Doomsday: 10 Ways the World Will End (2016) s01e01 Episode Script
Killer Asteroid
Every corner of the planet has been struck by disaster.
But some events are so cataclysmic They threaten - Go, go, go! Our very existence.
- It's a dangerous universe.
There's a lot of ways the human race can go extinct.
Will you be ready when doomsday strikes? Can any of us survive? 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid hit Earth and killed off the dinosaurs.
What if the same-sized rock struck the planet today? Would you survive? - On the scale of disasters, this would really challenge humankind to survive.
- Think of your world, and then turn everything upside down.
You will do anything for your loved ones.
At that point, it's survive or die.
Mount Lemmon Observatory.
Astronomers monitor the night sky.
It's a routine evening Until they spot something that catches them completely off guard.
- Ma'am, you might want to take a look at this.
- This can't be right.
It's an asteroid seven miles wide, and it's on a collision course with Earth.
- There's a small possibility that something this large could sneak by all the early warning systems that astronomers have in place.
And if that happens, there's this event, and there's nothing we can do.
Asteroids are leftover debris from the formation of our solar system.
About 100 tons of these space rocks plunge into Earth's atmosphere every day.
Most are so small that they burn up before hitting the ground.
But larger asteroids pose a threat to humanity.
Even one a half-mile wide could destroy a city and possibly bring down civilization with its after-effects.
But the asteroid heading towards us is more than 14 times that size, the same size as the one that killed off the dinosaurs.
Falling at 43,000 miles per hour There's no time to destroy or deflect it.
Miami, Florida.
It's a busy day on South Beach.
Suddenly, an explosive light streaks across the sky.
- Oh, my God.
- What you'd see is a small spot in the sky that would increase in brightness to an unimaginable amount.
- You would see the fireball.
And it would almost look like a second sun in the sky.
- If you could somehow be right behind the asteroid as it punches a hole through the atmosphere, there would be this perfect window to the cosmos In the middle of this expanse of daylight sky.
It would be like a black hole opened up and you could see through it into space.
- The atmosphere is shock heated.
You're effectively opening up a rarefied channel through the atmosphere for the several seconds that this mountain is just booming through the atmosphere, which rapidly fills in again.
It won't be the last Miami sees of the killer asteroid.
Over 650 miles to the southwest, in Chichen Itza, Mexico, these Mayan temples were once ancient observatories where astronomers tracked the movement of the sun and stars.
But these ancient people never witnessed anything like this.
- What is that? As tourists take in the temples, the falling asteroid intensifies into a blinding light.
- Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
What is that? Oh, my God, we have to go! We have to go! - Go! - Go! - Go, run! Run! - If you were looking up at the place where the asteroid is coming in, that could burn your skin and cause even permanent blindness if you were looking right at it.
- Run! The asteroid is headed for the Gulf of Mexico, over 500 miles off the coast of Florida, near the Yucatan Peninsula.
The exact spot where the dinosaur-killer asteroid struck.
Seconds later, impact.
- We're talking the release of something like 100 million megatons of TNT.
That's something like seven or eight billion Hiroshima bombs all in one place, all at one instant.
The asteroid eats away at the bottom of the ocean floor, creating a hole nearly 20 miles deep and 100 miles across, as wide as the distance from New York to Philadelphia.
- The excavation of this very large crater, actually, to our eyes, would almost appear to happen in slow motion.
This is not a small impact that happens instantaneously on a human timescale.
This happens over several minutes.
- The momentum of the impact has pushed the rock aside, and it continues to grow and open a crater, a hole that ends up being as large as metropolitan New York or London.
Eleven seconds after impact, the energy strike produces thermal radiation.
Waves of intense heat travel out in all directions across the surface of the Earth at 670 million miles per hour.
- Thermal radiation is just like the infrared light that's emitted by a fire or glowing embers.
You're not directly seeing, you're just feeling it.
As the radiation wave hits Chichen Itza, Mexico, temperatures reach 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
- You're going to be fried from the impact fireball.
You're talking twice the temperature of the surface of the sun.
Anybody within a 200-mile radius of the explosion doesn't even have a chance to run.
They are instantly killed.
But the destruction quickly spreads far beyond the impact zone.
The speed and size of the asteroid impact creates such extreme temperatures that it melts and vaporizes some of the rock from the crater, which is ejected into the atmosphere.
- The crystals in the rock that the impactor hits can get vaporized.
And that vapor gets flung out, and then as it cools, it condenses into glassy little spheres, and those can then get dispersed throughout much of the world.
The debris rains down on cities within about 600 miles of the impact.
From Houston and New Orleans to Mexico City, with its population of 20 million people.
For anyone caught outside, they face almost certain death.
- Think sort of like a volcanic eruption, the way that you think of material falling out of the sky.
- Mexico City would be covered with tons of ejecta from the blast, scorching chunks of the Earth's crust that will incinerate, burn anything they touch.
