SAM1: Armageddon (First Half for Everyone)

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is Serious Seriously Awful Movies. I think it's stuck. We're going with that. Seriously Awful Movies, or SAM. And this is the first one. Okay, here's the thing. Here is the conundrum, folks. I want to do this kind of bonus stuff to reward my amazing patrons at patreon.com slash SeriousPod. Pretty please, consider becoming a patron over there, supporting the show.

Not only will you get an ad-free show each and every episode, at the second tier and above you will get these Seriously Awful Movies each month. My conundrum is this: these are also, like, hours long, and they contain all kinds of cool science. For example, with Armageddon, we did a lot of asteroid science. Oh, it's so, there's plenty of science because there was so much bad science in Armageddon.

All right, so I want, like, I don't want it all to not be heard by everyone, so I think I came up with a really good compromise, which is I'm gonna post half the episode here, so like a full hour, half the episode, is, is, two days, Serious Inquiries Only. So, like, this is your episode, and then if you want the full thing, go to patreon.com/seriouspod at that second level or above, and you get the full, over two hours. It's, the second half is even as good. Actually, I couldn't really decide which is better. They're both, they're all us. It's the same show. The...

So if you want to become a patron, go to that now, get the full, not cut in half, version. But if you can't or don't want to become a patron, I totally understand. And I hope you will enjoy a very fun and funny and hour of Seriously Alpha Movies, in which we get to a lot of science. Bryan Gillis is going to take us through some astrophysics and some just common sense physics that the movie gets right and wrong.

0:01:54 Thomas: And you'RE GOING TO HEAR WE ALSO HAVE ANOTHER SPECIAL GUEST, Omar Najam, who was hilarious. It was so good. So I hope you'll either enjoy this hour or the full two hours if you go to patreon.com slash seriespod. Thank you so much for listening. Here we go. Hello and welcome to the first ever something seriously awful movies, maybe. I don't know. How's it going, everybody? I'm joined by, of course, Lydia Smith. I've also brought astrophysicist Dr. Bryan Gillis. How are doing, Brian?

0:02:22 Bryan: Thomas, I am doing well, thank you.

0:02:23 Thomas: Really? After watching this, you're doing okay? I've, I've.

0:02:26 Bryan: I gave myself a week off after watching this.

0:02:29 Thomas: And then Lydia, you brought a friend.

0:02:31 Lydia: I did. My friend Omar Najam. Hi, Omar.

0:02:35 Omar: I can't go after Dr. Gillis, like it's astrophysicist and person who has a degree in the movie that you watched.

0:02:45 Lydia: Well, I think it's perfect pairing. So there you go.

0:02:49 Thomas: That's going to be amazing.

0:02:49 Lydia: Yeah.

0:02:51 Thomas: It. That's it? Are we not introducing you as any, anything, any, uh, okay,

0:02:53 Lydia: Yeah. Omar, what do you want me to say about you?

0:02:56 Omar: You. I think I've got three major titles that I would like to sort of advertise um to justify my presence here. One is, uh, I am a filmmaker, uh, I do have a degree in film and media studies, um, two, um,

0:02:59 Lydia: Okay. Well

0:03:00 Thomas: Sure. Nice. Okay. Yeah. That's something Lydia could have mentioned to me. I didn't fucking know that. I was like, I was already on board by the way, Omar, like I was, well,

0:03:13 Lydia: You know why? Because he went to UC Santa Barbara and I was like, a party school, right? So, oh,

0:03:19 Omar: Avid party animal, um, thank

0:03:21 Thomas: So you're way more qualified than the guy who made the billion dollar film we watched. Okay.

0:03:25 Omar: You. Thank you. I mean, he did. Later, he did go on to make a movie with literally no script because the writer's strike was happening during, and Transformers Too. Um, it's a fun fact.

0:03:25 Thomas: Oh Is that true? I didn't know this. Oh

0:03:34 Omar: It's a fun, back, and and thirdly, and this might be sort of the least important one, I, um, worked on an oil field, um, for decades, and then, um, NASA hit me up and said, hey, what if, what if instead of astronauts we sent you and your homies and and we

0:03:35 Thomas: Yes.

0:03:35 Lydia: And

0:03:48 Thomas: We actually, yeah. Yeah. To start this recording, Lydia and I got in a boardroom meeting and the camera, we just set a camera on a office chair and just spun it around as fast as we could. And we're like, oh, we who do we get? And Brian. And then we had a helicopter go and. And then like a jet landed on Omar and was like, we need you.

0:04:05 Lydia: You can't ask any questions.

0:04:07 Omar: Were so sweaty and And it was so green and yellow.

0:04:08 Thomas: And Yeah. There is not a single camera shot in this film that captures a person's entire head. I'm pretty sure. It's only ever like eyebrows down for some... I'm not the filmmaking school guy. Omar, look, I'm an open-minded person. Tell me if that's some secret amazing technique or what. But like half the shots are just two-thirds of someone's head. Is that normal? Do they...

0:04:19 Omar: No, I This movie is in the Criterion Collection. So should I should I be some there's lots of arguments that the authors make as to why, lots of arguments for sure, that why it's in the collection, but like, it's it's called like the West Side Story of space movies.

0:04:40 Thomas: Is the criterion for that of

0:04:55 Lydia: My God, no.

0:04:57 Omar: And literally the star-crossed lovers, uh, and I don't want get too ahead of ourselves, it's just Michael Bay, um, like saw West Side's Story, I guess, and was just like, yeah, no movie should be boring, and really just kind of took that conceit and ran with it and

0:04:56 Thomas: What of what I

0:04:57 Lydia: Yeah listen

0:05:14 Thomas: Not. Omar, are you making this, this isn't what is, okay, what is the Criterion Collection and why is it a disgrace, is what my first two questions, because

0:05:16 Omar: If the Criteria Collection is a collection of the finest movies, the idea is that at some point film archives would disappear, so we need to preserve the world's best movie so you've got seven Samurai

0:05:30 Thomas: A meteor would hit the earth yeah, this

0:05:32 Bryan: So this movie is the reason the Criterion Collection exists. Exist, yeah.

0:05:36 Omar: Exactly, exactly let

0:05:38 Thomas: Is the worst fucking movie of all time like, I love it so much. I don't like bad good things, I'm not, i'mnot a bad good guy. I don't like watching the fucking, oh, just turn me apart at least, whatever, I don't want to watch any of that stuff, it's boring to me. This movie is the maybe the one exception, it's so fucking horrible in the most explosion-y, showy way that I was so happy to watch it for the third and fourth time. It's the best, it's, I think people need to go back, you know what, it should be in the Criterion Collection, but as like, you I can't believe this happened, like you need to goes back and watch this, everybody, if you haven't seen this since 1990, whatever, fucking

0:05:40 Lydia: It's so bad yeah

0:06:07 Omar: You would 1998,

0:06:13 Thomas: Eight, go please do me a favor, it's on HBO Max, you know, the app that changes names every week that you can't find anything in, find that and watch this, and just, you will have your mind blown. We can't do it justice. We could sit here for 10 hours. Literally we were watching the movie, Lydia and I, and we're like, wait, we we just have to play the movie. Like we were just like, let's just push play and you all listen to it. And that's roasting it. You can't even, yeah, it's unbelievable.

0:06:15 Omar: Yeah

0:06:15 Lydia: Yeah the

0:06:39 Omar: It speaks for itself, um, so, like, these movies are kind of, it's a little loosey-goosey, but they're in a way preserved in sort of like an order of like, we have to rush to like make sure that these were preserved as Laserdisc, as Giannis films, and then later it's Criterion DVDs, yeah, would you like to take a guess as to what number this is, so like, I believe Seven Samurai, either either Seven Samurai or Grand Illusion are number one, and then you have like Amarcord by Fellini and stuff like that. So like, do you want to take a guess as to what number?

0:06:54 Thomas: Are you serious? Wow do Was it assembled in the year something, or was it like every year they're like, "Let's add one to it?"

0:07:14 Omar: That's a very good, they kind of kicked it off. I think in like the 2000s. So there's like, there's a whole library of movies that they're like going through to be like, we, we got to get these ones in first. It's not going to be number four, but would you like to take guess as To what number number?

0:07:25 Thomas: Tell me how many movies were in existence at the time they put this together, and then I'll say that minus like one, I guess, is the number that this should be, yeah

0:07:34 Lydia: Bottom of the list

0:07:34 Omar: Oh so you're giving me a formula uh, I, I really appreciate that, uh, well, in that case, if you, if your statement is true, then only 41 movies were made. Yeah.

0:07:35 Lydia: Yeah open up Excel. Oh,

0:07:36 Thomas: Yeah no

0:07:49 Omar: It's number 40 on the Criterion. Yeah so anyway, thank

0:07:46 Lydia: My god

0:07:47 Thomas: No, that's not, that's that's not there's no way, I don't even know what to say, wow.

0:07:55 Bryan: Can think of maybe one argument, uh, from what I found researching this, as it is possible that the existence of this movie got people interested enough in asteroids that it kind of kicked mass into high gear to get better defenses in place. And if this movie accidentally resulted in saving humanity because we're a bit better prepared, okay. You can go in the Criterion tiering collection.

