[6] Late one night, near Billings, Montana, a meteoroid suddenly impacts the ground in front of an oncoming tanker truck.

Later that evening, at the National Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, Dr. Lily McKee (Annabella Sciorra) is observing a comet which is going to pass by Earth on the Fourth of July.

She informs Jack and Adam that two asteroids, Helios and Eros, have had their orbits disrupted by the comet and may hit Earth.

Helios would hit with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs and generate temperatures five times hotter than the Sun in the area of impact.

Jack drives into the city to rescue two stranded firefighters and a drunk driver who struck their vehicle, gets caught in the flood.

The idea for Asteroid originated in 1994, after NBC movies chief Lindy DeKoven saw news reports on the Shoemaker-Levi 9 Jupiter impact.

[7] Entertainment Weekly included three detailed descriptions of the film's notable effects sequences: Ray Richmond of Variety wrote, “More aptly titled “Aster-Oy!” the four hours sends the plausibility meter clear off the scale.

And while special-effects supervisors Sam Nicholson and Dan Schmit do some nifty pyrotechnics and destruction of scale miniatures, the storyline is so utterly predictable and banal that you find yourself rooting for the fiery rocks to do their stuff quickly so we can get on with our lives.”[8] Tom Jicha wrote for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “The spectacular special effects are the show and they are great fun.