Including humans.
Anyone this close to the impact is burned or crushed by searing hot debris.
But even people in cities farther away aren't safe.
1,500 miles from the point of impact New York City is hit with chunks of rock And intense heat.
- That ejecta, it's been pulverized into smaller sizes.
It's entering the atmosphere at very, very high speeds, enough to actually heat the upper atmosphere.
The upper atmosphere is now radiating down on you like a sun lamp.
From Central Park to the mountains of Maine, the entire eastern seaboard becomes a blazing inferno.
- The first thing that would happen is that the leaves would begin to steam a little bit, and then pop, and then turn brown and smoke.
And finally, burst into flame.
Millions of people have been killed in the initial impact.
S to spread around the world Who will survive? And for how long? - You have to adapt or die.
66 million years ago, a massive asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs.
If an asteroid just as big struck today, would you survive? In the Gulf of Mexico, over 500 miles south of Miami, an asteroid seven miles wide, the size of Mount Everest, has crashed into the water, kicking off a chain reaction of horrifying disasters across the planet.
- If an event the same as what killed the dinosaurs happened today, you're talking about the near-complete destruction of anything and everything on the planet.
- There's no place on Earth that is actually safe from an impact of this scale.
Within minutes, the asteroid impact unleashes a wave of thermal radiation and sends trillions of tons of rocky debris crashing across the globe.
And now the Earth begins to tremble.
The asteroid strikes the planet with such force that it triggers earthquakes that travel from the impact site in all directions.
In Los Angeles, a cloud of ash cloaks the city.
Minutes later, a massive earthquake shakes southern California to its core.
At a magnitude of 10.
8, it's the most powerful in recorded history.
People attempt to find cover as thousands become trapped or buried alive under collapsing buildings.
- Earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes.
An impact that large could trigger earthquakes all around the globe.
We could have cascading earthquakes all the way from Mexico up to Alaska on that plate boundary.
Approximately 100 miles south of Mexico City A group of farmers takes refuge from the heat, debris, and tremors in one of the largest cave systems in the world.
But they're far from safe.
- If you were sheltered inside a cave, there would be very, very strong seismic shaking.
Certainly even if the whole cave didn't collapse, you'd have rocks falling off the ceiling.
Your entrance would be buried by very hot material that you wouldn't want to go near.
As the farmers try and wait out the destruction, and earthquakes continue to jolt the planet, a shockwave radiates from the impact site in all directions.
- You're now going to have the blast wave, the shock wave, the compressed atmosphere that can't get out of the way fast enough from this hypervelocity impact.
And that produces a Effectively, a very big bomb blast.
The blast of air hits places like New Orleans and Mexico City at 875 miles per hour, almost three times the speed of the fastest tornado on record.
For those caught in these fierce winds, there is nowhere to run or hide.
- This supersonic wind could knock people off their feet, and the whole city is now covered in shrapnels of glass as material continues to fall from the sky.
- It would be, obviously, the loudest sound you've ever heard.
The concussion from an event like that is going to burst your lungs, rupture your internal organs.
You're going to die pretty much immediately from a blast like that.
With many parts of the U.
S.
either completely destroyed or on fire, the shockwave and ejected rock and dust now make their way across oceans.
Cities in Europe and Asia are now feeling the asteroid's deadly effects.
In London, England, people flee the streets, under attack from the scorching heat and debris.
- London, like the rest of the world, would really first notice the global effects.
The ejecta falling out, the sky turning bright red or white as thermal radiation came down to the surface and set things on fire.
To survive means going underground.
Tens of thousands of Londoners find sanctuary in deep-level air raid shelters that were last used during World War II.
- Say thousands of people get down there.
They could live quite a while if they had enough supplies.
But you also have to think about the human condition.
If your family's split up, and they're in one air raid shelter and you're in another.
If you're not used to living underground.
You're talking about placing a species that is completely used to a singular way of life into an entirely different environment.
Staying underground seems to be the only hope for survival.
As people all over the world seek refuge below the surface, how long can they really survive? Especially when the next wave of the disaster hits? 66 million years ago, an asteroid impact wiped out most life on Earth.
What would happen if it struck in the same place today? Would any of us survive? In every corner of the world Human civilization is under attack from a series of catastrophes triggered by the massive impact.
- So you have rocks, fire, steam, pressure, sound, earthquakes, all at the same time.
It's literally an apocalypse.
And this is just the beginning.
When the mountain-sized rock struck the Earth in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it created a ring of waves spreading in all directions, producing massive tsunamis.
Waves hundreds of feet high surge toward the cities on the Gulf Coast of the United States, sending people running for their lives.
- We're talking about massive waves.
Not one, but there's actually many waves, separated by minutes, that will impact the coast and engulf anything and everything in its way.
