Research for the Script

 Following the space/drama theme, I decided to write about the end of the world and have an asteroid hurtling towards earth. For this to be realistic, there was a few things I needed to research. 

Firstly, what size of astroid would be required to end the world. According to the website Futurism, scientists estimate that "an asteroid would have to be about 96 km (60 miles) wide to completely and utterly wipe out life on our planet". John (our lecturer) recommended that in the news report I used in the script, I used a reference to highlight the size of this, for example, 'the size of Texas'. Following further research, I struggled to find any significant object or location that was 96km wide. Eventually, I decided to make the asteroid 364km, the same length of the River Thames. 

Furthermore, another important element to the script is how the characters are told the world is ending. According to an interview with a scientist (here), NASA is constantly on the look for suspicious objects and would alert the world if there was anything of concern. In my story, however, the characters are not told until the last minute. This is for dramatic effect and the structure required for the short length of the story. Sadly, there is not time to tell this part of the story but I like to think that the scientists kept it under wraps and many had their own conspiracies that it was happening, like Edgar. 

In my story, the characters are told via radio announcement and on their phones and computers. I tried to find an answer for how we would be told but as it is yet to happen there is no clear answer. Most suspect an emergency broadcast on our televisions, etc. In this Quora thread many theorised if we would be told. Some argued that the government would not tell us until 24 hours before as to reduce chaos. Others argued that it would be a secret impossible to keep under wraps. One argued we wouldn't be told purely because professionals would be looking for a way to survive the disaster. For my story, I like the believe the latter, the government did not announce the end as they were searching for a way to fix it. This resulted in the 'one minute to go' announcement. 

Each of these decisions led to the creation of my finalised script.