0:08:17 Thomas: Wow meanwhile Deep Impact is like, no, it was us, it was Deep Impact, does anyone remember that one, we should do that one too, just for fun, yeah exactly, what was it with the 90s that happened every year in the 90s, there would be two clones of the same movie, and also there was a lot of this world ending stuff, here's my theory, we don't get many of these anymore because I think the reason is, I think reaction to the world ending would be a a little different now. You'd be like, oh, thank God, okay, fuck, Jesus, I thought we were going to have to do this for another guy, look at my watch, I don't know if it's 60 years, I

0:08:19 Bryan: Yeah yeah I came in like the same year, yeah

0:08:28 Omar: Yep yeah mm-hmm

0:08:34 Bryan: Yeah

0:08:35 Lydia: Yeah well we've had to enter into the Don't Look Up version of world ending movies, right? It's just satirical

0:08:53 Thomas: Yeah. Oh man.

0:08:55 Omar: Yeah Yeah.

0:08:55 Bryan: That's basically it but

0:08:56 Lydia: Yeah

0:08:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Oh, so any more observations before we get into it? Brian, imagine I if you were trying to track all the inaccuracies, you just, seriously, Seriously, you just jumped out of your window after three seconds?

0:08:57 Bryan: Yeah yeah I've got something, I've had four full pages of notes here, I don't think we'll be able to get through them all. Oh,

0:09:13 Thomas: No, no. Okay, today's edition, we're going to make the Criterion Collection, but for this podcast, this will be minutes zero through 1.7 of the movie. And then we'll do that every week. We'll meet at this time, the four of us.

0:09:28 Omar: Release it.

0:09:29 Thomas: And we'll due two and a half hours on the next three minutes of them. It is that amazing. I would say, here's my, I don't know if this is a controversial take or not, but the first thing I thought when watching this was, you know who comes out looking really good from this, live fucking Tyler she she, like, did a good job and she looked beautiful and she it was like, huh, that's so weird

0:09:44 Lydia: She looks great yep but you

0:09:45 Omar: Yes. Yeah. Our elven queen.

0:09:51 Thomas: Oh

0:09:50 Lydia: Know, so I I I 100% agree, I think, you know, she did the best that she could with what she was given, she like pulls in some really good performances. I will say, Roger Ebert's review at the time is really gross, and he just makes fun of her looks the entire time.

0:10:00 Omar: Oh, no.

0:10:08 Lydia: Yeah, yeah yep yep here

0:10:08 Bryan: Geez, oh

0:09:52 Thomas: God wow what did you pull any quotes, that is that's

0:10:12 Lydia: Let me, let me pull it up right now, yep

0:10:14 Thomas: Insane, that's actually crazy, you watch this movie and the first thing you think to criticize is the looks of like one of the best looking people that we have, like, what, that the sexism in this movie is so fucking off the charts, I love that this was just normal back then, like, apparently for movies, like, it was just like, yeah, that's fine.

0:10:26 Omar: Yeah.

0:10:33 Bryan: Some of it still is, that's one of the notes I made, is that her character has basically nothing to do in the movie except to be basically a ball between the male characters about who's going to catch her in the end.

0:10:33 Thomas: Yeah

0:10:46 Omar: Who's going to date? My daughter, my daughter's boyfriend or me. That's kind of the conceit.

0:10:49 Lydia: So gross, um, right, so he says, "What is it about cinematographers and Liv Tyler? She's a beautiful young woman, but she's always being photographed while flat on her back, with her brassiere riding up around her chin," and "lots of wrinkles in her neck from trying to see what some guy is doing."

0:10:51 Thomas: Yeah

0:10:51 Omar: Oh, my God. I

0:11:01 Thomas: Jesus fucking what that's freaking crazy, here's my question, I want to know which came first, the Aerosmith or the Liv Tyler, you, like, because like, obviously the whole movie is Aerossmith, that was

0:11:12 Omar: Oh yeah

0:11:14 Lydia: Was their biggest his tit. Oh,

0:11:19 Bryan: So which way does the nepotism go you're asking I

0:11:19 Thomas: Yeah yeah like is it like, oh, hey, I'm doing the sound for a movie, do you want my really, really hot daughter? Or is it like, hey, I'm in your movie that sucks, do you want my dad's shitty music in it? And then, or something, I don't know.

0:11:33 Omar: I I think it's a package deal. And I think Lord The Ring said no, um, the music

0:11:34 Thomas: Yeah. I I'm trying to think which two characters the love song is about in the Lord of the Rings. Yeah, yeah.

0:11:41 Lydia: It could be so many. That's what makes it great and classic. Like

0:11:45 Omar: The Balrog just our Arrow King the Balrog that's

0:11:49 Thomas: Right when the bridge of Khazad-dum or whatever is clove asunder and the Balrog starts to fall in slow motion, we hear, Don't want to clove! Yeah, that'd be, okay, let's do that. We'll go with that. Here's another thing. If I could have one wish from this movie, would love to sit Michael Bay down and maybe like strap him so he can't leave. Like he's handcuffed to a chair and

0:12:00 Omar: So good

0:12:09 Lydia: They do to Steve Buscemi at the end.

0:12:11 Omar: A little Steve Buscemi situation.

0:12:11 Thomas: Yeah, let's duct tape him to a spaceship.

0:12:13 Omar: Yeah.

0:12:13 Bryan: Yeah, there we go.

0:12:14 Thomas: I want To ask him, take as long as you need is I will be here. Michael Bay. I'll sit here. I've got dinner. I'll set for all night. What do you think gravity is? Just tell me. What do You think it is? I just want to know. I'm not going to be the astrophysicist, but even this idiot was like, okay, this is not, no, I get, there's like an on off switch on the asteroid gravity. Like sometimes it's like, yeah, that's just earth.

0:12:22 Lydia: Yeah.

0:12:25 Omar: Mm-hm.

0:12:29 Lydia: Things aren't making sense.

0:12:25 Bryan: Oh, Yeah, They've got these magic jets that give uh them gravity when they need it so they can turn gravity on and off, and apparently at no point did anyone tell them that jets don't work in a vacuum.

0:12:41 Lydia: Yep.

0:12:46 Thomas: Yeah. The only other insult I have is this movie is so bad. It's beneath Ben Affleck. There, I said it. There I said that, like, I watched this. I was like, you did Ben Affleck dirty by making this movie. Oh,

0:12:54 Omar: There there are a few moments, and I'm gonna back this up with evidence, I'll go more into it later, but there are few moments when you see Ben Affleck being like, "One of what did" I agree, to, and this isn't me being mean, he, in the DVD commentary for this movie, there's one very iconic moment that's now become like this internet legend where he just was talking about a scene, we'll get to it later, but he's just like, "This doesn't make sense, this movie doesn't make sense." Yeah.

0:13:07 Thomas: Oh, really?

0:13:24 Thomas: Didn't know that. So Armageddon, flash of the credits. We're going into it. Unless anybody has any further observations before we go. It's Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay which is just like evil universe Lennon McCartney I can't think of a worse combination this is and this is their fucking Sgt. Pepper actually this is there magnum opus of shit

0:13:25 Bryan: Yeah.

0:13:27 Lydia: Armageddon.

0:13:43 Omar: They

0:13:39 Lydia: Right. We're going to start this off in space. It's going to be very, very obvious we're in space, flying by the moon, checking out the earth. And we find out that way, way, way back when, a rock can hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons. And then the dinosaurs go away.

0:14:03 Thomas: I like that them going away, they're like, "ah, fuck this place." I didn't know there could be a thousand nuclear weapons, hey everybody, they just left."

0:14:07 Omar: Yes

0:14:04 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, I just wrote goodbye dinosaurs. Yep. So they're gone, and and we get this very ominous moment at the beginning that says it happened before, it will happen again, it's just a question of when.

0:14:20 Bryan: To go in and check all the numbers here because this is the first scene in the movie. I needed a baseline for how accurate this is going to be and I was surprised of the numbers they quoted. About About half were accurate. Yeah, they got the size of the crater right.

0:14:24 Lydia: Of course, okay.

0:14:27 Thomas: Wow. That's more than I would have guessed. Yeah.

0:14:38 Bryan: They got the speed of the asteroid right. A little bit of variance, but science marches on since the movie came out 25 years ago. Energy of it, way off. It wasn't 10,000 nuclear weapons. It to 5 billion. I don't know why they went with 10,500. Billion is more accurate and way more ridiculous.

0:14:38 Lydia: Way

0:14:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

0:14:53 Omar: Is it was more okay.

0:14:59 Lydia: More Oh my gosh, I had no idea, I thought they were overestimating.

0:15:03 Thomas: Also don't know, the nuclear weapon unit seems like a tough unit of measure, is there one standard international nuclear warhead unit, like, I know there's the small ones and then there's the fucking huge ones, what one do they mean?