Over 650 miles northeast of the impact, in Miami, Florida, where the asteroid was first seen blazing through the sky nine hours ago A tsunami over 30 stories high now barrels toward the city.
- In the peninsula of Florida, your highest points are only, you know, maybe 100 feet above sea level.
A tsunami of that magnitude is gonna be pretty devastating.
A wall of water blasts through Miami like a wrecking ball.
The wave churns up broken glass and metal that pulverizes people struggling to swim to safety.
And then drags them to a watery grave.
- Florida will suffer greatly.
It's exposed from every side, and it's a particularly shallow piece of land with nothing that can really stand in the way of the monster wave.
- Cities like Miami are going to be absolutely inundated.
We know from the geologic evidence, after the dinosaur-killing impact, tsunamis raced inland deep enough to uproot forests and drag them back out into the Gulf.
- If it happened today in the same semi-shallow water, you would have waves traversing the land all the way into Tennessee.
This is covering states.
It's covering countries.
After tsunamis have ravaged the U.
S.
coastline along the Gulf of Mexico Approximately 100 miles south of Mexico City, the group of farmers who fled into one of the largest cave systems in the world has survived the immediate effects of the disaster.
They dig their way out of the cavern Only to discover an apocalyptic wasteland.
- Everything on Earth is either dying, is on fire, or has collapsed.
You are walking out of this cave system into a modern hellscape.
- The landscape would look like the moon.
There'd be rocks everywhere.
It would be an utterly devastated landscape.
- If you've initially survived in the cave, you're still in deep trouble, because now you're gonna have to forage for food.
The rotting corpses of animals that were killed.
Probably any vegetation on the surface is gonna be un-edible.
Within one week of the asteroid strike, the farmers' chance of survival looks grim, and they're not alone.
A quarter of the world's population is already dead.
Can mankind hold out? Or is this the beginning of the end? What if an asteroid as massive as the one that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago struck in the same place today? Could mankind survive? Already the Gulf Coast of the US and Mexico has been ripped apart by a hail of hot debris, shockwaves, and tsunamis.
Southern California and parts of Asia have been rocked by earthquakes and searing temperatures.
Nearly two billion people have already died.
And most survivors are hanging on by a thread.
But the devastation has only just begun.
- This isn't just flash and it's done.
The secondary effects could cause even longer-lasting damage.
If you survived the initial impact, you would be stepping out into a hellscape of absolute chaos.
And unless you're prepared for it, you're going to die.
When the asteroid slammed into the ocean floor, it ejected rock containing toxins that become potent as battery acid.
- Sulfur-containing compounds released to the atmosphere combining with rainwater are gonna make sulfuric acid rains.
- The acid rain would do a huge amount of damage to everything on the planet.
Buildings would corrode.
Plants would die.
Rivers would be clouded, full of material.
Most reservoirs would be undrinkable.
You would have to have some amazing water filtration systems to even begin to think about survival at this point.
In Los Angeles, one week after the impact, survivors are still recovering from the massive earthquake that almost leveled the city.
They now must battle toxic dust, aerosols, and acid rain.
- If you were to survive long enough, and you were to come out of your shelter or anything like that, you'll have to have protective equipment.
You'll have to have goggles from all the dust in the air.
You'll have to have a filtration system, a respirator.
The combined effects of dust, smoke, and acid rain do more than pollute the air and soil.
They almost completely block out the sun's rays.
Without sunlight, plant photosynthesis stops.
Without crops, animals will die.
And without plants and animals, people will perish.
- Effectively, the whole food chain is broken.
We know that the extinction nearly 66 million years ago was a global event, because beyond just the dinosaurs dying, we know that roughly 2/3 of all species of life perished throughout the world.
And so this impact had to have global consequences.
- Changing the atmospheric composition, that's gonna severely affect agricultural plants.
There's gonna be a lot of people out trying to scavenge food beyond their local supermarkets.
That's for sure.
- You will do anything for your loved ones.
- Let's go.
- That includes instituting survivalist tribal war to try and get someone else's resources.
- Go! - At that point, it's survive or die.
Nearly 11,000 miles away from the impact site, in the rural western desert of Australia, the Martu, a group of aboriginal Australians, are one of the oldest and most resilient cultures in the world, with roots dating back 40,000 years.
But they've never encountered a mysterious disaster like this.
The lingering acid rain wreaks havoc on the landscape, and slowly kills off their main food source: Kangaroo.
But the Martu are resourceful.
They set small bush fires to expose the burrows of lizards.
Small lizards also survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago, because they lived underground and fed on insect larvae such as beetles and cockroaches, which also escaped extinction.
- The aboriginal people may fare fairly well.
They are used to rooting out, almost literally, food sources.
They're used to hunting and gathering, and having a deep knowledge of the world in a way that city dwellers don't.
But while the Martu use primitive hunting skills to try to stay alive - Get it.
