it happened long before our time [Music] it would change the face of our planet forever [Music] a gigantic object from space smashed into the earth [Music] the planet was transformed into a fiery furnace it was left a wasteland [Music] all life was extinguished in one massive blow a whole era of earth's history came to an end but the world recovered and began to bloom once again the age of humanity dawned man conquered the earth and subdued it but the cosmos has long been preparing its second strike [Music] this is a future history of our planet
and its inhabitants in that future we are threatened by a catastrophe on an unimaginable scale a catastrophe just like the one that happened so long ago two years ago a deadly comet was discovered since then almost everywhere in the world people have constantly watched the skies [Music] only a few very remote areas have not yet heard of the imminent danger [Music] elsewhere people are working to avert the disaster at the last minute [Music] started yeah in 10 minutes don't worry i'll be there the center for advanced european studies nicknamed caesar in bonn germany geologist john
smith is carrying a core sample from the floor of the atlantic a reminder of the catastrophe 65 million years ago [Music] he is meeting with an international team of scientists to discuss the possible consequences of a comet hitting the earth that during the winter live in frozen lakes if it happens what will it mean for our world and its seven billion people this is going to obliterate all the life on a continental scale anything that's unprotected is going to die within the first few minutes after this impact [Music] today is the day the telescopes of
the world's largest observatories are all trained on one target astrophysicist noah boyle heads the observation team in hawaii he and computer scientist xiang yatang have supplied important data for the mission thanks sean i checked my data again agencies around the world have been on a red alert ever since this project established under the most intense pressure imaginable represents the collective brain power of our planet blast at least a tenth of the comma to deflect it from its orbit i'd rather bet on science than faith but we better a probe with a nuclear warhead 800 times
more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima has been launched to deflect the comet from its course like billions of people around the world the vaton family are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the probe's mission [Music] you'll recall almost six months ago the ariane 5 began its voyage from the european space agency launch center in peru overcoming immense technical obstacles engineers finally succeeded in mounting the rocket launcher's payload vagina have they blown it up they will don't you worry shh at just two minutes until impacted the sensor here are pictures of the comet transmitted
live the huge lump of ice and rock is racing toward earth at over 200 000 kilometers an hour fernando martinez has been working in houston for several years to support his wife and children in mexico and now a message from the president of the united states good morning on this day where the destiny of our precious world is at stake the government of the united states of america can be proud of the effort our country has made in cooperation with the international community but will the probe succeed given the limits of the technology scientists have
their doubts 18 months is a very short time in which to prepare any sort of response to a major emergency of this kind physicist alan harris runs an international research program aimed at averting catastrophic collisions there would be no time to develop any more powerful type of rocket than that is in everyday use at the present time and that rocket would have to be refitted in about 12 months in order to carry a payload of some four tons the largest available launch vehicle is the european space agency's ariane 5. with such a short lead time
it's the only option [Music] the rendezvous points will be at about the distance of the planet mars and that will be some four weeks before the comet is due to impact the earth [Music] if this doesn't work there's absolutely nothing we can do to avoid the greatest natural catastrophe that civilization has ever experienced this is the moment of truth may god be with us all if they don't crack it the sensor at least will give us the exact position of the comet [Music] the vast explosive power of the warhead is dissipated into space the comet
remains on course for earth papa what's going to happen now [Music] the comet of this size coming at us from the outer reaches of the solar system has a is traveling at very high velocity it has a tremendous amount of kinetic energy the forces required to deflect or destroy a comet of this size are completely beyond what is available with current technology and so in my opinion this attempt was doomed to failure right from the start and i i really can't see anything that we could possibly do news of the mission's failure spreads like wildfire
yet there are remote regions that remain oblivious to the growing fear lomama and the other men of the pygmy bakker tribe go on hunting as usual [Music] no maria i'm sure you're safe in yucatan i'll be with you soon maria how's our little baby doing good and louisa hey little lady no maria i'll take the smaller road i should be there in about three days stop worrying i love you fernando heads out of houston to return to mexico [Applause] no one yet knows just when the comet will hit [Music] far from the big city it
is deceptively calm in populated areas however the situation is deteriorating in sociologist wolf dombrovsky is a world-renowned disaster management expert national strategic reserves include non-perishable food water medicine and fuel in germany the stocks will last between three and four months assuming they survive the disaster what happens after that is anybody's guess we have a comet coming in at 135 000 miles an hour it's eight miles across and it's going to hit the earth at almost all of that velocity the atmosphere counts for nothing something like that will release 100 million megatons of energy it plows
through the atmosphere in a second or two whether it's a deep ocean or not doesn't matter it's so much bigger than even the depth of the deepest ocean that it just blasts out a huge crater this is going to obliterate all the life on a continental scale anything that's unprotected is going to die within the first few minutes after this impact no one knows exactly where the comet's point of impact will be okay chad now two degrees south experts are working round the clock to predict just where the comet will hit okay i see we