0:15:03 Bryan: Yeah. Yeah, I Yeah there is a lot of variance. Even the biggest ones you couldn't get ten thousand, but I'm going five billion times the bond that was dropped on Hiroshima, which if there is the standard that's the one people use, and this is five billion time that. You could have had it be way more dramatic and it would be true.

0:15:23 Lydia: Wow. Yeah.

0:15:24 Omar: Yeah.

0:15:15 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Right. Well, yeah, mean, and I mean, just thinking about it, like, okay, yes, that bomb obviously caused a lot of destruction, but it, like, the earth is a big place. Like I could imagine 10,000 of that would be like, I don't know, the size of a small country.

0:15:39 Omar: Right

0:15:38 Bryan: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, instead of destroying a city, you destroy Japan. Okay, yeah that sucks, but you're not wiping out all life on Earth.

0:15:43 Thomas: Yeah. Here's the thing, all the dinosaurs lived on Japan. Yeah, they all live there in

0:15:52 Lydia: The Yeah.

0:15:53 Omar: So They got far, far enough in the information, and then, and then they called, called lunch, like, they got so far in that title card, like, I promise I won't, I won't sing catanics, but just to give everyone, I, I live in Hollywood, technically the valley, but I live in Hollywood, I work in Hollywood, there is one time I was working at a studio, I'm gonna break an NDA right now and I don't care, I love you guys, so we're doing this we're in baby, so um, I was doing coverage for a script, which is, you read a script and then you rate it, based off of, you summarize it and then you're like, should we, you know, invest in this or not, there is one about Da Vinci, and it was like Parts of the Caribbean, but Da Vici, and Da Vci was like, I'm gonna find the Holy Grail, but because I did the math, and Pangea, the Holy Grail is in Australia, we have to go on a globetrotting adventure, and I Went, hey, so real quick, um, two notes, just off, off the dome, um, one, I don't think Da Vucci knew about Pangeia, and two, uh, I don't think it was, was called Australia, and so, like, I just, like, threw those out, and they were like, are you

0:15:58 Bryan: Yeah.

0:16:06 Thomas: Oh,

0:16:13 Lydia: It's behind a paywall, you're good. Oh my god.

0:16:50 Omar: Sure, and I was like, it, it took me 17 seconds to Wikipedia the, the history of Pangea as a term, like, this took no time, this is the premise of this script, so this is what we're doing, yeah, like you

0:16:57 Bryan: Well,

0:17:01 Thomas: The whole thing this is like page one entre and they set it up, and they're like, sorry, already, that's, you can't do this, it's already literally the whole movie.

0:17:07 Lydia: That's nuts.

0:17:07 Omar: Can't, yeah. Yeah Because what would you scrub out, where Da Vinci's just like, I guess, hey, I'm, wild guess, New Holland, I don't know, I don't, WHAT PANGEA IS, like, what else could the entire script be? So, so anyway, this is what we're dealing with, I'm very excited, and I love that they downplayed it.

0:17:18 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. That position that, that you held, where someone looks at a script and decides whether or not to do that, it, that didn't exist in 1998, I guess they just were like, "We don't have that guy, we don't," Omar is not here yet, so we just have to make every script and someone wrote wrote this script. Oh, my

0:17:31 Omar: No. No. It

0:17:35 Lydia: We just have to make anything Michael Bay sends us

0:17:39 Bryan: Now, here's the scary thing. They actually did have a science advisor on this movie. I realized this about halfway through. I was keeping track of how much was right and wrong, and it occurred to me, too much is actually right. So much is wrong, but there are too many things that are specifically right, and I had to go yeah it means they had somebody telling them true facts, and they decided to ignore them.

0:17:42 Lydia: What

0:17:43 Thomas: God. Yeah.

0:17:48 Omar: Does

0:18:02 Lydia: Yeah

0:17:55 Thomas: But that makes it worse. That makes it worse. Yes. That is the funniest thing.

0:18:02 Bryan: Oh,

0:18:03 Omar: So this is called bread crumbing, in relationships, where you're given only so little to keep you on the hook, but this

0:18:10 Lydia: Yeah yeah keep you stringing along, they

0:18:11 Thomas: Brian, though, who is the science advisor and were they ousted from the International Academy of Scientists? Scientists.

0:18:17 Bryan: I'm not gonna name and shame, they Who they are, they're ashamed enough.

0:18:18 Thomas: Okay.

0:18:19 Lydia: Know who they are.

0:18:23 Omar: Is better drama than on screen.

0:18:26 Lydia: Yeah.

0:18:27 Thomas: Right from the get-go, we've got like a spacewalk happening, right? Here's Spoilers, What's going to happen is some pre come asteroids are going to start some, some, uh, sorry. I. Some pre asteroids are gonna come and hit, the just fucking machine gun, this space shuttle. But what I love is, like, even though that's, what's going happen, we all know that's what's gonna happen, they still have to have it be an intense spacewalk. Like, there's still, like, white knuckling the spacewalk, and Billy Bob Thornton is like, "Come on, you can do this, give me a fucking buffalo nickel if you can."

0:18:30 Lydia: Yeah, exactly, we're out in space. This is

0:18:39 Omar: Brian, are the, is that the

0:18:43 Lydia: Billy Yeah.

0:19:03 Thomas: And you're just like, why don't you have them just out in space being like, "Hey, how's your day, what's your, what's, you know," like you don't, not every second of the movie has to be like an intense crisis, that NASA, you know what I mean, especially with the tone of this movie.

0:19:10 Lydia: Crisis yeah

0:19:18 Omar: It's got to be West Side Story every frame every frame of West Side Sorry.

0:19:20 Thomas: You're right, it all comes, yeah. I do remember the scene now that you say that, from West Side Story, okay. You know what, I'll edit that out, that was stupid of me, I don't know why I said that, I'll cut that, go ahead hon, wait.

0:19:26 Lydia: All right So, uh, so we're in space, astronauts trying to fix something on a satellite, Billy Bob Thornton's freaking out, you know, like, they're not able to do it, but he believes they can do it. Come on, come on, gets hit, because we have to watch everything be blown up for a while. And NASA doesn't know what what happened, right? They're trying to figure it out. They're like, was it a glitch? Were we attacked? And they're not exactly sure.

0:19:49 Thomas: No. It's worse than that, sir, we're in a Michael Bay movie, fuck.

0:19:59 Bryan: And of course, everything here with bonus fire. Even though it's in space and things shouldn't be burning, you're getting bonus fire, oh, and the media's coming, these streaks through the complete lack of atmosphere.

0:20:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, oh.

0:20:10 Omar: Yes, yes.

0:20:09 Lydia: The we can find out what happens, because NASA isn't watching space, I guess. They don't have any way to find out. We have this random amateur guy who's just looking out his telescope. His name is Carl. He's horrible to his wife. We never see him again. So I don't really know why he has to be this terrible to his wife. She made him dinner. She's just letting him know. And he screams at her to get his phone book because he just saw something happen and he needs to notify some folks.

0:20:24 Thomas: My god. Jesus Christ. This is the, this fucking casual misogyny of 1998, is the best, they give us this shitty relationship where, let's contrast this asshole man, he's, you see he's concerned with the literal end of the world, the most important thing in the world ever, and let's give him this shrill harpy of a wife, and you know what she cares about, fucking, like, dinner or something, you're like, like, it's like, why would you, it's the most unbelievable, setting up this misogynistic tone from the get-go, why would you contrast this, what does that even mean, what, oh my god, it's the best, yeah.

0:21:03 Lydia: Yeah.

0:21:15 Lydia: And then we get to New York City, full of stereotypes, forward and backward.

0:21:16 Omar: I'm walking here, oh.

0:21:22 Lydia: Yeah, that's

0:21:20 Thomas: That would have been better, actually.

0:21:23 Bryan: Oh, one point, actually, because this will come up later, I think what this man sees isn't actually the satellite, but he sees the big asteroid that's coming. He's the one who tells and he wants them to name it after his wife because he hates her.

0:21:24 Thomas: Yeah Yep.

0:21:37 Lydia: Right.

0:21:37 Thomas: Yep. So, Brian, you're gonna tell us the science of, like, are you often able to just pop it over on your personal telescope and see, like, a giant rock that's gonna kill the earth? Well,

0:21:37 Lydia: That's right,

0:21:46 Bryan: This part actually isn't the most implausible part of the movie. A lot of comets do get picked up by amateurs

0:21:52 Omar: I

0:21:50 Thomas: Sure, yeah. That can't be the standard Brian? I'm sorry, or we can't contribute anything, I guess, but

0:21:59 Bryan: Before professionals because there's a lot of sky out there and amateurs are just looking in random places. So this could totally happen. Happen.

0:22:08 Thomas: He, no, I, okay, yes, but doesn't he, like, already know it's gonna hit, or, what, like, he instantly knows, like, this thing's coming for us, doesn't he, or does he just because otherwise why is he reporting, why, you're telling me, he somehow gets a hold of Billy Bob Thornton because he's found a rock in space, like, like, that's normal.

0:22:15 Bryan: I'm not sure if he knows that. Credit for identifying it.