Get it.
Other humans are faced with an environmental ticking time bomb that threatens our existence forever, as the Earth turns from fire Could mankind survive a massive asteroid impact like the one that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago? Six months after a devastating asteroid strike, human life on Earth hangs by a thread.
As things are about to get worse.
A blanket of dust and aerosols is having a chilling effect on the climate.
Due to the absence of sunlight, the world is plunged into a deep freeze, an impact winter.
- The amount of particulate that will be thrown in the air during an asteroid impact is enough to cool the planet extremely rapidly, days, weeks, months.
Because of that, temperatures will absolutely drop.
- It's a perfect double-whammy.
First, the hot fire.
And now, freezing temperatures.
It would bring many species to the edge of existence.
Around the globe, the average temperature plummets nearly 13 degrees.
It's a worldwide chill that reaches extremes in places like London, where the spring temperatures are 50 degrees Fahrenheit below normal.
The air raid shelters, where tens of thousands had taken refuge, have become mass graves.
The survivors have no choice but to brave the elements in search of food and water, trying not to become the final victims of a new mass extinction.
- You're dealing with no sunlight.
No animals on the surface of the planet.
You'd have to dig down for them.
You'd have to be comfortable eating them.
Not a whole lot of people are like that, unfortunately.
One year after the asteroid impact, the toxic dust begins to dissipate across the globe Allowing the sun's rays to reach the Earth's surface once again.
But with this, another danger awaits the survivors.
The Earth's ozone layer, an atmospheric shield in the planet's stratosphere, is completely destroyed.
- The impact would eject a lot of compounds that would react with Earth's ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, destroying them.
And then the sun's ultraviolet radiation would be much more likely to penetrate through Earth's atmosphere, react with our living cells, and cause mutations, most of which are hazardous to our health.
- If you get too much ultraviolet radiation, it causes all sorts of biological damage.
You can get skin cancers.
You can get burns.
It causes cataracts.
In Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, and other places around the world, ozone depletion isn't the only new danger.
Once the dust and toxins have settled, temperatures begin to rise due to the enormous amount of carbon dioxide that has been released.
- You'd have an increased warming, an elevated greenhouse effect.
Because various limestone-type rocks would've been vaporized by the impact.
That would send the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- It circulates around the planet.
Temperature rises as much as maybe 10 or even 12 degrees globally.
As temperatures become unbearably hot, the last few survivors cling to life.
66 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck planet Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Could humans survive if the same thing happened today? Two years after the asteroid impact, life on Earth is enduring the worst disaster in human history.
At least half the world's population of 7 billion has perished.
- There's gonna be so much devastation and so much chaos that it's gonna be "Mad Max" world.
No person alive on the planet at the time of the impact will ever see a normal life after that.
100 miles south of Mexico City, a dwindling group of farmers clings to life inside a cave, subsisting on a diet of bats, rats, and snakes, all descendants of species that survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
The limestone bedrock neutralizes the acid rain deposits in the cave's river water, making it safe to drink.
Ave to be in there long enough, it's a lot more than just food, shelter, and water to think about.
The human psyche will really have a massive impact on any kind of survivability.
Over 1,500 miles to the north, in New York City, sparse pockets of humanity sleep in the day to avoid the harsh environment outside.
They troll subways and alleys at night hunting for rats and possum.
But we are not built for a nocturnal existence.
- As humans, we need vitamin D.
Vitamin D is best synthesized in the human body by being exposed to the sun.
If there is no sun, we begin turning into a nocturnal lifestyle, like mole people.
You start losing hair.
Your liver isn't functioning very well.
Your skin begins to reduce its melanin.
And if you have to live in there for generations, you have these weird, pasty white people who are blind.
Halfway around the world, the aboriginal Martu have migrated to the west coast of Australia.
They spend much of the day in coastal caves, protected from the UV rays and searing heat.
At dusk, they hunt for turtles, one of the few marine creatures that have endured the disaster.
- Turtles survived the impact 65 1/2 million years ago because they are great at adapting.
They can survive huge temperature variations, acidity levels.
They could eat dead carcasses.
They could eat seaweed and anything falling through the water column.
By relying on creatures like these for food, the Martu will be among the last survivors on planet Earth.
But the asteroid impact will decimate the human population as a whole.
66 million years ago, when the first killer asteroid hit Most land creatures weighing over 30 pounds went extinct, which means the long-term outlook for humanity is grim Leaving the very existence of our species in doubt.
- I would guess something like 99% of the human population would die in such an event.
- Long-term? Say 10% of all of humanity lives.
Then you have a genetic bottleneck that may not be a viable population.
It gets to a point where, all of a sudden, you're the last group of people on Earth.
And if that happens, you may survive for a generation or two.
Our intellect is our tool.
That is our evolutionary edge.