just have to wait wow this thing's putting out a hundred thousand kilograms of dust per second that's like 10 times more than come with haley in 1986. no wonder it's got such a big tail noah i've got a leak from a friend in our sebo they've estimated the coordinates of the point of impact have they released it no it's top secret they won't go public until they've got an evacuation plan the point of impact is now known but the breakthrough wasn't made with optical telescopes the radio telescope in arcebo puerto rico is the largest in
the world [Music] its data 10 times more precise than an optical telescope's made it possible to plot the point of impact to within a few kilometers the problem with this is we have to wait until the comet is really quite close to the earth uh about two weeks before the impact but at that time it will be possible to transmit a radio signal to the comet the comet will reflect a part of this signal and that will be then received at the ground as an echo now the transmitted signal will have a particular frequency and
the echo will have a slightly different frequency and on the basis of these radar data that we would then we will then be able to calculate exactly uh where on the surface of the earth and at what time the comet will hit the point of impact has still not been announced [Music] so beloved people of mexico this is a tragic day in the history of our country we have just received news that the point of impact of the comet will be somewhere in the region of the yucatan peninsula credible sources predict the complete destruction of
our country and the entire gulf of mexico region can the whole gulf of mexico region be evacuated in such a short time concrete good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the news at 8. tonight's coverage will be devoted exclusively to the comet three days ago scientists finally succeeded in determining the impact lisa my parents place in platoon would all be together and how are we supposed to get there now fruits were underway in the region leading to outbursts of violence in mexico and southern california [Music] the show from now on do not take sarah out
alone michelle end of discussion i'll come down once i'm ready okay give me half an hour [Music] in hawaii the scientists have finished their work what are you doing don't you want to be with your family when it hit my parents died in a car crash when i was 15. my dad used to take me camping you'd lie in our sleeping bags looking at the stars now i've got a front row seat i'm not giving it up take care of yourself all right and look after shine for me she's already gone home [Music] do you
think the seismographic data will transmit during the impact [Music] what are you doing here didn't you wanna i mean weren't you supposed to be on a plane like hours ago fight the mob for a seat at least we have something to do here don't we [Music] there are many evacuation plans which work perfectly in theory but experience shows that evacuating even a single large city can end in chaos hardly anyone actually makes it to their destination [Music] foreign [Music] law and order is breaking down in the final days before impact people are on edge as
never before fernando has been walking for days he hasn't met a soul who could have warned him [Music] [Music] hey hey hey hey stop the car hey hey [Music] new york city is almost 3 000 kilometers from the expected point of impact but new yorkers fear the worst most of them have already left anyone who could afford it has fled to another continent the others are trying to cross the border into canada [Music] dr david sutler specializes in the psychological consequences of hurricanes earthquakes and tsunamis as hurricane emily was making a direct threat on charleston
south carolina i went out and interviewed people and asked them what were they doing to prepare and what we found was that people who were older people who had higher income and the ability to buy supplies but also people who had an internal locus of control those people who believe that what they do can make a difference to prepare were more likely to prepare than those who had an external locus of control those who believed that what was going to happen to them was determined by fate or by luck whenever you like mr comet i'm
ready stupid idiot you could have killed her come on here come on in paris places and public shelters are scarce and nowhere near enough for everyone who has stayed in the city [Music] oh [Music] meanwhile in mexico fernando stumbles on an army barracks hey is anyone there [Music] [Music] oh come on everybody's gone and they left you to starve [Music] the chance of survival here only 800 kilometers from the calculated point of impact is minimal no one remains even the underground shelters are deserted [Music] the hunters have sighted buffalo near the village the baka tribes
people have no idea that their lives will soon change forever [Music] the comet announces its arrival like an angry god this is the latest computer simulation it shows that when the projectile strikes it doesn't much matter whether it strikes on land or in the ocean it heats the ground tremendously just like a super bicycle pump that you've pumped up the temperature gets up to 100 000 degrees after it reaches this temperature it expands out at high speed and throws material out several times the earth's radius into space at the same time it brushes the floor
of the impact crater away throws it out at high speed and removes about six miles of rock from the impact site calm down easy there i'll get this car fixed and i'll take you with me upon impact the comet releases energy equivalent to more than a hundred megatons of tnt come on maria pick up the damn phone the crater at this stage is about 60 miles in diameter and it's lined with partly vaporized and even melted rock at this stage the crater begins to collapse under gravity the floor rises the adjacent terrain collapses into the
cavity and we're left with a lake of lava 100 miles in diameter it only takes a couple of seconds for these enormous temperatures to cause an expanding fireball this fireball is hot initially ten times hotter than the surface of the sun anything within a thousand miles that sees that fireball will be incinerated [Applause] houston is obliterated within seconds the effect of the impact is felt at once thousands of kilometers away impact that was the emp wave the emp or electromagnetic pulse destroys all electronic equipment [Music] [Music] did you look at that charged particles create effects