0:22:25 Bryan: Yeah, that's the part that's a bit of stretch.

0:22:27 Thomas: Yeah, well, that is what I am saying. I thought, I got the indication that this guy knows it is going to kill the world already. But you do not think so?

0:22:31 Lydia: It's a threat.

0:22:34 Bryan: Oh, I don't know. Just movie magic. They only had a limited number of characters on cast.

0:22:35 Omar: He He sees the worst in everybody, I think that's the thing. I

0:22:44 Thomas: Yeah, she looks at the meteor. She is like, I think it is coming to be friends with us, actually.

0:22:48 Omar: Yeah, yeah, it's a totally different film where it's like, we're solving your energy crisis, he hit by, I think it's, he sets the tone of this movie, I mean, ignore the scene that comes before this, of course, but like, I think that really, it boils down to his assumptions, and that says more about him than about the physics of what's about to occur.

0:22:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:08 Lydia: So, New York city, got some Meteors coming, folks. They are hitting everywhere and blowing things up. People are flying, cars are flying. Fires are starting, and we realized that's what took out, uh, the entire, you know, shuttle out in space, the satellite, everything that was getting hit, and they want to know why are all these meteors coming down, so they say, all right, it's time to move Hubble, we're gonna move it, we're going to track down what this anomaly is, let's, and it turns out it's an asteroid as big as Texas, and it's gonna hit in 18 days. What are they gonna do?

0:23:09 Omar: Mm-hmm.

0:23:44 Bryan: Nothing. At that point, there's absolutely nothing you can do.

0:23:47 Thomas: I was going say, Brian, feel free to chime in at any moment. Like yeah well

0:23:51 Bryan: Yeah, yeah,

0:23:52 Omar: I Yeah, I do personally have a lot, lot questions. Oh.

0:23:53 Bryan: Yeah. At that point there's nothing. Far. The only thing I have in my notes here is that, despite all the meteors raining down and knocking giant holes in the Twin Towers, the Twin T towers somehow don't fall to all the meteores, but a couple of planes supposedly can knock them down? Yeah, I don't know. Not

0:23:57 Thomas: Yeah right right yeah suspicious yeah

0:24:09 Omar: Yeah,

0:24:06 Lydia: All Yeah. We're getting into 9-11 truther territory,

0:24:14 Thomas: I really lament that they went with the fiery missile thing in space specifically, because the I actually find it horrifying, and I don't understand how anyone goes in space, because someone once said on a a podcast or something, like, couldn't just a fucking rock the size of a nickel whizzing by at any moment just go through your entire shit? Like, am I wrong, Brian?

0:24:20 Bryan: Yeah, yep, yep, Yeah.

0:24:35 Thomas: Like, isn't that always a chance? Yeah.

0:24:37 Bryan: That's a chance, and that is a definite issue. I mean, you know, if they're prepared for some of that to happen and uh ready to patch it, and for small ones, but there are so many little ones, you little compared to size of Texas, that are completely undetected.

0:24:40 Omar: Uh-huh.

0:24:53 Thomas: But it's never happened that we know of, right? And nobody, there's no mission where they're like, "Actually, something shot through the something over here."

0:25:00 Bryan: Not due to meteorites, I think there might have been something recently where space junk from something destroyed, affected another satellite. I'd, yeah.

0:25:07 Thomas: So that's such a cooler movie, though, if it's just like the silent killer of like, all of a sudden, because these things are traveling at speeds. I'm guessing Brian, the speeds we're talking about here, the astronauts probably, would they even see anything? Like if there's some tiny rocks, it would just be this like science, like there's a sniper on the moon or something. It'd really cool to see like, you know?

0:25:23 Lydia: Whoa.

0:25:18 Bryan: Yeah. So you just be there, and all of a sudden you see holes being blasted in the satellite. You're working on

0:25:28 Thomas: Yeah. It would be so much cooler.

0:25:31 Omar: If you all want a really silly film theory thing about sort sort of this scene kicking off, uh, it won't be satisfying, I want to be clear, you might not like this, but but and first of all, really quick, that the silent moon sniper is so rad and that needs to be a thing.

0:25:36 Thomas: Yes. Yeah. That would be so much cooler, yeah,

0:25:50 Omar: The second that this is published, you need to patent that or copyright it, you need, you need to register that with WGA, that's so good, so in In Transformers, and I might be wrong, but I did an analysis in college of Transformers, because the idea of it is so ridiculous. It's just cars. Like, there's no story there. And so what they did, and before this, anyone goes like, "You're reading too much." This is really hack. I want to be very clear. So don't get too excited. But like the way that you communicate that visually is you essentially make it a fight between angels and demons in the most basic way possible, so you had the know, your Predacons coming out of the ground, those giant scorpions, which is very like biblical, desert, you know, old testament stuff and uh like Hebrew scriptures stuff, and then you have your heroes are balls of fire that come from the sky, which are seraphim, and the reason, and then at the end, Shiloh uh buff is clinging to literally a statue of an angel, it doesn't matter, so um, but but in In this,

0:26:01 Thomas: I know,

0:26:47 Omar: I feel like it's the same trick being used earlier where it's it's just this biblical fear of the things falling and to just communicate to people like, do you get it? It's scary, but in a big, in a Big God way, it's not like there's we have to.

0:27:02 Thomas: I think they they call that hat on a hat, I think, which is like, "I'm already scared of the world-killing astro," you know what I mean, like, no, but also it has a knife, you're like, I don't fucking yeah.

0:27:08 Omar: Yes. Yeah, that's it is 100 percent. When you, the uh, there's a great interview with the sound design folks for this, because it's that's, I think, this is the difference

0:27:17 Thomas: Okay. That's what the rant I was just gonna go on the fucking asteroid has a soundtrack, like every time they pan to the asteroid, it's like, like it's just a monster coming to us.

0:27:24 Omar: Yes okay great, yes, it yeah,

0:27:29 Lydia: Oh,

0:27:35 Bryan: And you can also hear the ones that are falling, which if you, they're falling at more than 10 times the speed of sound. So you do not hear them coming. Even on Earth where there is an atmosphere, they are still silent killers.

0:27:42 Thomas: Wow. Jeez. That's cool. And then you hear it like later at some point. Is that what happens?

0:27:51 Bryan: Yeah, you'll get a sonic boom if you're close enough to survive the initial hit.

0:27:56 Omar: So these ones slow down on purpose to scare us. That's sinister, that's sinister, but I do think that that is a huge difference between, like, Deep Impact and this one. Deep Impact is like, there's this thing happening, and this one Michael Bay is like, demons from the sky are gonna come down to New York, and they're gonna blow up the bicycles, these little devils are gonna do this, and there's a one big devil rock in the sky that's, that's howling at us, this monster.

0:27:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:24 Thomas: Actually I want to ask that, Brian. I was trying to think about this. Does it make sense that, okay, the story behind these, you know, again, pre-asteroids is the big boy, like, hit, knocked a bunch of them, and then they came first. Does that, would that happen?

0:28:36 Bryan: So what they say is that a rogue comet passed through the asteroid belt and knocked off a ton of different things. So, first bit, a rogue comet that nobody is tracking, that part is perfectly plausible and would be a threat. A rogue comet on its own could come straight for Earth, and we would have maybe a couple of months of warning, depending on how lucky we are. So a real comet on its own would be a threat, that's probably what their advisor told them, but Michael Bay wanted more explosions, you can't just have the one asteroid.

0:28:45 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:50 Omar: Mm-hmm.

0:29:09 Bryan: You've got to have New York and Paris be wiped out earlier in the movie, so he said. Okay, but what if it goes through the asteroid belt and knocks a ton loose? And short story, no, the asteroid built, you think of this like the asteroid you see in Star Wars where it's just one asteroid next to another, they're colliding into each other all the time, but these are spread out ridiculously much. A comet going through it would be lucky to have an interaction with one asteroid, and even knocking two loops that happen to go towards Earth would be a stretch, uh,

0:29:13 Omar: Right. Okay.

0:29:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:41 Omar: Question for you, Brian, if this were to happen, what's the, the probability of these rocks targeting mostly liberal cities, because no.

0:29:50 Thomas: 100%.

0:29:52 Bryan: Really depends on the director. For Michael Bay, yeah, 100 hundred percent, yes.

0:29:53 Thomas: Yeah. Oh,

0:29:56 Omar: Further questions, your honor, yeah.

0:29:57 Lydia: Man, all right, we're gonna take a break from space because we got to go to the South China Sea, where we meet Bruce Willis playing Harry Stamper, and he's golfing off of his big boat, oil rig, and he is trying to hit Greenpeace protesters that don't like that he's drilling in the ocean, and so he's just, you know, yelling for, but not, and hoping that he hits them, and so that's really gross, and I'm not a fan of him off the bat. He's supposed to be our protagonist.

0:30:09 Thomas: God. Yeah.

0:30:28 Thomas: Quick sponsorship by Srixon, by the way, brand of the golf ball. I didn't know they got their start this way. The golf ball you need if you're going to anger the libs.

