Astrobiologist Breaks Down Apocalyptic Scenes from Movies

Astrobiologist David Grinspoon breaks down apocalyptic scenes from movies, including 'I Am Legend,' 'Interstellar,' 'WALL-E,' 'The Day After,' 'Ad Astra,' 'Waterworld,' '12 Monkeys,' 'The Martian' and 'The 5th Wave.'

- Hey everyone, I'm David Grinspoon.I'm an astrobiologist, and I studyhow planets get lifeand how they lose life.And welcome to The Breakdown.[click][static hissing][mid-tempo lo fi music]All right, let's start with The Day After.[static hissing][static hissing][people talking excitedly]- What's going on?[rockets roaring]- Those are Minuteman missiles.- Like a test, sort of, like a warning?- Of all the post-disaster depictions,to me, this is, in a way,the most actually frighteningbecause it's [laughs] it's a real thingthat they try to make a realistic film of.I remember, actually, when this was on.I'm watching this, and I'm thinking,where are these people running to?How's it gonna really help?In theory, you get down in a basement,and yeah, you can avoidthe immediate effectsof fallout if you shelter in placeand don't breathe thatoutside air with the dustand if you get enough ina basement or something.You might escape the radiationif you're not literally in the blast zone.I'm also looking at these peopleand thinking yeah, so what are yougonna do a few [laughs] days from now?- [Man] How long do theradioactive effects last?- So there's the immediate pulseof there's some, theseshort-lived radionuclidesthat, if you manage to shelter in placeand not breathe that airand breathe falling dustfor a few days and then you get out,you're much better off.That's the theory is thatthere is something youcan do to stay alive immediately,and then maybe that's theonly town that got nukedand you can get to anotherone, but [laughs] maybe not.Okay, let's skip ahead here.[tape whirring][blast booms][people screaming][blast booms]Yeah, boy, that doesn'tlook like fun at all.The first thing I noticed wasthat the electromagneticpulse was depicted.If the blast doesn't get youand the radiation doesn't getyou, the electromagnetic pulsewill make all our electricalmachines stop workingwithin a certain radius.And then the explosion itselfis frighteningly convincing to me.I'm not sure about that scenewhere all the people startturning into skeletons,but even that, I think that's an attemptto depict the fact thatthere's these X-raysthat are pouring out of thething that are frying everybody,and it's even conceivable that youwould see something likethat in your last microsecondof consciousness [laughs]before it happened to you, too.[sonic boom][person screaming][building crumbling]- [Man] Danny![Danny screams]Don't look back!- Yeah, I think thatis pretty well depictedas far as I understand it.First of all, there'd just bea completely blinding flashof just radiation so intensethat everything would be whitein every direction, evenwith your eyes closed.If that didn't blind you andyou were still able to see,then yeah, there'd be thismassive mushroom cloud,which is simply the thermal pulseimmediately expanding this volume of air,which is low density because it's so hot,and it rises like a giantbubble into the stratosphere.And whenever you release thatmuch energy near the surfaceof the planet, you're gonnaget a bubble like thatthat just inexorably risesup and forms that mushroom.Everything left would burn.The aftermath of a nuclear explosionin a city is a firestorm,massive, massive amountsof smoke and debris headingup into the stratosphere.And by the way, that's whyyou get a nuclear winter,which is the real mainthreat of the aftermathof the nuclear war.After all those immediate effects,and that is because of all that smokethat ends up in the stratosphere.So those firestorms, it's actually notfrom the nuclear bomb itselfbut from the fires created,and all the burning cities, collectively,they make enough smoke that it circulatesaround the planet in the stratosphere,and it's gonna block outthe sun for two years.Again, the best approach is tonot let this happen.