But we've lost the kind of necessary, natural tools to use in a situation like this.
The next great extinction likely will be us.
But some events are so cataclysmic They threaten - Go, go, go! Our very existence.
- It's a dangerous universe.
There's a lot of ways the human race can go extinct.
Will you be ready when doomsday strikes? Can any of us survive? 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid hit Earth and killed off the dinosaurs.
What if the same-sized rock struck the planet today? Would you survive? - On the scale of disasters, this would really challenge humankind to survive.
- Think of your world, and then turn everything upside down.
You will do anything for your loved ones.
At that point, it's survive or die.
Mount Lemmon Observatory.
Astronomers monitor the night sky.
It's a routine evening Until they spot something that catches them completely off guard.
- Ma'am, you might want to take a look at this.
- This can't be right.
It's an asteroid seven miles wide, and it's on a collision course with Earth.
- There's a small possibility that something this large could sneak by all the early warning systems that astronomers have in place.
And if that happens, there's this event, and there's nothing we can do.
Asteroids are leftover debris from the formation of our solar system.
About 100 tons of these space rocks plunge into Earth's atmosphere every day.
Most are so small that they burn up before hitting the ground.
But larger asteroids pose a threat to humanity.
Even one a half-mile wide could destroy a city and possibly bring down civilization with its after-effects.
But the asteroid heading towards us is more than 14 times that size, the same size as the one that killed off the dinosaurs.
Falling at 43,000 miles per hour There's no time to destroy or deflect it.
Miami, Florida.
It's a busy day on South Beach.
Suddenly, an explosive light streaks across the sky.
- Oh, my God.
- What you'd see is a small spot in the sky that would increase in brightness to an unimaginable amount.
- You would see the fireball.
And it would almost look like a second sun in the sky.
- If you could somehow be right behind the asteroid as it punches a hole through the atmosphere, there would be this perfect window to the cosmos In the middle of this expanse of daylight sky.
It would be like a black hole opened up and you could see through it into space.
- The atmosphere is shock heated.
You're effectively opening up a rarefied channel through the atmosphere for the several seconds that this mountain is just booming through the atmosphere, which rapidly fills in again.
It won't be the last Miami sees of the killer asteroid.
Over 650 miles to the southwest, in Chichen Itza, Mexico, these Mayan temples were once ancient observatories where astronomers tracked the movement of the sun and stars.
But these ancient people never witnessed anything like this.
- What is that? As tourists take in the temples, the falling asteroid intensifies into a blinding light.
- Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
What is that? Oh, my God, we have to go! We have to go! - Go! - Go! - Go, run! Run! - If you were looking up at the place where the asteroid is coming in, that could burn your skin and cause even permanent blindness if you were looking right at it.
- Run! The asteroid is headed for the Gulf of Mexico, over 500 miles off the coast of Florida, near the Yucatan Peninsula.
The exact spot where the dinosaur-killer asteroid struck.
Seconds later, impact.
- We're talking the release of something like 100 million megatons of TNT.
That's something like seven or eight billion Hiroshima bombs all in one place, all at one instant.
The asteroid eats away at the bottom of the ocean floor, creating a hole nearly 20 miles deep and 100 miles across, as wide as the distance from New York to Philadelphia.
- The excavation of this very large crater, actually, to our eyes, would almost appear to happen in slow motion.
This is not a small impact that happens instantaneously on a human timescale.
This happens over several minutes.
- The momentum of the impact has pushed the rock aside, and it continues to grow and open a crater, a hole that ends up being as large as metropolitan New York or London.
Eleven seconds after impact, the energy strike produces thermal radiation.
Waves of intense heat travel out in all directions across the surface of the Earth at 670 million miles per hour.
- Thermal radiation is just like the infrared light that's emitted by a fire or glowing embers.
You're not directly seeing, you're just feeling it.
As the radiation wave hits Chichen Itza, Mexico, temperatures reach 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
- You're going to be fried from the impact fireball.
You're talking twice the temperature of the surface of the sun.
Anybody within a 200-mile radius of the explosion doesn't even have a chance to run.
They are instantly killed.
But the destruction quickly spreads far beyond the impact zone.
The speed and size of the asteroid impact creates such extreme temperatures that it melts and vaporizes some of the rock from the crater, which is ejected into the atmosphere.
- The crystals in the rock that the impactor hits can get vaporized.
And that vapor gets flung out, and then as it cools, it condenses into glassy little spheres, and those can then get dispersed throughout much of the world.
The debris rains down on cities within about 600 miles of the impact.
From Houston and New Orleans to Mexico City, with its population of 20 million people.
For anyone caught outside, they face almost certain death.
- Think sort of like a volcanic eruption, the way that you think of material falling out of the sky.
- Mexico City would be covered with tons of ejecta from the blast, scorching chunks of the Earth's crust that will incinerate, burn anything they touch.