similar to gigantic polar auroras they are harbingers of the coming disaster the tremendous amount of energy involved in an impact to this magnitude would cause the release of charged particles uh in particular electrons which would be moving around very very rapidly and these particles would give rise to very powerful electric and magnetic fields which would induce currents in any sort of electrical conductor anything containing a computer chip would probably be destroyed silent invisible the emp races around the world what's [Music] don't be afraid [Music] hey come look at this the cloud of dust and ash
has reached hawaii it brings a salty dirty rain that burns the skin traces of this phenomenon can be found in geological remains of disasters all over the world young smith specializes in analyzing the geological traces of the impact at the end of the cretaceous period we have here a special core from the atlantic ocean just one of the many you have here the slowly deposited sediments of the latest cretaceous of the mississippi era every 10 centimeters is 1000 years or so but then 65 million years ago we see this layer of greens ferals and and
brownish stuff and that was deposited only a few days which demonstrates the enormous power of the impact some 3000 kilometers away only the poorest of the poor remained in new york city during the next hour everything will suffocate under a thick coat of dust and ash [Music] but the next stage of the catastrophe is already underway when the comet falls into the shallow water off the coast of the yucatan peninsula it creates a wave almost a kilometer high this initial wave immediately breaks down to 30 to 50 meter and loses more height when it runs
into deeper water but it conserves its energy geophysicist robert weiss is an expert in the origin of tsunamis the wave height goes down in deeper water but it created a longer wavelength and this wavelengths travels to the coast the tsunami is not the flow of water it's a flow of energy which means that the water particle transfers its energy to the next one the approaching and precious water on the front of the wave and builds up a gigantic wall of water the tsunami hits a ravaged landscape what is left of the coastal areas is drowned
in the floods the water surges hundreds of kilometers into the interior the tsunami waves leave the gulf of mexico and propagate into the atlantic ocean the gigantic waves simply roll over the caribbean islands and race along the east coast towards north and south america a peripheral wave six meters high crashes into new york so the wave 100 kilometers long surges through the streets for hours before it begins to end [Music] [Music] [Music] the waves crossed the atlantic at over 500 kilometers an hour heading for africa and europe [Music] the waves are still almost as massive
as when they began cities such as dakar and lisbon then bordeaux and dress disappear beneath the deluge despite warnings many people have remained in the coastal areas in the pacific there is no tsunami wait come on but the temperature soon rises dramatically rock vapor condenses into small particles those small particles will re-enter the atmosphere all over the world and cause the most serious global problems of this impact [Music] unbearable heat all over the world within minutes the sky seems to be burning the scorching heat takes both people and animals by surprise the baka people have
never experienced anything like it they perform a ritual to break the terrible spell [Music] [Music] the outside temperature is now over 100 degrees celsius even in the observatory basement the effect of the rising firestorm is obvious the heat is created by rock vaporized during the impact and hurled out into space what's really going to cause the earth problems is the high speed ejector that falls all over the earth this stuff has condensed from the vapor it forms tiny little particles and rains back into the atmosphere all over the earth at the same time there's a
lot of rock debris fist-sized fragments that that fall in here and there around the earth but the dangerous part is really these small particles while the particles penetrate the atmosphere they heat themselves up and that causes thermal radiation that bathes the surface the the surface temperatures may rise as high as six or 700 degrees that will cause forest to burst into flame any unprotected animals human beings that can't get undercover will essentially be roasted alive in paris the air is getting thick it's difficult to breathe um outside it is already like an oven and the
temperature is still rising [Music] [Music] michelle [Music] the underground part of the samartan canal is salvation from the hell above the temperature outside soon reaches 400 degrees celsius the earth is burning [Music] the smoke from the fires mixes with the falling dust particles a thick veil forms over the earth at ground level the only light comes from the fires themselves when catastrophes occur everyone pitches in search and rescue is organized rapidly and efficiently but this time we see a bus by crosstalk network the international minecraft is gun the effect on the american continent is devastating
within a radius of 1500 kilometers from the point of impact not one stone is left standing on another [Music] further away the earth is covered in rock expelled by the comet the only people who survived were in underground shelters [Music] after the dusk cloud and the tsunami fires rage in new york hey hey fernando's bunker withstood the earth tremors that followed the impact he survived but what has happened to this land that was once his home [Music] the baka tribe's people survived they took shelter in a nearby cave [Music] henry manages to hotwire an abandoned
car an older model with no electronics it survived the high voltage electromagnetic pulse now they face a time that will put society to a grueling test a time when the rules will be sacrificed in the fight for survival hey there's a well i'm gonna get us something to drink you sit tight with your mother don't leave the car and sting or something [Music] the car catherine [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign is would you look at this yeah must be luna or something but let's look for the others you really think you still need those [Music] yes
let's go at this stage no one has any idea of the extent of the catastrophe almost 75 of all life has been extinguished it is uncertain whether the survivors have any chance of a future the earth is in the deadly embrace of a night that will last for months [Music] [Music] uh you
