Plot
On May 10, 1998, teenage amateur astronomer Leo Biederman (Wood) discovers an unusual object near the stars Mizar and Alcor at a star party in Richmond, Virginia. He alerts astronomer Marcus Wolf (Smith), who realizes that the object is a comet on a collision course with Earth. Wolf tries to get the information out, but dies in a car accident before he can alert the world.
A year later, MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner (Leoni) investigates the resignation of the Secretary of the Treasury (Cromwell) and his connection to an "Ellie". She discovers that Ellie is not a mistress but an acronym: "E.L.E.", for "Extinction-Level Event". Because of Lerner's investigation, President Tom Beck (Freeman) advances the announcement of the grim facts: The comet, named Wolf-Biederman, is 7 miles (11 km) wide, large enough to destroy all life if it strikes Earth. The United States and Russia have been secretly constructing a spacecraft, the Messiah, in orbit. They plan to use it to transport a team lead by Captain Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall) to the comet, so that it can be destroyed with nuclear weapons.
After landing on the comet, the crew members plant nuclear bombs 100 meters beneath the surface. When the bombs are detonated, the ship is damaged and loses contact with Earth. Instead of being destroyed, the comet splits into two smaller rocks nicknamed "Biederman" (1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide) and "Wolf" (6 miles (9.7 km) wide), both world-threatening.
Beck announces the Messiah crew’s failure, declares martial law, and reveals that governments worldwide have been building underground shelters. The United States' shelter is in the limestone caves of Missouri. The US government conducts a lottery to select 800,000 ordinary Americans aged 50 and under to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers, and officials. Lerner and Leo's families are pre-selected, but Leo's girlfriend Sarah Hotchner (Sobieski) is not. Leo marries Sarah to save her family but the Hotchners are mistakenly left off the evacuee list; Sarah refuses to leave without them.
A last-ditch effort to use Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to deflect the two chunks of the comet fails. Leo returns home looking for Sarah, but her family has left for the Appalachian Mountains and is trapped in a traffic jam on the highway. Sarah's parents urge Leo to take Sarah and her baby brother to high ground; Sarah still does not want to abandon her parents, but they convince her to let them go. Lerner gives up her seat in the last evacuation helicopter to her friend Beth, who has a young daughter. She instead joins her estranged father (Schell) at her childhood beach house, where they reconcile and remember happier times.
The Biederman fragment impacts in the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, creating a megatsunami. Leo, Sarah and her baby brother survive. Lerner, her father, Sarah's parents, and millions along the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, Europe, and Africa perish. The world braces for the impact of Wolf in western Canada, which will create a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years. This, in turn, will destroy all remaining life on the surface. Low on fuel and life support, the crew of the Messiah decides to undertake a suicide mission with the remaining nuclear warheads. After saying goodbye to their loved ones by video conference, the ship reaches the fragment and enters a fissure to blow itself up, which breaks Wolf into much smaller pieces that burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
President Beck, speaking to a large crowd in front of the United States Capitol building, which is undergoing reconstruction, urges the nation and the world to continue their recovery.
Read more about this topic: Deep Impact (film)
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