0:30:31 Omar: Yeah

0:30:32 Lydia: Oh, wow. Yep. And then we Go down into Ben Affleck's bedroom, and he's been having fun with a lady friend. We see some feet underneath some covers, and Bruce Willis, you know, heads on down there, sees uh a bra, pulls it up, and then notices oh, the the lady friend he's having fun with is his daughter Grace, played by Liv Tyler.

0:30:54 Thomas: What's up, brah?

0:30:58 Bryan: Yeah. So the two of them were having consensual sex, and so obviously the solution to this is murder. Yeah.

0:30:58 Lydia: Yeah.

0:31:04 Omar: Yeah.

0:31:05 Lydia: So Harry gets pissed

0:31:05 Thomas: Yeah, This is just like 10, 15 minutes of pure patriarchy.

0:31:09 Lydia: On.

0:31:09 Thomas: It's just like they might as well just put the word patriarchy up and we just look at it for 10 minutes because he chases and it's so extreme. He chases around Ben Affleck. But actually, I was thinking about it. I wonder if this was just an improvised scene. Like, I think this, the, this, the script says, oh, Bruce Willis, you catch Ben Affleck with your daughter and you're like, ah, beans, you rascal. And then Bruce Wilson's like, that's not realistic because look at Ben Afflick's face. Like, I am so, I hate this guy. Like, you got, let me chase. And it just got more and more until he's to the point where he's chasing him around with a shotgun

0:31:09 Omar: If

0:31:42 Lydia: An oil rig.

0:31:42 Thomas: One thing, yeah, and he's just shooting. Why don't, look, Michael Bay, you're the explosivity guy. Why, why do you pick specifically a shotgun, the thing that had, like, literally, it's called a shotgun because there's shot in it, like, it, it spreads, there's a bigger thing. You can't just like, ah, just missed him with the shotgun bullet. It's like, no, that literally would, he would have shot all over him. Like, you canít, it's so fucking dumb. He's shooting willy-nilly, and one of the guys is like, ah, this is getting a little, I love that guy, he's shooting everybody all over the thing, bullets are flying, and one of the guy's like, this is going a little far. Do you guys think this is, is going a little far, like a little bit.

0:31:43 Lydia: Yeah.

0:32:17 Lydia: Come

0:32:18 Bryan: Yeah.

0:32:19 Thomas: I love that moment.

0:32:19 Bryan: Just a bit. No.

0:32:19 Lydia: On Harry. Yeah.

0:32:20 Thomas: Yeah. And so then that the, but some racial stereotypes that Michael Bay wanted some more, but Michael Bay squeezes in as many stereotypes per minute as I don't know if that's a you metric have in film school, Omar, you can tell me, but his stereotypes per minutes score is, is through the roof. I mean, just absolutely through the roof

0:32:31 Omar: It If it drops, um, your budget gets cut. It's kind of like, it's it's kind of like police, like a completely bloated police budgets. If they drop, you know, if you don't use them, then you get in trouble. So

0:32:38 Thomas: Speed yeah yeah if your racism speed goes below 60 miles per hour then the whole movie explodes but no Michael Bay would like that the movie doesn't explode

0:32:50 Omar: I I wanted to verify the screen direction that you are saying might be the case. And I am now the proud owner of the Armageddon script on PDF.

0:33:01 Thomas: No.

0:33:01 Lydia: Wait.

0:33:03 Omar: So give me a sec. I'm scrolling to the page.

0:33:06 Thomas: That was just merely a joke

0:33:07 Omar: I mean, there's some details, but you're not wrong. Like, like, I mean, it's a pretty short, it's shorter than it plays in the movie. So, uh,

0:33:16 Thomas: Yeah. The actually, that's a good question. How long is the script? Is it like three pages, because this, the whole thing is just fire and explosions. So I wonder, all

0:33:24 Omar: No It'S NOT THREE, IT'S SEVEN. UM, FOUR OF THEM ARE DRAWINGS.

0:33:28 Thomas: Right.

0:33:31 Lydia: Man, all right, so we're going back to NASA, though, so that was a nice little side excursion, um, I'm sure Harry will matter soon enough, um, they're trying to figure out what they want to do, and Dr. Ronald Quincy, pretty much the smartest man on the planet, is is

0:33:46 Thomas: I have so much to say. I'm sorry.

0:33:47 Lydia: What Billy Bob Thornton refers

0:33:49 Thomas: They're having the board meeting and it's like, what are we going to do? And this is where we get a lesson from Brian. I can't wait. But first I just want to say, as I was, okay, doing the math, 11 or 12, when this came out, so they introduced Lucius Malfoy as, you won't want to listen to him. He's the smartest man in the world. And so as a kid, I was like that. OK, so the government maintains a position and they keep the smartest man in the world always hired. And I was Like, that's great. Obviously, you would do that if you're the United States government.

You would have like, hey, we got another problem. Call the smartest men in the World. Yeah, he's already here because we keep him on staff, like obviously. And then what he does is he gives a really like arrogant lesson to everybody in the room about, you know, like, but he communicates the problem, but makes everyone feel dumb while he does it. Cause that's filmmaking. And, but that's, like, it's almost the opposite. We actually just maintained the dumbest people in power and go to them exclusively. So I was disappointed, uh, when I finally learned that the smartest man in the world thing doesn't exist, but

0:33:49 Lydia: To him as yeah yep it's

0:34:17 Omar: Yeah.

0:34:48 Lydia: Not actually a job. Yeah. Yep.

0:34:48 Bryan: No.

0:34:49 Thomas: The comedy of this thing is just, they pull out all their solutions for the asked for what to do. And they They pull out two things that are real things. And then Billy Bob Thornton is like, God damn it. This is all bullshit. What are we going to do? Shelved the smart real things in three seconds. And they're like, well, none of that's going to work. And they are like, ah, damn.

0:34:49 Bryan: Yeah.

0:35:11 Lydia: We gotta blow it up from the inside, and in order to do that, we gotta drill, baby.

0:35:14 Omar: It's Oh,

0:35:14 Thomas: They So, Brian, what do we really do if this happens?

0:35:19 Bryan: So there are plans, um, and surprisingly enough, nuking the asteroid is one of the plans, um, it's the last plan, um, it is basically the last

0:35:30 Thomas: It's more for fun before we die, though. Yeah.

0:35:33 Bryan: Yeah, it's basically you nuke it if you've got nothing else left you possibly can do. But what you don't do is drill inside it and nuke from the inside. That's the way to actually make the problem worse.

0:35:47 Thomas: Wait, hold on. Are you telling me it doesn't split clean in half right down the middle and each side is like, oh, I guess I'll go. You go that. Okay. I'll go that way. You go that way.

0:35:51 Bryan: No, no, no... Yeah...

0:35:57 Thomas: And we'll meet on the other side, by the way, we'll put ourselves back together on the other side of the earth. It doesn't do that. Okay.

0:35:57 Lydia: Oh.

0:36:03 Bryan: No, so just to put some numbers in perspective, An asteroid about 1 kilometer in diameter is enough to wipe out all life on Earth. This asteroid is the size of Texas. That is hundreds of miles in diameter. So if you break that up and even one chunk, so you're going to have thousands, tens of thousands of chunks afterwards. Words, if even one of those is still a kilometer in diameter and isn't blown through to the side and falls down on Earth, you've still got a problem. So, fragmenting it is exactly what you want to avoid when dealing with an asteroid, because it increases the risk that there will be at least one chunk big enough to wipe out all life.

0:36:19 Omar: Yeah.

0:36:21 Lydia: My god, we're all dead.

0:36:14 Thomas: Wow. Wow Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like if you had a firing squad, it'd be great if they're like, hey, everybody, no, actually one guy hold 50 guns. And then you just take out that guy. But if it's like, no, I know what I'll do, hey, you, one guy, hand out all those guns to 50 other people. And now I'll try to take them all out before they shoot me. It's like, that's the the worst plan, that's not a good plan.

0:37:09 Bryan: So moving a step up and not quite as bad is the plan they disregard, which comes from the the White House, which is nuking the surface of it to push it away, which is still a bad plan, the energy isn't on their side, but at least it wouldn't make things worse. And if you know some other country on Earth has a brilliant idea to solve it, at least you aren't getting in their way and making things worse by doing that. And a plan like that could actually work if the asteroids were significantly smaller. Like, if you had an asteroid that was just a few kilometers across, you could knock that off, or if you have enough time in advance. A lot of this comes down to how much time you have. Because, Think about this, you see a bullet coming at you. If it's two feet away, you've got to shove it all the way at a sharp angle to get away, way, but if it's two miles away, you only have to change its trajectory by a fraction of a degree.

0:37:16 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. This thing hits like a bug on its windshield out there, it might miss us, but How

0:38:08 Bryan: Yeah, so the further of this, but they set this movie up that we've got 18 days, which is not enough to get it out of the way.

0:38:13 Omar: 20.

0:38:13 Lydia: To do anything,

0:38:16 Thomas: Close. Is that, like, give us an idea of how close that is, we don't know how fast, is it matter about the Speed?