[laughs]The Day After seems very real to me.It's got this heavinessto it that I still feelwhen I see it even thoughI'm also going like,well, that was the 80s, andwe've survived till now,so [laughs] that didn't happen.And now this is The 5th Wave.- Thank you.[cart rattling][deep rumbling][trees rustling]Come on, Tim.- [Tim] It's an earthquake![water roaring]- Tim, run!- Okay, so they're by a lake.The broad strokes of thisseem realistic to me.Earthquakes are short, and there's a jolt,and then they end up in an earthquake,and that seems pretty well done.And then the idea that the wave comes,that is realistic in broad terms.That's the thing with a tsunamiis that it comes awhile later.But what I'm wondering is the volume,the concentrated pulseof water from a lake,I'm not convinced that it works outin terms of the size 'causethe earthquake they lookedlike they were experience,it seemed like yeah,it was a major earthquake,but it wasn't like Krakatoa,the ground blowing up to bits.And that was a very,very powerful tsunami.[water roaring][intense dramatic music][bridge crashing]That's what I picturea tsunami looking likeif you experience it.It's that first rush of waterand then more and more and more.And we've seen footage in Japan and Sendaiwhich is the first really modern tsunamiwith that kind of footage of it crashinginto urban areas, and thatlooked pretty realistic to me.Let's check out Waterworld.- [Narrator] The polarice caps have melted,covering the earth with water.Those who survived[deep mid-tempo tribal drum music]have adapted to a new world.- So both probable and improbable.The polar ice caps can melt.They have in the past melted completely.They're on their way towards melting now,and that does raise sea level.But it doesn't raise sea level so muchthat the entire earthis covered with water.It raises sea level somuch that the oceansare larger and the land massesis comparatively smaller.Many times, actually,Earth has been ice freein its history, not recently,not since human beings have been here.So this is a realisticthreat and a possible futurewhere the earth would be ice free,and there'd be a lot moreocean than there is now,and that would changelife on Earth for sure.But it's taken to an extremethat you would never see happen.Interestingly, in my field, astrobiology,we consider the possibility of lifeon a lot of other kinds of planetsthat are like Earth butare different in some ways,and there is a kind of planetthat we call water worldswhich is a planet like Earth butthat initially just gets a lot more waterso that it never develops continentsthat push up above the oceans.It's completely covered with water,and there's a lot of interesting questionof whether life couldevolve on such a planet.So there probably arewater worlds out there,but this is probably nota realistic future Earth.[soft dramatic music][urine pouring][spigot creaking]There's almost a familiarity to thisfrom thinking aboutastronauts in a space capsuleand having to recycle all their waterand basically drink their own piss,although nicely filtered andhopefully conditioned well.And I see him doingthat, and first I think,oh, that makes sense.He's keeping his water and filtering it.But the difference between thisand astronauts in a space capsuleis that he's surrounded by water.Now he can't drink it'cause it's salt water,but what I'm wondering isit really that much easierto filter and recycle your pissthan to desalinate salt water?In theory, you could do either.It takes some energy and some effort,but I'm not sure about that.Maybe the pee would be easier to recycle.At times when it didn't,he'd have to manufacturefresh water eitherfrom the ocean or from hisown reused bodily fluids.And yeah, the plant, same thing.Most plants can't handlesalt water like us.They need fresh water.So if wanted the companyof his vegetable companion,he'd have to give it fresh water, too.All right, let's fast forward herethrough another part of Waterworld.[flare hissing][slow dramatic music]Okay, so here we see KevinCostner breathing underwateror at least Kevin Costner's character,which leads to the questioncould people evolve gills?I don't see this happeningnaturally biologically,in other words, if the world gets flooded,some mutant humans aregonna be born with gills,and then they survivebetter and give birthto a sub race of humans with gills.I don't see evolutionreally working that way,but, in a way, our closest analogiesin the ocean are the whales and dolphins,and they didn't develop gills.What they developed was the abilityto hold their breath underwater and dive,and they go to the surface tobreathe, and they have lungs.If it was that easy to develop gills,why didn't dolphins andwhales develop gills?Uh huh.Tell me that, evolution.

[laughs]- [Man] So would it be more realisticfor Kevin Costner to have a blow hole?- Yeah, yeah, I think Kevin Costnershould have a blow hole here,[laughs] not gills.

[laughs]when they make Waterworld Two.

[laughs]All right, let's check out 12 Monkeys.- Five billion peopledied in 1996 and 1997.- You believe 1996 is thepresent, then, is that it?- No, 1996 is the past, too; listen to me.- I think this is great.Bruce Willis is so good in this role.You can see that they have everyreason to believe he's nuts'cause he's spouting this ridiculous storyabout time travel.I love the way that's set up,and the depiction of the end of the worldin this film, again,frighteningly realisticin that the notion ofa world-ending disasterbecause of some biological agentthat humans are defenseless against.It's not necessarily an imminent threat,but there's a logic to it.- The man made dire prognosticationsabout a pestilence which he saidwould wipe out humanity inapproximately 600 years.Obviously, this plague Doomsday scenariois considerably more compellingwhen reality supports itwith a virulent disease.- Whatever the affecting agent isis something that's been evolving on Earthwith us for billions of yearsand is part of our biologicalsystem that's out of whack.But if you have somebodydeliberately engineering somethingthat there's no defenses against,there's potential that that could happen.That's why it's sounnerving about the factthat biological engineeringis getting easierand easier because it potentially puts itin the hands of people with lessand less institutionalallegiance.

