Impact!

Movies that deal with the impact of a meteorite on earth have the great advantage that they can almost completely define the scenario - until now almost no reference exists how an impact would destroy a city or earth itself. Large impacts are relatively rare in historic times, the most famous (and still controversial) is the Tunguska event in 1908, however because of the remoteness of the Siberian taiga the damage and the fatalities were limited. Interests on this kind of catastrophe aroused late, only in the mid 20th century the possibility that earth can be hit by large chunks of extraterrestrial material became largely publicized.

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