Ambitious MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner stumbles onto the story, prompting a White House press conference. President Beck announces the government's solution: a team of astronauts will travel to the comet and destroy it. The team leader aboard the spaceship Messiah is Spurgeon Tanner, who was once the last man to walk on the moon. However, the mission fails, splitting off a chunk of the comet, now due to land in the Atlantic with the impact sending a 350-foot tidal wave flooding 650 miles inland, destroying New York and other cities. The larger part of the comet, hitting in Canada, will trigger an E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event), not unlike a "nuclear winter" as dust clouds block out the sun and bring life to an end. Beck reveals Plan B: a cavernous underground retreat constructed to hold one million Americans, with most to be selected through a national lottery. Since teenage amateur astronomer Leo Biederman discovered the comet, his family gets a pass to enter the cave, but his girlfriend Sarah and her parents will be left behind. Meanwhile, still in space, Spurgeon Tanner devises a plan for a kamikaze-styled operation that could possibly save the Earth. Starring Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, James Cromwell, Ron Eldard, Jon Favreau, Laura Innes, Mary McCormack, Richard Schiff, Leelee Sobieski, Blair Underwood, and Morgan Freeman. Mimi Leder directs from the script by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown; Executive Producers: Steven Spielberg, Walter Parkes and Joan Bradshaw. SVFX by ILM, supervised by Scott Farrar. a Zanuck/Brown production for Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks Pictures. in memory of cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann. (TM) Paramount Pictures Corporation, Dreamworks L.L.C. and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.