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Alright, so as the title suggests, this theory of mine contains spoilers, so if you haven’t watched LIFE, go do so before you keep reading. You’ve watched it? Great! Let’s begin. So it’s pretty hard not to forget the ending. Calvin reaches Earth in the relative comfort of one of the escape capsules, lands somewhere in South-East Asia, and a few fisherman open up the capsule so it can get out. So, that’s it, we’re all dead, right? Wrong. Very wrong. If all my research and theorizing has been even slightly successful, then within a minute of the screen going to black, Calvin, the fishermen and the surrounding islands are atomized out of existence in a blinding white light. Now, let’s step back a bit and see how I came to this conclusion. First, let’s look at it from the perspective of the people on Earth, specifically the ones in charge of everything. Now, communications with the ISS may have been lost but they could still tell that something serious had happened and that that thing that had happened could threaten all of humanity. Remember, it didn’t take long for them to launch an attempt to boost the ISS into deep space, which meant they’d already determined Calvin’s isolation to be worth more than a $200 billion space station and the lives of several astronauts. Now imagine what they’d be thinking when they see the attempt fail. They’d be so terrified that I actually can’t think of a good analogy to use for them. Now, if I were in charge, here’s what I’d do: I would do everything in my power to bring as much of the world together as possible together in humanity’s last stand against Calvin. That means using everything in humanity’s arsenal to destroy it if it reaches Earth. And what’s humanity’s best tool for destroying things? Nuclear weapons. Now, if I’m not mistaken it was said that after the failed attempt to boost the ISS out of orbit it had 39 minutes before hitting the top of the atmosphere. That gives fourty-something or fifty-something minutes before the fisherman open the capsule. Now, that may not sound like enough time to implement the plan I imagine would be put into place, but it turns out it is, and even if it wasn’t, this “Plan B” would’ve been put into action at least as far back as when the shove-the-station-into-deep-space Soyuz was launched. IIRC t takes about 6 hours for a Soyuz to get from the launch pad to the space station, which is plenty of time to implement my plan. So, what is this plan I’ve been alluding to? First, every orbital-debris-tracker and satellite-observation platform on and around the Earth would keep a close eye on the station, carefully looking at everything that comes off it. IIRC we already have the ability to track everything larger than a tennis ball, so seeing and tracking Calvin’s capsule should be no problem. Next, every time something from the station enters Earth’s atmosphere, the point of touchdown would be quickly calculated and once it has been confirmed with a margin of error of less than a hundred meters or so, humanity’s strength would be launched from multiple airbases, missile silos and submarines. Well, that escalated quickly. But at this point, this is what I think would actually happen. Now, you may think that Calvin could simply tolerate the nuclear detonations and continue on its way, but you’d be wrong. In the whole movie the only extreme conditions we’ve seen Calvin tolerate are the surface of Mars, the heat from the flamethrower and the vacuum of space. Compared with being within a few hundred meters of multiple nuclear detonations, that’s all easy. Just look at NUKEMAP and you’ll get a good idea of what kinds of conditions Calvin would be subject to. Oh, and that’s not all. In the end of the movie we see that Calvin has landed in what is probably South-East Asia, and you know what’s right next to South-East Asia? China. And you know who has the most powerful nuclear weapons in the world? China. Their 2 most powerful nuclear warheads types have yields of 3.3 or 4-5 megatons, and for comparison both the atomic bombs dropped on Japan had a combined yield of just 0.035 megatons. And the travel time from the silos to Calvin, remembering that the missiles were probably launched right after the touchdown site was confirmed (i.e. while Calvin was still in the air), gives no time for Calvin to have escaped beyond certain-death range. And even if China didn’t push the button, other nation’s nukes would only take a few extra minutes, if any extra time at all. So in conclusion, I believe that the ending of LIFE was one not foreshadowing humanity’s downfall, but merely the deaths of a few fishermen along with one of the most short-lived villains in sci-fi horror movie history. (PS: If this theory is right, then it means none of the astronauts would’ve survived regardless of which capsule landed.)

So NASA recently set up "The Planetary Defense Office", and I was wondering what you guys were thinking about it. Here's a link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/news/a18896/nasa-creates-a-first-line-of-asteroid-defense-for-earth/ Does this give humanity a higher chance of surviving a large Asteroid impact?