Armagedon

by

William A. Gralnick

In (1998) a campy movie hit the screens called Armageddon. Starring Bruce WIllis, it was about the impending doom coming down from space and its improbable thwarting. The thwarting was done by a crew of drilling engineers who went into space, landed on the meteor headed to earth, dug an 800 ft hole, implanted an atomic bomb, blew it off course and saved the world. Hooray! Strangely enough neither scenario is that improbably anymore. NASA is tracking meteors and the science of how to blow one up in a crisis isn’t far from what the movie depicted.