Plot
An atomic rocket is launched on a manned moon mission, but one of the engines malfunctions. The rocket's steering is broken. The pilot disengages the capsule and returns to earth. The atomic booster, however, continues on, eventually crashing into and exploding in an asteroid belt. The explosion dislodges many asteroids from their orbits. They coalesce into one giant cluster and are heading for earth. As the cluster approaches earth it causes global scale disasters: tidal waves, wind, fire storms and earthquakes. One scientist loses his sanity in the crisis and disables the great computer needed to calculate all the firing data. He is stopped and the data provided. But when no reasonable hope can be on the possibility that humans could eventually avoid the crash, scientists finds that moon will pass in front of the cluster so that most of it will be shielded. Hovever a small part of the cluster is not shielded and goes towards the earth. At this point, mankind's only hope is to arm every missile on earth with a nuclear warhead and fire them all at the cluster. The nations of the world band together and fire the volley. The cluster is destroyed.
In the English version of the movie, the sun was not mentioned as the source of the asteroids. From the movie:
| “ | “We have been able to locate the source of the echo.” “Well?” “It comes from the mass of Delta asteroids. The explosion of the XZ atomic charge has driven them out of orbit. They have become attracted one to another forming a single mass which is now wandering in space.” “Direction?” “Towards the Earth.” | ” |
In the French version of the movie however, the atomic rocket stage exploded later in Asteroid belt hurtling meteors on a collision course with earth.
Read more about this topic: The Day The Sky Exploded
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)