0:38:16 Bryan: Oh.

0:38:16 Lydia: It Says 22, 000 Miles per hour is The Travel Speed, no.

0:38:21 Thomas: Oh. Oh.

0:38:22 Bryan: Yeah. 22, 000 Miles Per hour, so multiply that, so we got 400,000 miles in it per day, times 18 days, 20 million miles, I'm thinking? No, 10

0:38:35 Omar: Million.

0:38:35 Thomas: So What is that?

0:38:36 Omar: Miles. It's

0:38:36 Thomas: And You're saying that's way too close. So I want to get an idea.

0:38:38 Bryan: Yeah. Yeah, just how massive this is, is what makes it a problem and how much you can deflect it.

0:38:45 Thomas: How close is Mars to us? Do we know? Has anyone ever figured that? I just want to know, how close are we to the sun in miles? Like a bazillion?

0:38:53 Omar: It's more of an art than a science. Is

0:38:59 Thomas: I'm just trying to get an idea of where the fuck this is. Okay. How close are we to the Sun? Okay. 94 million miles to the son. So it's about that far away, I guess.

0:39:11 Lydia: He No, he said 10, 10 million miles.

0:39:11 Thomas: Oh.

0:39:12 Bryan: 10 million I think, just doing it off my head.

0:39:13 Lydia: Oh.

0:39:13 Thomas: Oh, 10 million? Oh, I thought I heard 100. Okay.

0:39:15 Bryan: So yeah, it, it it's pretty close on a solar system scale. It's coming and so it's going to be hard to deflect it. If it were smaller, we could deflect it, but if it were small, we wouldn't have a movie. So, yeah, they had to put a big one, so, yeah.

0:39:17 Thomas: Oh. Yeah. Here's my question. How do you do the calculation of how many nukes deflects, like, because, like, explosion has some force, obviously, but how do you calculate that? Because it's not like, you know, it is space, so it's just the speed, the momentum of the whatever you know, like what is that calculation. Sure.

0:39:46 Bryan: Yeah, it's how much momentum you need to give it, and this depends a bit on which direction you're trying to deflect. But you can figure out how much momentum. So if you know the mass of it, then you can think about what speed you need to get it clear of the Earth. Then some quick algebra gets you the momentum change, and then momentum is force times time, so what's the force of a nuclear blast times the time it lasts, and you can calculate all that

0:40:14 Thomas: But Well But hold on But also, what's the force of a blast directionally the way you need, you know, because, like, a lot, right? I mean, because a

0:40:21 Omar: It, like, we're playing pool in a way, right, so

0:40:23 Thomas: Blast is a three-dimensional like sphere, right? I mean, like, isn't like, he, energy gonna go out spherically, but

0:40:28 Bryan: And you do have to allow from that when serious people were trying to figure out how to do this. The plan was you have to detonate a nuke a bit away from an asteroid for safety. If you put it on the surface, there's too much of a risk of fracturing it and breaking it apart. You put it away so that all the blast hits it at roughly the same direction, and then you can calculate what's the angle the asteroid takes up viewed from where the nuke explodes, and then you divide that by the full three-dimensional angle the... Yeah.

0:41:03 Thomas: Also, remember that, not, we're all dumb, what, what is the thing that's hitting the the asteroid? Like, I, I know is is

0:41:09 Bryan: So that So that would be all the particles let loose by the nuclear explosion.

0:41:14 Bryan: So, atoms, basically. Atoms and subatomic particles and photons come shooting out. So if you're using a helium bomb that's a fusion bomb, you're creating helium particles and emitting tons of photons of energy, and that will cause on it.

0:41:22 Thomas: That? Crazy. Wow.

0:41:33 Thomas: Is it, like, we talked about the other day, like, it's all, it's literally like the light pushes it, partially?

0:41:37 Bryan: Yeah, the light is a big part of this, yes. But there also are particles that come shooting out. Like a helium bomb creates helium, and that helium is going to be moving quickly because of all the energy.

0:41:41 Thomas: That's so cool. Right. Right. Okay, like, it said, like, like, we're literally shooting an air gun at it.

0:41:57 Bryan: Yeah,

0:41:54 Omar: This plan might not work. So, so, sending our boys up, drilling, drilling, notwithstanding, this is a complicated plan. Okay.

0:42:00 Lydia: God.

0:42:06 Bryan: And even the time they do have... If we put aside the fact that it makes things worse, one nuke is not enough to blow up this asteroid. I mean, just imagine, do we have one nukem that could blow up all of Texas?

0:42:07 Omar: Okay.

0:42:19 Thomas: We Should get one.

0:42:21 Bryan: I ran the numbers on how

0:42:23 Thomas: Finally, someone's asking the good questions here. Do we

0:42:26 Lydia: That's

0:42:26 Bryan: Big is this asteroid? The biggest bomb we had at the time, the B53, about one trillionth the energy needed to blow this asteroid up. So,

0:42:39 Omar: One trillionth.

0:42:36 Thomas: Well, Wow. I was gonna say we could send a bunch of them, but I don't, I don't think we have, we spend a lot on defense, but I don't think we have a trillion bombs. We might have several billion that is crazy.

0:42:39 Bryan: Yeah. No. No. No. Yeah.

0:42:49 Lydia: Crazy also.

0:42:49 Omar: Steve Buscemi, we need you to take a trillion bombs.

0:42:52 Bryan: Yeah.

0:42:55 Thomas: Brian, I do love your, like, setting aside the fact that this will make everything worse. I hope all my plans are greeted with that kind of, reception, like, all right, set aside the fact that your plan is literally going to make everything worse. I'll address it still for some reason. Why are we still evaluating it?

0:43:03 Bryan: Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:07 Lydia: We Got a lot of movie to get through, you guys.

0:43:12 Thomas: Yeah,

0:43:12 Bryan: I'll just leave it with, the, rather than going through all the plans, there is one better plan we have for if we see something, which is it basically boils down to throwing a rock at it, which is, just when it's far enough away, the fancy term for this is kinetic impactor, but when you boil it down, we throw a rock at it to knock it away. Um, they've tested this, um, there was a test a few years ago, actually, that they can pull this off, and they can, so if we have enough lead time, we get catch one, um, we can pull those off again and knock it out of the way.

0:43:29 Thomas: Really? Really? How how are we getting and sending a rock? And what size of thing are you talking about?

0:43:48 Bryan: Okay, it isn't literally a rock, it's a rockette, I just left off the et

0:43:52 Thomas: A rocket? Damn, that's sad. Which one do they, how do they pick which one goes up there?

0:43:52 Lydia: They're

0:43:59 Omar: Yeah, it's a, it's short straw situation.

0:44:00 Lydia: Really good at kicking so Yep.

0:44:01 Omar: It's just like the movie.

0:44:01 Bryan: Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:00 Thomas: Yeah, they're rockets. They're going to get in a kick line and kick. Yeah. Just kick the fucking asteroid out of the way. I love that. No, but for real, how big a thing and what what

0:44:09 Bryan: Oh, it depends on what we want to do. I haven't looked at the specifics of the mission, but, you know, anything you launch into space, you can aim at an asteroid and have just collide with it. It's, uh, you've got to be careful with all the calculations to make sure it actually hits, but it doesn't really matter what it is, as long as you get going with it at enough speed and, and early enough, you can push it out of the way.

0:44:30 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry. I'm also forgetting. Um, this is all under the theory that this is not a fucking Texas size thing, right? If it was a Texas size thing, we're just fucked. Right.

0:44:38 Omar: Right

0:44:38 Bryan: Even that, if you do it early enough. You need enough time.

0:44:41 Omar: Okay.

0:44:40 Thomas: Okay. Early enough. Yeah, But all those plans suck, Brian. There's only one thing that will work. What is it, hon?

0:44:46 Lydia: Yeah. We gotta drill into this plant, a bomb, and then blow it up from the inside. So, uh, so we have to get Harry over, right? So we go back over to the oil rig and we're interrupting something that's like pretty intense, um, AJ is not listening to Harry. This is a common thread throughout the movie, right? Oil's going everywhere. There's valves that are happening all over the place.

0:44:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:10 Lydia: I don't know exactly what they're doing. They're talking a lot about the valves. Alarms are going off. Everyone's trying to evacuate the rig because I think they think it's all going to blow up. Everyone is going to get hurt.

0:45:10 Thomas: Valves are happening, yeah. Yeah. But this this

0:45:21 Lydia: Someone could die.

0:45:21 Thomas: Won't have any relevance to like the last moments of the film, though, will it? So,

0:45:25 Lydia: Yeah. Well, yeah. Who knows? Who knows. I guess we'll find out.

0:45:27 Thomas: There's a disagreement among Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis as to what the drilly drill should drill strategy.

0:45:31 Lydia: Yep. Yep. AJ wants to push through Harry's like, no, stop it, um, you

0:45:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I love it too, because the whole movie doesn't work if you can't make drilling seem like the most complicated possible thing.

0:45:43 Lydia: Hit lots of pockets as you go down.