[laughs]People have counterarguments aboutwhy that probably wouldn't happen,and it's not totally clear that it would.But it's certainly based on a premisethat has a realistic scientific rationale.[tires screeching][engine revving][deer hooves clopping]Yeah, so here we see New York City.It's obviously been overrun for awhile.The plants are growing up in the streetsand through some of the buildings,and there's wildliferunning through the streets,herds of deer.This looks pretty realistic to me.I often wonder about what's gonna happento cities when and ifthe humans disappear.And sometimes you'll be in a place,a part of New York or apart of some other citywhere, for some reason,it's been a little blockor a lot or something has been abandoned.And the city's still there,but it's reverting to forest slowly.[laughs] So you're gonnahave the grass growing talland out of control and othervolunteer species moving in,and it's gonna go wild like this.It's gonna take longer forthe streets to become fields.It's not gonna happen overnight.The pavement has to erode and be worn downby biology and have stuff growup and crack the pavement,so it's gonna be a number of yearsbefore the streets look like fields.It's hard to tell from this cliphow many years it's supposed to be.All the cars are stillthere in the streets,looking pretty fresh.They're not rusted out or anything,at least as I could see right there.I'm not sure the streets themselvesare gonna that quickly turn into fields,but they will eventually.[click][tape whirring]- [voice breaking] Please, take my baby!Take my baby![crowd clamoring][machine beeping]- [Soldier] No good.- This is really scary andI think pretty well done inthat one can imagine if there'sa really widespread diseaseand a biological emergencyin a crowded modern city like this.There might be a need for triage,which is that if you'regonna save anybody,you have to not save some people.It's a horrible thing tocontemplate and to depict here.Triage is a real response tocertain kinds of emergencies,and it's depicted in a brutal way,but you can imagine if thingswere on the edge of chaosand the authorities were strugglingto maintain control andthis was the only wayto prevent everybody from dyingthat you could end up ina situation like this.- Now there's just corn.- [Cooper] And we're growingmore than we ever have.- Well, like the potatoes in Ireland,and the wheat in the Dust Bowl,corn will die.- The notion that we couldlose whole staple cropshas some basis in reality.The food system isarguably more vulnerablethan it used to bebecause we're moving moretowards these monocultures.And anytime you have a monoculture,things that are genetically similar,forming a whole basis of a food crop,that makes it much more vulnerablethan it would be if it werelots and lots of strainswhere a disease, apathogen, might affect onebut not the neighbor's field,which is a different strain.The specific thing, Ithink, that's happeningin Interstellar, if I remembercorrectly is that the airis changing, the oxygencontent is going down.And I thought that particular detailwasn't that realistic because thereare things you can imagine we can do,raising the CO2 level,which we're doing now,which, if it continueson the wrong course,could cause a climate apocalypse.But actually lowering theoxygen in the atmosphereis not that easy, andthat's not really a threat.That would take many,many thousands of years,even if you stopped making new oxygen.But the notion thatwe've changed the planetin some way that's making it harderto grow food is certainlynot that hard to imagine.- We're not meant to save the world.We're meant to leave it.[ethereal dramatic atmospheric music]- The idea that someday people will tryto go live on planetsoutside our solar systemis not completely far fetched.It's challenging becausethe stars are so far away,you can't get to them in anordinary rocket within anythinglike a human lifetimeor 100 human lifetimes.But science fiction is fullof people getting around thatby inventing fancy physicswarp drives or generation shipswhere you have multiplehuman generations livingand then the distant descendantsof the people that set outare the people thatreach that other world,and it could happen someday.The thing that seemsunrealistic to me about thisis that's gonna be a responseto us messing up this planet.It's like oh, well, we need to go livein another one 'causewe screwed this one up.That really seems like a cop out.If we are ever able togo live on another planetin any kind of numbers where wecould repopulate thehuman race and survive,it seems to me in somemuch more far-off futurethan the much more immediate problemof figuring out how notto destroy Earth's climateand overpopulate the planetand cause a mass extinction.And so if you ask me will we ever go liveon planets around other stars,I don't wanna say never.Given enough time, that'ssomething that could happen,but I don't see it as connectedto our current climate threats.But there's a kind of space,industry space exploration,that is absolutely essentialto the project of saving the planet.Now this particular thingwhere you've got some hidden compoundand people are getting ready to launch offand try to save themselveswhen everybody else dies,I could see people objecting to that.I might object to that.And now next up, The Martian.