Including humans.
Anyone this close to the impact is burned or crushed by searing hot debris.
But even people in cities farther away aren't safe.
1,500 miles from the point of impact New York City is hit with chunks of rock And intense heat.
- That ejecta, it's been pulverized into smaller sizes.
It's entering the atmosphere at very, very high speeds, enough to actually heat the upper atmosphere.
The upper atmosphere is now radiating down on you like a sun lamp.
From Central Park to the mountains of Maine, the entire eastern seaboard becomes a blazing inferno.
- The first thing that would happen is that the leaves would begin to steam a little bit, and then pop, and then turn brown and smoke.
And finally, burst into flame.
Millions of people have been killed in the initial impact.
S to spread around the world Who will survive? And for how long? - You have to adapt or die.
66 million years ago, a massive asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs.
If an asteroid just as big struck today, would you survive? In the Gulf of Mexico, over 500 miles south of Miami, an asteroid seven miles wide, the size of Mount Everest, has crashed into the water, kicking off a chain reaction of horrifying disasters across the planet.
- If an event the same as what killed the dinosaurs happened today, you're talking about the near-complete destruction of anything and everything on the planet.
- There's no place on Earth that is actually safe from an impact of this scale.
Within minutes, the asteroid impact unleashes a wave of thermal radiation and sends trillions of tons of rocky debris crashing across the globe.
And now the Earth begins to tremble.
The asteroid strikes the planet with such force that it triggers earthquakes that travel from the impact site in all directions.
In Los Angeles, a cloud of ash cloaks the city.
Minutes later, a massive earthquake shakes southern California to its core.
At a magnitude of 10.
8, it's the most powerful in recorded history.
People attempt to find cover as thousands become trapped or buried alive under collapsing buildings.
- Earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes.
An impact that large could trigger earthquakes all around the globe.
We could have cascading earthquakes all the way from Mexico up to Alaska on that plate boundary.
Approximately 100 miles south of Mexico City A group of farmers takes refuge from the heat, debris, and tremors in one of the largest cave systems in the world.
But they're far from safe.
- If you were sheltered inside a cave, there would be very, very strong seismic shaking.
Certainly even if the whole cave didn't collapse, you'd have rocks falling off the ceiling.
Your entrance would be buried by very hot material that you wouldn't want to go near.
As the farmers try and wait out the destruction, and earthquakes continue to jolt the planet, a shockwave radiates from the impact site in all directions.
- You're now going to have the blast wave, the shock wave, the compressed atmosphere that can't get out of the way fast enough from this hypervelocity impact.
And that produces a Effectively, a very big bomb blast.
The blast of air hits places like New Orleans and Mexico City at 875 miles per hour, almost three times the speed of the fastest tornado on record.
For those caught in these fierce winds, there is nowhere to run or hide.
- This supersonic wind could knock people off their feet, and the whole city is now covered in shrapnels of glass as material continues to fall from the sky.
- It would be, obviously, the loudest sound you've ever heard.
The concussion from an event like that is going to burst your lungs, rupture your internal organs.
You're going to die pretty much immediately from a blast like that.
With many parts of the U.
S.
either completely destroyed or on fire, the shockwave and ejected rock and dust now make their way across oceans.
Cities in Europe and Asia are now feeling the asteroid's deadly effects.
In London, England, people flee the streets, under attack from the scorching heat and debris.
- London, like the rest of the world, would really first notice the global effects.
The ejecta falling out, the sky turning bright red or white as thermal radiation came down to the surface and set things on fire.
To survive means going underground.
Tens of thousands of Londoners find sanctuary in deep-level air raid shelters that were last used during World War II.
- Say thousands of people get down there.
They could live quite a while if they had enough supplies.
But you also have to think about the human condition.
If your family's split up, and they're in one air raid shelter and you're in another.
If you're not used to living underground.
You're talking about placing a species that is completely used to a singular way of life into an entirely different environment.
Staying underground seems to be the only hope for survival.
As people all over the world seek refuge below the surface, how long can they really survive? Especially when the next wave of the disaster hits? 66 million years ago, an asteroid impact wiped out most life on Earth.
What would happen if it struck in the same place today? Would any of us survive? In every corner of the world Human civilization is under attack from a series of catastrophes triggered by the massive impact.
- So you have rocks, fire, steam, pressure, sound, earthquakes, all at the same time.
It's literally an apocalypse.
And this is just the beginning.
When the mountain-sized rock struck the Earth in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it created a ring of waves spreading in all directions, producing massive tsunamis.
Waves hundreds of feet high surge toward the cities on the Gulf Coast of the United States, sending people running for their lives.
- We're talking about massive waves.
Not one, but there's actually many waves, separated by minutes, that will impact the coast and engulf anything and everything in its way.
Over 650 miles northeast of the impact, in Miami, Florida, where the asteroid was first seen blazing through the sky nine hours ago A tsunami over 30 stories high now barrels toward the city.
