Sunday, April 1, 2012

Kiss your "Asteroid" goodbye! #atozchallenge

What's that up in the sky? It's a bird. It's a plane. Holy crap! It's Steve Buscemi riding a nuclear warhead!

You probably saw that one coming, right? We are talking asteroids, after all! And I don't know about you, but when I think about asteroids, comets, or any other space rock-caused apocalypse scenarios, that's the image that immediately jumps to mind. 

Forget snot-sobbing while Bruce Willis tells Liv Tyler goodbye. Just give me Steve Buscemi riding that bomb like it's a mechanical bull, and I'm a happy camper.

In all seriousness, there's just something about a giant space-rock on a crash course with Earth that has the action-movie fangirl inside dashing off to find popcorn and a good seat. I figure if we’re going to have an extinction event and zombies can’t be involved, we should at least go for broke! And an asteroid promises to make a big splash, no pun intended.

Scientists are pretty much in agreement that just such a rock crash landed on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 65 million or so years ago. The force of impact triggered everything from massive earthquakes to landslides to giant tsunamis, each of which has featured in its own end-of-the-world scenario a time or two. When all was said and done, the planet was covered in a nasty cloud of junk that thrust it into a catastrophic winter and eventually killed off the dinosaurs.

Who’s to say it won’t happen again?

It’s certainly a popular apocalypse theme in Sci-Fi movies and novels, with everyone from Michael Bay to Jack McDevitt getting in on the asteroid action. You have to admit, it certainly makes for some great action sequences and tense moments. Sadly though, I’ve not come across many current YA novels featuring asteroid-y goodness.

Maybe some of my fellow writers can remedy that shortage for me, yes? ;)

What about you? When you think asteroid apocalypses (or just plain asteroids), what novel or movie scene comes to mind for you?

Behave and I’ll Be Back with B tomorrow (har har),

*Useless factoid side-note: Steve Buscemi is talking about Slim Pickens taking a bomb ride in the movie, Dr. Strangelove   

**Remember to check out other Letter A posts for the A to Z challenge here.


  1. No nukes! No nukes! LOL! I don't have an asteroid apocalypse theme in mind, but maybe we should ask Amanda Hocking?!

    1. Oh, not a bad idea. I bet she could come up with something!

  2. Maybe someone can write a series like Harry Potter, Twilight or The Hunger Games with asteroids. Big movie success. Would the series be about survival? Seems like a winner to me.

    1. I'm on board with this plan! I just love a good end-of-the-world movie. It would be interesting to see a YA spin on the whole asteroid of doom scenario, particularly since most aversion movies/novels require blowing the asteroid up.

  3. I love it, can't wait to see where you're going with B.

    I've been racking my brain on this one all morning and you have me stumped. I don't think there are any asteroid films other than Armaggedon... are there?? I could give you a song about it if that helps - Asteroid by Killing Joke.

    1. There are a few asteroid films out there. Asteroid, and Armageddon are the obvious two. Then there's Deep Impact, Fire in the Sky, and a few others where a comet is the space-rock-of-death.

      I like the song! Very fun. :)

  4. I am still envisioning Buscemi riding a nuclear warhead! That said, I am with you on the fan-girl, grabbing popcorn to watch a good asteroid apocalypse film.

    1. Isn't it great? I just love him. He's always such a fun actor to watch. :)

  5. Let's hope there's no asteroid collision with Earth coming. I can't think of any movies about the subject.

    An A to Z Co-Host
    Tossing It Out

    1. There's an asteroid scheduled to fly-by on Sunday. I think we're safe from an apocalyptic collision though. ;)

      Thanks for stopping by, Lee!

  6. The Feral World Series by Gaddy Bergmann (Migration of the Kamishi, Trials of the Warmland, and Riders of the Mapinguari) is all about life 3,000 years after the asteroid Apophis hits in mid Twenty-First Century. It is quite the feel-good post-apocalyptic fiction. It is suitable for the YA market, and appeals to those who enjoyed The Road, Hunger Games, and Clan of the Cave Bear.

    In the series, human civilization has been knocked back to the stone age, but carries the lessons of industrialized society as part of its bible. The sins of pollution, over-exploitation, extinction hunting and global warming are clearly lessons for a new society religiously bound not to repeat them. Our lives become the apocryphal stories of the next age of humanity.

    Gaddy Bergmann is a zoologist and biologist who has studied how animals migrate in the modern world, among the presence of industrialized and fenced human civilizations. He approached the Feral World Series with the question: What would happen if today, mankind no longer affected how wild (and feral) animals migrated or propagated, and no longer exploited the world's resources?

    These are powerful novels. I highly recommend them. Note: We publish them.

    --DavidRozansky, publisher, Flying Pen Press

    P.S. Go ahead and Google the asteroid Apophis. It's headed right this way, on a collision course. What you find will certainly change how you view the idea of asteroid collisions. April 13, 2036, may be the unluckiest of Friday the 13th's ever.

    1. Thanks for the recommendation, David! I'll take a look.

      I've heard of Apophis. I was under the impression that astronomers had determined the possibility of a collision was negligible and the threat level had been significantly lowered on the Torino Scale since initial discovery. I'll take another look.



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