0:45:45 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, so I love they're like, no, I said we should push the off button and he said no, push the on button. You see, it's an art. It's not a science. There's a lot to it. This

0:45:46 Lydia: Um,

0:45:55 Omar: You it does get to a point where it's just like, but what if we just drill with a bigger drill? Oh, you think you could just drill mit the bigger drill? You think that you could, you think that we could just go, oh, you want to go deeper, you think that we can just, yeah, okay, why don't we do, why don, go ahead and do that, because Mr. Smart Guy, so what are we gonna do? We're gonna get a thinner drill, we're going to go deep, okay, okay, and you're just like, wait, what, I, I'm, I can't track this, okay.

0:46:15 Lydia: So. Uh, they, they managed to avoid death, which was good at the time, but then the government is there and they say, Harry, you got to get on the chopper, don't ask questions, and Harry says, all, all right, but I'm taking my daughter. So they make it over to NASA, or Harry makes it over to NASA. Billy Bob Thornton tells them what's going on, you know, they talk about the speed of the asteroid, even if it hits water, it's still land, so there's really no way of avoiding it, and we only have 15 days left. They've already wasted three days trying to get Harry over, so that was really efficient and suffocate.

0:46:15 Thomas: Just I got a question, assuming, again, not the Texas size thing, the Texus, what, assume, uh, you said a kilometer right is enough to kill us, us all. Could you tell us real quick about the, like, ocean versus land thing? Does that matter? Would we, more of us or less of us survive?

0:47:00 Bryan: It's going to change how it kills us, but if it hits the ocean, it's going to cause massive tidal waves. The one that killed all the dinosaurs, they theorize it would have caused tidal waves kilometers high, which would have flooded the land. And if it hits land, it's going to more directly cause a huge dust cloud, which will stay up in the atmosphere for a decade or so and cause global cooling.

0:47:03 Thomas: Okay.

0:47:24 Lydia: Everybody, yeah.

0:47:25 Thomas: Here's one quote, and I know you're not a biologist, but at one point someone said everything will die. Not even bacteria will survive. And that to me seemed a little far-fetched. Is that true?

0:47:34 Bryan: I suspect some bacteria could survive. I mean, the dinosaur extinction, not everything died in that. Now, one the size of Texas, maybe that could, Yeah, something that big could turn the whole Earth's surface molten.

0:47:41 Thomas: Exactly. They didn't have to start life over again. Oh, oh, okay.

0:47:43 Lydia: Even

0:47:53 Bryan: Yeah, I haven't done the math on that, but I think there's an idea that that's how we got our moon, is some big collision split off a chunk of the Earth and basically disrupted the surface so much. So, yeah, if that happens, we'll get another moon, but we won't be around to enjoy it.

0:47:54 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Jeez. So that level of destruction. Okay. Maybe it could wipe out literally every all back to that. I thought that was a bold claim, but geez, I guess Texas size fucking thing. No, they're fine.

0:48:17 Lydia: The cockroaches.

0:48:18 Omar: Yikes.

0:48:19 Thomas: They don't count. They're neither life nor bacteria. Two moons.

0:48:23 Lydia: Yeah.

0:48:20 Omar: Two. Moons. I mean, obviously. Not worth it, obviously. Not worth it, but the Star Wars fan of me, yeah.

0:48:24 Thomas: Yeah, they'RE Yeah, the

0:48:29 Lydia: So they're trying to get uh, Harry to work with them, they built um, his drill design, they stole his patent from the patent office, he says and they put it together badly,

0:48:34 Omar: They just they just borrowed it, yeah.

0:48:32 Thomas: God, oh, my fucking this this is the he he this is the writing here is just so he walks into the hangar, and the bad writing, they have to repeat themselves a lot for no reason. So like, Billy Bob Thornton's like, "Take a look at that. You might recognize it." And then Bruce Willis is like, "I recognize that because it's my design. And you're like, only one of you needed to say that. You don't both need to say it. So we're to believe they very quickly stole his design that that he patented. And I'm pretty sure that's not how patents work. Work? I don't think you like, like a, like a mechanism that's like 50,000 moving pieces. I don'T think you like draw out every function of what everything does in your drill. I think, don't you have to just do like kind of broad strokes of what the patentable thing is about it? Like what the, yeah.

0:48:37 Omar: Yes.

0:48:53 Lydia: And

0:49:12 Bryan: Yeah.

0:49:22 Lydia: This is also confusing because, like, they, they put together this drill, they didn't do it very well, and then Lucius Malfoy says that the, the team has been training for eight months, but I thought we've only had three days, so

0:49:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:34 Bryan: They just coincidentally

0:49:34 Thomas: What was that?

0:49:34 Lydia: Maybe they were getting ready for something else

0:49:35 Bryan: Had an astronaut drilling team on standby, buy. But despite that, they had to go get real drillers because they couldn't teach the astronauts how to drill, but they can teach drillers how to be astronauts. That's

0:49:36 Lydia: Yeah,

0:49:44 Thomas: Yeah, well, I'm gonna play that clip, but a second ago we were told this was the smartest man on Earth, and then, and then we get the scene where Bruce Wills walks in, sees his drill that he designed, he's like, literally every part is on backwards like the whole he's they're like, no part of this is correct, well then what was it doing, did he even turn it on, was it like

0:49:58 Lydia: He's like you yeah you put this on backwards maybe he's not good at IKEA instructions either, there.

0:50:07 Thomas: He's he's the smartest man in the world, but I mean, your instructions were, they were just, yeah, they sucked, but yeah, but we got, this is, the if you could sum up the whole movie, I think it'd be, I

0:50:12 Omar: Sudoku, I'm great at, yep,

0:50:18 Clip: I assume you sent for me because somebody told you I was the best. Well I'm only the best because I work with the best, if you don't trust the men you're working with, you're as good as dead. If you want to send these boys into space, fine, I'm sure they'll make good astronauts. They don't know jack about drooling. To

0:50:36 Lydia: I had that quote written down too. I'm glad you played it.

0:50:38 Thomas: Good. It's so good. That's like saying like, I'm sure these people make fine astronauts, but they don't know anything about drilling. It is that dumb. Like that is how I couldn't think of a, yeah, what is dumber than, I tried to think of an, like a dumber statement and that like, Oh I am sure these people make fine the job. That's the hardest job we've ever come up with as humans.

0:50:46 Bryan: Literally what he said.

0:50:47 Lydia: Yeah.

0:50:48 Omar: Uh,

0:50:58 Lydia: That takes years to train for.

0:50:59 Thomas: Yeah. Like you, you need to be like fucking a doctorate and a man, like a, like a pilot, like you can't, it's the hottest job in the world might be astronaut and in terms of qualifications.

0:51:00 Lydia: Yeah,

0:51:08 Bryan: Job description of astronaut is being able to do whatever complicated thing they need to do out in space because they've got, like, three people out there who need to do everything in zero gravity.

0:51:15 Lydia: Yeah,

0:51:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, you can, I'm not, I'm like, I'm fine best people we've never come up with as humans, but they don't know how to push the start the drill button and then like if if something goes wrong they don'T KNOW HOW TO PUSH THE STOP BUTTON and then be like change the bit

0:51:30 Omar: Generations, three generations. Generations. This, uh, Brian, this is the bit that Ben Affleck, uh, has the commentary over. Right where, yeah, this is, there's a, the DVD commentary of him just and

0:51:42 Bryan: Yeah. Yeah, the very premise of the movie is you can't teach astronauts how to drill. Oh,

0:51:51 Omar: He just is like, he apparently was telling Michael Bay, he was just like, "Michael, this doesn't make sense, they're like, you, like, of you can't train people to be astronauts in two days, the astronauts are the smartest people, blood and ass, I'm sure they can do it, I'm sure that they could be the ones," and Michael's just like, "Shut up, shut up, just like marched off set."

0:51:57 Thomas: Yeah

0:52:02 Lydia: Yeah.

0:52:06 Thomas: Did he write it wait did he actually who wrote the script though

0:52:14 Omar: This is, I can tell you, as a proud owner of the script, uh, this,

0:52:15 Thomas: Yeah I was gonna say oh

0:52:19 Bryan: I've got something even more horrifying. There was a whole script continuity department who worked on this.

0:52:24 Thomas: Abrams is listed as one of the writers that'S THE WORST THING I'VE ever heard. I guess before he got his start, you got to just take whatever job you can get.

0:52:30 Omar: You, I could say who's, uh, credited as the writer on the script, but more importantly, I just want to say that at the top of the script, on the on the cover page, in, bold, all and underline, it says, "edgy for," in all caps, "for educational purposes only." I disagree, I I actually I fundamentally disagree with the use of educational, uh, I'm offended as a writer, I think words have meaning.

0:52:43 Thomas: What wait? What part of it is for?

0:52:54 Omar: I

0:52:53 Thomas: Oh, are they saying you can't buy the script and then put on your own Armageddon play or something? Thing is that

0:52:58 Omar: Guess you can't put on your own Armageddon, which, hey, I'm sorry, buds, you can take me to court, but I'm doing it, um, but, but educational, I don't know, so non-profit. Maybe, but let's be careful with what we say.

