due to the lead character's lack of adequate knowledge, not the screenwriter's. This is what a thousands of kilometres deep collision looks like :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0FCE4H0Dro
Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.share
So Africa was chilling?
shareYours is the best answer/comment. Thanks.
shareI was thinking the same thing and wondering why nobody else asked.... thank you. That was English with a slight Aussie accent, it wasn't a heavy accent at all.
The only way the OP's post makes sense is if English is his or her second language as you asked. If this person is native English speaking then the world is doomed.
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i'm American and i find the Aussie accent both easy to understand and incredibly sexy! the accent that i can hardly understand is...in the Scarlett Johansen film UNDER THE SKIN, a number of the men the lead (Scarlett) talks to have a VERY VERY think Scottish(?) accent. i swear i NEEDED subtitles when i watched the movie. lol. but yeah, Aussie accents are gorgeous and easy to understand IMO.
sharein the Scarlett Johansen film UNDER THE SKIN, a number of the men the lead (Scarlett) talks to have a VERY VERY think Scottish(?) accent. i swear i NEEDED subtitles when i watched the movie.
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Antartica was [probably] ok.
shareMaybe but then you'd still be in Antarctica and that seems kinda like a lateral move in most respects :P
Officer, I've had a doozy of a day...
Antarctica would have been a melted, molten mess. No amount of cold would have been enough to save someone from a blast of extreme heat like that. You could bunker down in an Antarctic bomb shelter, with a heap of survivalist gear inside. The blast would melt the snow before it got to the shelter, and you would cook inside the bunker. I think the idea of the movie was that no matter what the steps taken, the firestorm would obliterate whatever was in the path.
Antarctica would become a flooded, perforated landmass.
Pretty obvious from the opening scene that it was very large meteor impact.
shareI had no problem understanding any English dialogue US, Irish, Australian, etc until I hit my late 50's then like so many in that group even proper American dialogue becomes a chore. Perhaps he is in that age group. I visited my neighbor recently who is 67 and he wears wireless headphones while watching TV because he can't understand the words however regular conversation presents no challenge to him. I though it was because his wife never shuts up. It's just old age having a run at us. Then again I spent many decades as a rock bassist and that may have contributed.
He should look at subscene.com where there are several subs available for this movie that may be tweaked with SubMagic a freeware application.
You don't have to know someone to know someone.
Actually, it was two meteorites, in fact (probably a nod to Deep Impact) That hit the North Atlantic...
What seems to be the case though, is not that a tsunami wave or a "ball of fire" did the deed, but apparently the explosion created by the meteorites strike seems to have been so hot that it set the atmopsphere on fire, which was why there was no way of surviving it unless burrowing several kms down earth's crust, since the atmosphere being lit on fire would pretty much just incinerate EVERYTHING on the surface of the earth.
That's why the party guy's bunker plan was useless. Even if they somehow survived, there'd be no more air to breath, or food to eat.
I got the impression that the Meteor was similar in scope to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. It caused a massive fireball that consumed the planet then later shrouded it in a cloud of ash for around a year or two. Life would eventually bounce back but it would take a very long time. A meteor this size however would have been noticed well in advance and I would imagine wealthy and powerful people around the world prepared and had the bunkers and supplies to ride it out. I'm willing to bet humanity would survive but probably no more than a few hundred thousand max.
Well, the dinosaur extinction sized meteor wouldn't have done this damage. This is more in line with the pre-cambrian extinction event, where a huge asteroid pummeled the earth, and the seas were completely evaporated, with the entire surface of the earth scorched. Nothing survived that one btw, other than some microbes deep in volcanic vents.
So in a nutshell, there's simply no preparing for an event like that - recovery from the pre-cambrian extinction took 100 million years. To survive it you would need to be thousands of kilometers deep in the earth, which is not possible. Which I think was his point - there was no possible way to survive this, it's a planet wide extinction event. There is also no chance to explode or change the orbit of an object that large.
The earth has a dinosaur extinction sized meteor every 25 million years or so, as we pass through the galactic plane, objects in the Kuiper belt of the solar system are dislodged, and begin the cycling down to the sun. We've been overdue for quite some time - but eventually we will in fact be destroyed by one, unless we leave the planet. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. The answer is "eventually."
I presume a moderate sized Kuiper Belt object got knocked into a earth grazing orbit by a random collision. Could happen and no way to predict something like that. The early TV video shows it breaking apart possibly due to tidal stresses. Might have come down in pieces. If mostly frozen methane it would ignite in the atmosphere creating a super Tunguska event. Like a fuel air bomb it might not dig a very big crater but simply create an incineration shock wave traveling at the speed of sound. How big would it have to be? Dunno. Maybe more than 50 miles across. That would explain the slow expanding ring of fire.
Where's Bruce Willis when you need him!
Thank you! Now that explanation makes sense to me. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out now a rock falling into water would create fire but methane sounds reasonable to me.
Can you cite a source for this 'evaporation' of the Earth's oceans? I can't find that anywhere.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth-sciences/big-five-extinctions
Not very original, but 'We accept the love we think we deserve.' Brilliant.