How I love a good disaster movie

[gemfyre]

Deep Impact

I've yet to watch this all the way through again, so these thoughts are based on the previews.

In the movie the president announces that the tunnels beneath the earth can hold 1 million people for two years and this will "preserve our way of life."

Thinking about this it kinda made me not as gut wrenched by the movie because I realised the human race will likely still die out this way.

It certainly ISN'T preserving the American way of life. That way of life involves living above ground, breeding indiscriminately and chewing up resources like there is no tomorrow. Instead they will be confined underground with limited resources intended to last two years.

And here's where I think these tunnels must have been created by creationists and politicians rather than scientists.

Two years. In two years the world is still going to be an ashen wasteland. Maybe, MAYBE there will be some rats or cockroaches scuttling around, and possibly a few weeds. The people who built these tunnels obviously didn't realise that a tree takes hundreds of years to grow to full size. That the evolution required to repopulate the earth with living organisms will take tens of thousands of years AT LEAST.

So, the million in the tunnels will survive on the two years of resources in the tunnels. Then they're screwed. Is it wrong that this makes me happy?

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Go check out Joe Lansdale's short story "Tight Little Stitches In A Dead Man's Back" for an interesting take on that. In that story, you have about 4000 people in a nuclear shelter designed to support twice that many for 100 years, and some of the survivors go back up twenty years after the bomb goes off. Ooh, you'll like that one.

[scribblette.livejournal.com]

that's amusing. two years. lol. maybe they don't expect it to be a total wipe out then... I forget. Like ash that'd only last a couple of years and doesn't coat the ENTIRE earth means there's a chance of it not being impossible. But anything serious and we're screwed. But eh, I expect a big rock to come along, smack the moon, moon smacks us, bam.

500,000 for 4 years...
250k for 8 years...
125k for 16 years
62,500 for 32 years...
36,250 for 64 years...

Just randomly thinking.

Once you read the short story, pass on the ending over here :)