- I have created 126square meters of soil.But every cubic meter ofsoil requires 40 litersof water to be farmable.- So the idea of farming on Marsis something that's been studied a lotby people at NASA and other agenciesbecause we wanna be ableto send people to Mars,and we want 'em to beable to live off the landbecause there's no wayyou could have any kindof a longterm presence on Marsand have to bring all the food from Earth.Just it's too expensive.You're launching too much mass.So you wanna be able togrow your food there.So it's an interesting question.Could you grow food on martian soil,and people are trying that, actually,with martian simulant soils.And it seems like somethingwe probably could solve.I think farming on Mars is realistic.Eventually, they'll be able to do it,but, as I understand this story,the premise is that theyweren't actually planningon doing this.They're not at that point yetwhere they sent up a colonythat was really prepared todo this, and he's improvising.He's obviously veryclever, but he'd also haveto get really lucky 'cause there'sgonna be a lot of factors.There's a balance, a lotof things that can go awry.I think it might be harderto grow food on Marsthan is depicted inhere, but I also think itis possible, so using thehydrazine from the rocketto separate it into nitrogen and hydrogenand then using the hydrogen to make water,that's realistic.The author of this hasworked out the chemistry,but I'm not sure the biology partis gonna be as easy as he thinks.I think that humans willeventually live on Mars,but as a post-apocalypticway to survive on Earth,it doesn't make much sense.It's certainly nothing to hope forbecause the idea that most people dieand then a few peoplego get to live on Mars,it's like yay, humans?[laughs] It's like that'sa pretty dismal scenario.But also, the post-apocalyptic worldis probably not the best worldin which to innovateand have the resourcesto figure out how to go live on Mars.So I think it's more likelythat in a thriving worldthat then you have thescientific expertiseand the resources and the support backon Earth to make the effortto go eventually build asustained society on Mars.I think it's gonna be harder to liveon Mars than people currently think.I bet there's gonna be failurebefore there's success.So it's easier for me toimagine that happeningin a pre-apocalyptic worldwhere there's the innovationand industry and support on Earthto do the trial and errorthat's gonna be needed.Okay, let's take a look at Ad Astra.- [Man] Good morning to our astronautsup there on theInternational Space Antenna.Sure is a beautiful day.- There is this idea that youcould build a space elevatorusing a tether that was attachedto the earth and extended all the wayinto orbit, and the physics work out.If you had the right materialthat had the right tensile strength,it couldn't be that heavy,but it'd have to be really strong.And people wanna make itout of these new kindsof carbon nano fibers and things like thatthat if they come upwith the right material,you could build a space elevator.And then the idea isyou climb up this rope,or you essentially have elevatorsthat run up and down it, andit takes a lot less energyto get into orbit thanit does with a rocket.So it actually is physically realisticif you could make the right materials,and people are working on it.[electronic boom][antenna groaning][explosion booms]- [Roy] Control, I'm seeinga power surge on C post.You gettin' that?- If these guys are in space,they're not gonna hear anythingcoming through the air.There is no air.But they might hear the pulse,the electromagnetic pulsecoming over their radio sets.And I imagine it would havethat kind of a wave sound,that wub wub wub, that.I've never heard an electromagnetic pulse,but that seems reasonable to methat it could have that kindof a wave sound piercingthrough their headsets.- A controlled release of antimattercould ultimately threaten the stabilityof our entire solar system.All life could be destroyed.- Antimatter is real, and the notion that,if you could isolate antimatter,that you could use it forspace propulsion is a real ideathat at least theoreticallypeople have toyed with.And of course, on StarTrek, you've got the matter,antimatter engines, and that's riffingoff of a real thing which is that,if antimatter encounters matter,it makes a tremendouslypowerful explosion.It would be a way toconvert a small amountof mass to a huge amount of energy,which is great if youwanna fuel a spacecraft.You don't wanna bring a lotof mass but you want somethingthat's gonna keep on giving youenergy, so it's a good idea.But we don't really knowhow to isolate antimatter.We can make atoms of antimatter,individual atoms thatare even small moleculesin the lab that last forsome ridiculous nanosecondor a femtosecond.

