WMG / Deep Impact

Deep Impact is racist propaganda.

In the future world of Deep Impact, there's an African-American president (played by Morgan Freeman!). Immediately after this, giant world-killing rocks start falling out of the sky. Clearly, the aesop is supposed to be "God will punish us for electing a black president".

• Morgan Freeman plays God in Bruce Almighty, so maybe he's punishing the world for electing himself president!
  • Deep Impact is a parable about the importance of separation of Church and State.
• So God has four years to show us the error of our ways?
  • He's half-black, and so only one big rock should be coming our way. (If you live on the American East Coast, have an escape plan. If you live in Western Europe — we'll miss you.)
• Yeah, but the United States SURVIVES at the end of the film, so good thing he was in charge.

Deep Impact and Armageddon (1998) are future-imperfect depictions of the same event.

And in whatever metaficional universe these stories came out in, they were also released within a month of each other.

• As an aside, Mad Magazine did this to combine the two movies into one parody. The first half is Armageddon; then they split the asteroid (or whatever), but both chunks are still heading to Earth so they can do a Deep Impact spoof as well.
• And the adaptation takes place on the holodeck, so what do you expect?

Deep Impact is female, Armageddon is male.

Generalising to an absurd degree, Deep Impact is about caring for the people on Earth, Armageddon (1998) is about kicking ass-teriod.

• Which raises the question of what would happen if they mated.
  • Deep Armpit.
    • "We need you to fly in there and set off twenty megatons of deodourant."
    • Yes, it was called The Core.
    • Hee. Drilling.

Deep Impact is an in-universe propaganda film about the Second Impact in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The "real" Second Impact was from the experiments run on Adam in the Antarctic. Afterwards, everybody is told that the global cataclysm was due to an asteroid impact. SEELE arranges for a series of Hollywood movies with Hollywood Science to explain the disaster that caused global climate change. The film contains subliminal suggestions about the people who will "save" humanity from the Third Impact; the hero of the movie is a high schooler who just "happens" to discover the asteroid, and the real scientist just "happens" to die in a fiery automobile accident that night. Everybody believes that the US created a giant spaceship in secret that was destroyed blowing up only part of the asteroid, and society rebuilds with NERV formed as the UN's new branch to protect us from any other "asteroids".

The United States of America is well and truly screwed.

Half of the country just got wiped out by a tidal wave from the impact. China and Russia, being left completely untouched, can invade and take over what's left of America any time they want.

• This very plan was attempted in Stephen Baxter's Titan, but the Chinese messed up their calculations regarding the asteroid's size and impact and caused The End of the World as We Know It.
• On the other hand, the waters only reached as far as the Ohio and Tennessee valleys. Most places west of the Mississippi were probably OK, meaning the US still has its major food producers as well as the cities and military personnel stationed in the West.
• "The wave hit Europe and Africa." We can well and truly imagine that (mostly flat) Western Europe and (quite flat) Western Africa bought it, too. But as mentioned on the main page, there's no way a wave that size left any coast untouched.
  • The Americas, Europe and Africa absorbed most of the wave's energy. IF the wave had made it into the Pacific and/or Indian Ocean, it would likely be too weak to reach Asia/Australia/Hawaii.

Russia is truly screwed as well.

You don't think that tidal wave is going to just magically stop when it rolls over Gibraltar, do you? It's going through the Mediterranean and travel up the estuaries of the Black Sea, flooding the Ukraine. The Ukraine is a major supplier of technology to the Russian Federation. So good luck getting replacement parts and machines, Russians.

The United States is going to be rebuilding its own infrastructure, and trying to feed its own people left homeless by the tidal waves. Thus, it's unlikely we will be sending our much needed equipment to help the Russians.

If there is a crop failure like those in the past in Russia because of all the space dust kicked up when the second comet ("Wolf") exploded, then yikes! That's going to be a lot of people in the Russian Federation dying of starvation.

And if the above isn't bad enough, China might get the idea that Russia might think this is a good time to invade China - and throw some nukes to solve the problem of a couple of several hundred million starving Russians on their doorstep.

• Almost all of the above is nonsense. There are so many obstacles between the Atlantic and the Ukraine that there is no chance of any serious effect of the Ukraine (not to mention that not all of the Ukraine is on the coast anyway). The second comet burned up in the atmosphere, which won't create dust to cause a impact winter.
• And the idea that China could come out better than Russia in an impact winter scenario is quite unlikely considering that they have a much denser population, not to mention far fewer nuclear weapons.

The poster designer was quite frisky when he came into work.

Just look at the poster on the main page. Does anyone else see an erupting nipple on it?

• I don't.

What were other countries' plans for sheltering their people from the impact?

We all know the US isn't the only place in the world. So what were other countries doing at the same time? They need to save their people as well. I'd imagine at least some countries will end up teaming up to build joint shelters, especially in regions like the EU. Some countries, like the Netherlands, would be entirely wiped out by any oceanic impact, so it makes sense to collaborate with their neighbours. I'd imagine that the EU created a joint shelter in the Alps to save at least as many people as the US shelter did. But if it's a joint effort, how do you allocate space for each country? How are individuals chosen? Does the process change from country to country?