Plot
Jack Hall is a paleoclimatologist on an expedition in Antarctica with colleagues Frank and Jason. They are drilling for ice core samples on the Larsen Ice Shelf for the NOAA when the shelf breaks off and Jack almost falls to his death.
Later on, in New Delhi, India, Jack presents his findings on global warming at a United Nations conference, where diplomats and Vice President of the United States Raymond Becker are unconvinced by Jack's findings. However, Professor Terry Rapson of the Hedland Climate Research Centre in Scotland believes in Jack's theories. Several buoys in the North Atlantic simultaneously show a massive drop in the ocean temperature, and Rapson concludes that melting polar ice is disrupting the North Atlantic current. He contacts Jack, whose paleoclimatological weather model shows how climate changes caused the first Ice Age. His team, along with NASA's meteorologist Janet Tokada, builds a forecast model with their combined data.
Across the world, violent weather causes mass destruction. U.S. President Blake authorizes the FAA to suspend all air traffic due to severe turbulence. At the International Space Station (ISS) three astronauts see a huge storm system spanning the northern hemisphere, delaying their returning home. The situation worsens when the latter develops into three massive hurricane-like super storms with eyes holding extremely cold air that instantly freezes anything it comes in contact with.
The weather becomes increasingly violent with intense winds and rains, causing the traffic-jammed Manhattan streets to become flooded knee-deep in a mix of rainwater, saltwater, and sewage. Jack's son Sam, who is in New York City on a school trip, calls his father, promising to be on the next train home, but the subways and Grand Central Terminal are closed due to flooding. As the storm worsens a massive storm surge hits Manhattan. Sam and his friends seek shelter in the New York Public Library, but not before his friend Laura gets wounded.
President Blake orders the evacuation of the southern states, causing almost all of the refugees to head to Mexico. Jack and his team set out for Manhattan to find his son. Their truck crashes into a tractor just past Philadelphia, so the group continues on snowshoes. During the journey, Frank falls through the glass roof of a snow-covered shopping mall. As Jason and Jack try to pull Frank up, the glass under them continues to crack and Frank sacrifices himself by cutting the rope. Meanwhile in Mexico, Vice President Raymond Becker hears from the Secretary of State that President Blake's motorcade was caught in one of the super storms before he could make it to Mexico.
The small group that remains burns books to stay alive and breaks the vending machine for food. Laura appeared to have a cold, so Sam comforts her and later confesses his feelings for her. Soon afterward, the group find out that Laura is afflicted with blood poisoning from her cut leg's being infected by the sewage-tainted water, so Sam and two others search for penicillin in a derelict Russian cargo ship that drifted inland, and are attacked by starving wolves that have escaped from the local zoo. The eye of the super storm begins to pass over the city. The three barely get back to the library.
During the deep freeze, Jack and Jason take shelter in an abandoned Wendy's restaurant, then resume their journey. They discover the library buried in snow, but find Sam's group alive. They radio this in and the President orders in UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters flown in New York. President Becker orders search and rescue teams to look for other survivors as he gives his first address to the nation. The movie concludes with the astronauts looking down at Earth from the Space Station, showing most of the northern hemisphere covered in ice and snow, with one of the astronauts calling it "the clearest atmosphere ever seen."
Read more about this topic: The Day After Tomorrow
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)