[laughs]But the idea that we couldmake a container full of itand then take it on board a spaceship,it's still a science fiction dream.But I see the premise herethat they've figured out how to do that,and that's how they're poweringtheir deep space mission.That doesn't seem impossible.- [Man] Could somethingthat happens near Neptune,a sort of pulse, cause catastrophic eventsas he mentions in the clip?- I don't know what thespecific thing happeningout near Neptune wouldbe, but certainly onecould imagine things that would happenout near Neptune thatwould affect the earth.In the galaxy, there are natural thingsthat happen that are powerful enough that,if one happened to putout super powerful flareswith radiation, thatwould sterilize all lifeand things like that.Things like that happen in the universe,and if you were the distancefrom Earth to Neptunefrom one of those explosions or flaresor something, you'd be in trouble.So if you imagine that there was somethingthat happened out in Neptunethat was that powerful,then yeah, Earth would be in trouble.Fast forward right here.- [Woman] Rover's set for departureto the far side launch complex.- I don't see it as unreasonablethat you could have some sort of a cityor colony of people on the moon.It would obviously take alot of resources to build,but there are people thatwanna do such things,and there's nothing physically impossible.You have to solve the problemsof you're gonna need energy,you're gonna need water,you're gonna need food,so there's nothing about seeing this scaleof human activity and human habitationon the moon that strikes meas physically impossible.It's just a matter of having the moneyand the political will to decide to do it.Okay, now we have to check out Wall-E.[light waltzy playful music]I love this movie.Wall-E is a great, great film,and there are a few things about itthat are oddly realisticwhere you're descendingthrough that layer of space debris.That's a real thing that can happen,and it's a concern now thatwe're putting so much stuffout there that you canget this cascade where,if satellites are out of controland start to collide into each other,that creates more debriswhich creates more collisions.So it's an actual real concernthat you could end upwith this impassible ringof space debris that makesit harder to do anythingin orbit other than justget hit with debris.[static hissing][light waltzy playful music]This world, it's a worst-case scenario.You see the windmills andthe nuclear cooling tanks,so it looks like you'regetting this quick glimpseof this planet where theytried alternative energyof various kinds andtried to save themselves,but they just got overrunin their own garbageand then basically lost it.And it's a cartoon, so youcan get away with a lot,but the notion that we are threatenedby just making too muchstuff and it piling upis a wonderful way to encapsulate oneof our real challenges now ofhumans in the 21st century,realizing that the earth is not infiniteand that we can't just throw stuff awaybecause there is no away.There's only one planet.When we were much fewer in numberand didn't occupy the whole earth,you could throw stuff away,and the world was functionary infinite.But now, we're realizing it's finite,and if we don't deal with that,then the end result is Wall-E.[electronic beeping and trilling][clanging]So touching, the romancebetween Wall-E and EVE.I'm always moved.

[laughs]It's very, very hard tocompletely wipe out lifefrom a planet like Earth.The earth has been throughsome mass extinctions beforewhere really horrible things happenedand wiped out most life, butlife is very, very tenacious,and it's very ingrained in the planet.So most disasters that wouldwipe out human civilizationor even the human racewould not even come closeto wiping out the biosphere.The biosphere would shrugus off and keep going.It's happened over and over again.The biosphere is notfragile; we're fragile.Our civilization is fragile.But you're not gonna wipeout all life from Earth.So yeah, floods, asteroids,volcanoes, all that stuff,all real threats, maybenot completely realisticas depicted in the movies always,but real things to worry about.And then there's the biological disaster,the genetic engineering accident,the mutant that gets outta thelab and wipes out all life.And again, there's a realisticcomponent to that worry.[laughs] So all these things,Hollywood maybe runs offwith them in directions thatmakes scientists go hmm,not quite, but they're all real threats.Thanks to listening to me talkabout post-apocalyptic worlds.May we never see any of them come true.[electronic trilling]