- In the peninsula of Florida, your highest points are only, you know, maybe 100 feet above sea level.
A tsunami of that magnitude is gonna be pretty devastating.
A wall of water blasts through Miami like a wrecking ball.
The wave churns up broken glass and metal that pulverizes people struggling to swim to safety.
And then drags them to a watery grave.
- Florida will suffer greatly.
It's exposed from every side, and it's a particularly shallow piece of land with nothing that can really stand in the way of the monster wave.
- Cities like Miami are going to be absolutely inundated.
We know from the geologic evidence, after the dinosaur-killing impact, tsunamis raced inland deep enough to uproot forests and drag them back out into the Gulf.
- If it happened today in the same semi-shallow water, you would have waves traversing the land all the way into Tennessee.
This is covering states.
It's covering countries.
After tsunamis have ravaged the U.
S.
coastline along the Gulf of Mexico Approximately 100 miles south of Mexico City, the group of farmers who fled into one of the largest cave systems in the world has survived the immediate effects of the disaster.
They dig their way out of the cavern Only to discover an apocalyptic wasteland.
- Everything on Earth is either dying, is on fire, or has collapsed.
You are walking out of this cave system into a modern hellscape.
- The landscape would look like the moon.
There'd be rocks everywhere.
It would be an utterly devastated landscape.
- If you've initially survived in the cave, you're still in deep trouble, because now you're gonna have to forage for food.
The rotting corpses of animals that were killed.
Probably any vegetation on the surface is gonna be un-edible.
Within one week of the asteroid strike, the farmers' chance of survival looks grim, and they're not alone.
A quarter of the world's population is already dead.
Can mankind hold out? Or is this the beginning of the end? What if an asteroid as massive as the one that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago struck in the same place today? Could mankind survive? Already the Gulf Coast of the US and Mexico has been ripped apart by a hail of hot debris, shockwaves, and tsunamis.
Southern California and parts of Asia have been rocked by earthquakes and searing temperatures.
Nearly two billion people have already died.
And most survivors are hanging on by a thread.
But the devastation has only just begun.
- This isn't just flash and it's done.
The secondary effects could cause even longer-lasting damage.
If you survived the initial impact, you would be stepping out into a hellscape of absolute chaos.
And unless you're prepared for it, you're going to die.
When the asteroid slammed into the ocean floor, it ejected rock containing toxins that become potent as battery acid.
- Sulfur-containing compounds released to the atmosphere combining with rainwater are gonna make sulfuric acid rains.
- The acid rain would do a huge amount of damage to everything on the planet.
Buildings would corrode.
Plants would die.
Rivers would be clouded, full of material.
Most reservoirs would be undrinkable.
You would have to have some amazing water filtration systems to even begin to think about survival at this point.
In Los Angeles, one week after the impact, survivors are still recovering from the massive earthquake that almost leveled the city.
They now must battle toxic dust, aerosols, and acid rain.
- If you were to survive long enough, and you were to come out of your shelter or anything like that, you'll have to have protective equipment.
You'll have to have goggles from all the dust in the air.
You'll have to have a filtration system, a respirator.
The combined effects of dust, smoke, and acid rain do more than pollute the air and soil.
They almost completely block out the sun's rays.
Without sunlight, plant photosynthesis stops.
Without crops, animals will die.
And without plants and animals, people will perish.
- Effectively, the whole food chain is broken.
We know that the extinction nearly 66 million years ago was a global event, because beyond just the dinosaurs dying, we know that roughly 2/3 of all species of life perished throughout the world.
And so this impact had to have global consequences.
- Changing the atmospheric composition, that's gonna severely affect agricultural plants.
There's gonna be a lot of people out trying to scavenge food beyond their local supermarkets.
That's for sure.
- You will do anything for your loved ones.
- Let's go.
- That includes instituting survivalist tribal war to try and get someone else's resources.
- Go! - At that point, it's survive or die.
Nearly 11,000 miles away from the impact site, in the rural western desert of Australia, the Martu, a group of aboriginal Australians, are one of the oldest and most resilient cultures in the world, with roots dating back 40,000 years.
But they've never encountered a mysterious disaster like this.
The lingering acid rain wreaks havoc on the landscape, and slowly kills off their main food source: Kangaroo.
But the Martu are resourceful.
They set small bush fires to expose the burrows of lizards.
Small lizards also survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago, because they lived underground and fed on insect larvae such as beetles and cockroaches, which also escaped extinction.
- The aboriginal people may fare fairly well.
They are used to rooting out, almost literally, food sources.
They're used to hunting and gathering, and having a deep knowledge of the world in a way that city dwellers don't.
But while the Martu use primitive hunting skills to try to stay alive - Get it.
Get it.