0:52:59 Thomas: Oh Wow. Yeah.

0:53:09 Lydia: Yeah it's what not to do is is really what the education is there.

0:53:13 Thomas: No. I learned a lot from this. No, like, I just from watching this movie, I can already drill an asteroid. Like, I think you can Teach Astronauts to do that in the days that you have, whatever days you have, however long that is.

0:53:19 Lydia: Oh, there. You go all Right. So, We, we got to get all Harry's guys, right? He says he's not going to go up without his guys, so we get a montage, um, yes,

0:53:25 Thomas: Yep. Yeah,

0:53:28 Omar: Yeah.

0:53:29 Bryan: Yeah. And remember, this is one day later, and AJ has already started his own company.

0:53:33 Lydia: Yes,

0:53:33 Thomas: Yeah, We said that, same thing, we were ever watching it? He's like, well, they get AJ. And he's, he's like, well, yeah, I built this house, got this whole oil rig, I got three kids now, by the way, I, he's, like, all in old man makeup or something. It's been one day. He has his whole business.

0:53:35 Lydia: Yeah, Exactly. Yep.

0:53:36 Omar: Yeah.

0:53:46 Omar: This is my daughter, Gracie.

0:53:49 Thomas: Yeah. He is like, Oh, it's great.

0:53:50 Omar: I will replace you.

0:53:52 Thomas: Being my own boss now, it is awesome. I have been telling... let me tell you, I have got, got my retirement plan set up. I've got, like, what the whole point of the movie is, how little time they have, but just, to fuck with us, they're like, "What if AJ already started a new business venture?" And not only that, it's not even like he, he talked to a guy and was like, "Yeah, should I come drill?" Like, he's already out there, like, he's ALREADY DOING IT

0:54:14 Omar: Yeah.

0:54:15 Lydia: He's working on the job and And from the South China Sea too, right? Like, I imagine there's some travel time.

0:54:15 Thomas: Yeah

0:54:17 Omar: Yeah.

0:54:21 Bryan: Yeah, just getting back to the U.S. is going to take more than a day.

0:54:24 Omar: That's so funny.

0:54:24 Thomas: They actually said 18.5 hours they actually set bruce wills is like we've been flying for 18. 5 hours 18 and a half hours. As I'm sure, I probably just made the note, 18.5, and that's already eaten up a lot of your time right, I mean couldn't they have just telephoned

0:54:25 Lydia: Oh my God, you

0:54:27 Bryan: Yeah. Yeah, and

0:54:36 Omar: That's. So funny.

0:54:37 Lydia: Have six more hours to start a business

0:54:38 Thomas: Yeah

0:54:37 Bryan: That's on a government helicopter. The other guys are going to have to fly commercial. It's going to keep them even longer.

0:54:43 Lydia: Yeah and also

0:54:43 Thomas: I think next time just do a conference call, like here's

0:54:47 Lydia: Like, like, why was 1998 a lot of jokes with Steve Buscemi and underage girls, a lot like throughout the movie very uncomfortable Oh was he

0:54:47 Omar: This could have been an email. Yeah. Yes.

0:54:53 Bryan: Yeah, but wasn't he also inclined to airplane also? Pedophile?

0:54:57 Thomas: The tragic thing is, it's literally the only comedy that works in the whole movie, though, that's what sucks about it, found because myself laughing every time, but it's because Steve Buscemi's actually a good actor and I was like, god damn it,

0:54:58 Lydia: Yeah oh yeah

0:55:06 Bryan: Yeah, yeah.

0:55:08 Omar: There's one bit when they're all getting their checkups because they haven't even gotten past to fly to space in general, where, where it's, "Listen, lady, I'm here to drill," and then she goes, "Me too," and I'm just like, you know what you're the best part of this, yeah

0:55:19 Lydia: Yep

0:55:18 Thomas: Okay we need we need to set, let's, let's fast forward to there, they for some reason need to do, like, testing on all of them, like, you already know they can't fucking, do we already know that it's not like it's like, okay, we're gonna get this Bruce Willis team to go do the drilling, but if they get like a B minus on the astronaut test, then nah, they can't go no, they're an F, they're a solid F you know, that's the, yeah, and why

0:55:22 Lydia: Yep they're doing medical and psyche vows yep, yep

0:55:31 Bryan: Yeah,

0:55:40 Omar: Yes

0:55:42 Bryan: They're enough, and they go anyways, but if they were going to go anyways, why did you bother testing them?

0:55:46 Thomas: Are you wasting the time doing, okay, this is the, this, my favorite thing in the world is stupid, how stupid people think smart people are. It's my favorite thing. We get a cut to this, I guess the psychological exam that they're doing and Steve Buscemi has done a Rubik's cube. So we're to believe that this guy is like, hey, we, they get them on the phone, by the way, and they're like, Hey, we were, okay. You're not going to believe this. We're Um, sending just some fucking randos. Like we're just sending randOS to space, but can you do for some reason, like a psychological exam on them? And this guy is like, all right, Hey, pack up the Rubik's cube. Where he brings a, what is that test? What information

0:55:50 Omar: Yes. Yep.

0:55:59 Bryan: Yeah. Whether

0:56:24 Lydia: Yeah. Oh.

0:56:31 Thomas: Is the Rubiks cube providing in this scenario? Please somebody tell me.

0:56:36 Bryan: Or not you've previously learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube quickly.

0:56:39 Omar: Yeah.

0:56:40 Thomas: I know.

0:56:40 Omar: Right. Right. It's you're

0:56:40 Lydia: God.

0:56:40 Thomas: Oh, he's like you see the launch button on the space shuttle is a Rubik's cube so and I like damn is

0:56:46 Omar: Gonna have to use in in a squeeze you're going to have to use the the goldfish method, do you understand that? And Steve was like, oh, I do, I do, let me show you on this Rubik's cube my friend, um, Kate will also get it. That's

0:56:53 Thomas: That a Rubic's cube joke that only you get I mean, no, I meant only of the four of us. I, yeah, I bet you there's like 600 people listening who are Rubik's Cube champions.

0:57:06 Omar: The only thing I know about Rubik cubes it's just you form a fish and then from there you could do anything you want, I guess. I'm not good at it. I'm not going to space how

0:57:06 Lydia: Not

0:57:07 Thomas: There's a goldfish method I think someone just lied to you about how to do a Rubik's cube, yeah, Yeah, a

0:57:18 Omar: Would I know. It's Armageddon logic. Like, how would I know.

0:57:21 Thomas: Rubik's and they're doing there. The joke that you kind of spoiled already is some they're getting rectal exams or like colonoscopy. Like, why would there?

0:57:21 Omar: Yes.

0:57:29 Bryan: Yeah. Something like that. If you Have bowel cancer, the tumor will explode when you go into space.

0:57:32 Omar: You Uh-huh. This,

0:57:33 Thomas: Yeah,

0:57:37 Lydia: Like a legitimate probe that she's holding, like, is that, is that how they actually test for that? I would imagine the camera would be smaller. Yeah.

0:57:43 Thomas: Why would any of this? Why would any of this you do? What, give me one piece of information that the, answer to which will change what you're doing, like, seriously, tell me, like, "Oh, this guy actually has a bomb in him," that'd be like the one thing we looked up his ass and there, like, is his clock and it's, and by the way, the clock, if it's more than the time that the asteroid's coming, he can actually still go up. So, like, you'd have to see that there's a bomb there that's due to go off before the, like, the mission would be over, I guess. Guess that's the one thing.

0:57:54 Omar: Yeah. Yeah.

0:57:59 Lydia: Oh.

0:58:14 Omar: Oh. No, don't, don't defuse it. Don't diffuse it, if it's 20 days. Yeah.

0:58:17 Lydia: Yeah.

0:58:14 Bryan: Well Yeah, if they're actually serious about this and they might want to test, can they withstand all of the g-forces they're going to, because they get into this later, that they're gonna have to make this ridiculous maneuver that has like 10 g-forces, um, which by the way, 10 g-forces is about the fatal limit at which even a trained fighter pilot in a special, compression suit that made to survive the most G-forces humanly possible will probably die at 10 G-Forces.

0:58:26 Omar: Oh.

0:58:26 Lydia: Did you pop

0:58:35 Omar: Die.

0:58:45 Thomas: Oh, all First off. Yeah. Thanks for the correction, Brian. We do keep the ability to withstand G-Force in our asshole. I forgot about that.

0:58:46 Lydia: Right.

0:58:50 Bryan: Yes, I know.

0:58:51 Thomas: So it is true that they do have to look up up your ass for that?

0:58:51 Omar: Let's That's Where it is I

0:58:58 Thomas: If you want the full thing, go to patreon.com/seriouspod at that second level or above and you get the full over two hours. It's, patrons will also get access to Brian's complete notes, because obviously he didn't get to a lot of the bad science, he's got, you know, I think it was like six pages of full notes, that'll be amazing. So, patrons, I'll put that up there as well. So yet another reason, get on patreon.com, okay?