When a comet suddenly veers off course and crashes into Mars, scientists Trish Zane (Gigi Edgley) and Tom Lively (Collin Galyean) discover that the comet was moved by the gravitational pull of a strangelet
, which is heading for Earth and will destroy the planet in a few days. Scientists around the world scramble for a solution, but to no avail, and the strangelet causes massive destruction as it approaches.
Meanwhile, in the city of Parish, Mayor Ben Marshall (Randy Mulkey), his children Leo (Stuart Lafferty) and Samantha (Jenna Craig), and his new wife Lynne (Stephanie Jacobsen) try to survive the series of disasters. But Ben's autistic brother Terry (Rhett Giles) has an idea that he thinks can save the world.
Quantum Apocalypse contains examples of:
- The Alleged Car: Leo has a car, but he keeps asking Ben to drive him to school because it smells like mildew.
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Leo's girlfriend Lindsey (Kristen Quintrall) is a blonde cheerleader whose creepy ex-boyfriend Sean (Kyle Clements) is still obsessed with her.
- Attempted Rape: At one point Sean breaks into the Marshall home and tries to rape Lindsey. Lynne gets home just in time and shoots Sean dead.
- Disability Superpower: As Leo tells Lindsey, "[Terry] doesn't have the best motor skills in the world. But the trade-off is, he was born without the piece of his brain that filters out, I guess useless information. So, yes, he knows everything."
- Does Not Drive: Terry doesn't want to drive, even though he thinks he'd be good at it, because he's scared of other drivers.
- EMP: Happens while Ben and Terry are driving to Houston. Their car immediately breaks down, but Terry manages to fix it.
- Flatline: Ben forgets to bring his blood pressure meds to Houston and has a heart attack as he and Terry are arriving. He dies in the hospital a short while later.
- Gravity Sucks: The strangelet is portrayed as a gravity vortex that only pulls in one direction. The word "suck" is actually used to describe what it does.
- Nuke 'em: The Russian government nukes the north and south poles in order to knock Earth off its orbit to avoid the strangelet. Not only does it not work, it triggers earthquakes and tsunamis that destroy New York City.
- Perky Goth: Trish dresses in Goth fashions and has a very cheerful personality.
- Race Against the Clock: The protagonists only have a few days before the Earth is completely destroyed.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Towards the beginning of the movie, Terry says that he's used his pancake recipe 672 times. During the last scene, after his solution has stopped the strangelet and rewound time to before the disaster happened, he says that he's used the recipe 673 times.
- Techno Babble: The science behind the disaster and its solution is a mixture of creative interpretations of real theories and complete nonsense.