Other humans are faced with an environmental ticking time bomb that threatens our existence forever, as the Earth turns from fire Could mankind survive a massive asteroid impact like the one that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago? Six months after a devastating asteroid strike, human life on Earth hangs by a thread.
As things are about to get worse.
A blanket of dust and aerosols is having a chilling effect on the climate.
Due to the absence of sunlight, the world is plunged into a deep freeze, an impact winter.
- The amount of particulate that will be thrown in the air during an asteroid impact is enough to cool the planet extremely rapidly, days, weeks, months.
Because of that, temperatures will absolutely drop.
- It's a perfect double-whammy.
First, the hot fire.
And now, freezing temperatures.
It would bring many species to the edge of existence.
Around the globe, the average temperature plummets nearly 13 degrees.
It's a worldwide chill that reaches extremes in places like London, where the spring temperatures are 50 degrees Fahrenheit below normal.
The air raid shelters, where tens of thousands had taken refuge, have become mass graves.
The survivors have no choice but to brave the elements in search of food and water, trying not to become the final victims of a new mass extinction.
- You're dealing with no sunlight.
No animals on the surface of the planet.
You'd have to dig down for them.
You'd have to be comfortable eating them.
Not a whole lot of people are like that, unfortunately.
One year after the asteroid impact, the toxic dust begins to dissipate across the globe Allowing the sun's rays to reach the Earth's surface once again.
But with this, another danger awaits the survivors.
The Earth's ozone layer, an atmospheric shield in the planet's stratosphere, is completely destroyed.
- The impact would eject a lot of compounds that would react with Earth's ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, destroying them.
And then the sun's ultraviolet radiation would be much more likely to penetrate through Earth's atmosphere, react with our living cells, and cause mutations, most of which are hazardous to our health.
- If you get too much ultraviolet radiation, it causes all sorts of biological damage.
You can get skin cancers.
You can get burns.
It causes cataracts.
In Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, and other places around the world, ozone depletion isn't the only new danger.
Once the dust and toxins have settled, temperatures begin to rise due to the enormous amount of carbon dioxide that has been released.
- You'd have an increased warming, an elevated greenhouse effect.
Because various limestone-type rocks would've been vaporized by the impact.
That would send the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- It circulates around the planet.
Temperature rises as much as maybe 10 or even 12 degrees globally.
As temperatures become unbearably hot, the last few survivors cling to life.
66 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck planet Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Could humans survive if the same thing happened today? Two years after the asteroid impact, life on Earth is enduring the worst disaster in human history.
At least half the world's population of 7 billion has perished.
- There's gonna be so much devastation and so much chaos that it's gonna be "Mad Max" world.
No person alive on the planet at the time of the impact will ever see a normal life after that.
100 miles south of Mexico City, a dwindling group of farmers clings to life inside a cave, subsisting on a diet of bats, rats, and snakes, all descendants of species that survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
The limestone bedrock neutralizes the acid rain deposits in the cave's river water, making it safe to drink.
Ave to be in there long enough, it's a lot more than just food, shelter, and water to think about.
The human psyche will really have a massive impact on any kind of survivability.
Over 1,500 miles to the north, in New York City, sparse pockets of humanity sleep in the day to avoid the harsh environment outside.
They troll subways and alleys at night hunting for rats and possum.
But we are not built for a nocturnal existence.
- As humans, we need vitamin D.
Vitamin D is best synthesized in the human body by being exposed to the sun.
If there is no sun, we begin turning into a nocturnal lifestyle, like mole people.
You start losing hair.
Your liver isn't functioning very well.
Your skin begins to reduce its melanin.
And if you have to live in there for generations, you have these weird, pasty white people who are blind.
Halfway around the world, the aboriginal Martu have migrated to the west coast of Australia.
They spend much of the day in coastal caves, protected from the UV rays and searing heat.
At dusk, they hunt for turtles, one of the few marine creatures that have endured the disaster.
- Turtles survived the impact 65 1/2 million years ago because they are great at adapting.
They can survive huge temperature variations, acidity levels.
They could eat dead carcasses.
They could eat seaweed and anything falling through the water column.
By relying on creatures like these for food, the Martu will be among the last survivors on planet Earth.
But the asteroid impact will decimate the human population as a whole.
66 million years ago, when the first killer asteroid hit Most land creatures weighing over 30 pounds went extinct, which means the long-term outlook for humanity is grim Leaving the very existence of our species in doubt.
- I would guess something like 99% of the human population would die in such an event.
- Long-term? Say 10% of all of humanity lives.
Then you have a genetic bottleneck that may not be a viable population.
It gets to a point where, all of a sudden, you're the last group of people on Earth.
And if that happens, you may survive for a generation or two.
Our intellect is our tool.
That is our evolutionary edge.
But we've lost the kind of necessary, natural tools to use in a situation like this.
The next great extinction likely will be us.