CBS' Show 'Salvation' Could Spark Geopolotical Fires About Asteroids

Having aired yesterday, CBS' newly premiered show Salvation tells the tale of an unlikely ragtag group of heroes who seek to save the world. Among them is a MIT student, a public affairs officer, a billionaire who knows more than he seems, and a Pentagon official who's not ready to see her daughters life end.

So their only option is to attempt deflecting this extinction event asteroid in the hopes to save all life on Earth. What happens though, when people let their imaginations about a very real concern get a bit out of hand? A geopolitical fire unlike any other. A fire that the shows co-executive producers Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro, are having to deal with now. However, their ideas for the show approach rather interesting scientific ideology and explores the geopolitics behind such a threat would be like.

Here's How Salvation Starts. Spoilers Ahead.

Salvation isn't scared to kick things off with a bang. Within the shows opening minutes, the shows main protagonist, Liam Cole (Charlie Rowe), is shown mapping near-Earth objects or NEO's. These NEO's pose a threat that could possibly wipe out humanity, but many of them appear to be close to that of what happened in Russia when a meteor hit near Moscow in 2013. Shortly after the show starts, one of his simulations discovers a threat unlike any other. A unknown asteroid hurtling towards Earth with the intention of glassing Earth and everything on it.

When he rushes to the authorities, it seems they have a very different idea of what humanities defense is. Their idea? Take the good ol' blow it up approach. Except the reality of this issue? More debris and Earth being bombarded in hundreds if not thousands of different locations. This proves to be even more hazardous than before. This is where the shows billionaire entrepreneur Darius Tans (Santiago Cabrera) comes in with a new solution. His only idea here will require Liam as well as some government officials to come to his aid so the plan can come to fruition.

Now that the threat for our characters has become reality, now it's time to face the fact the government has known about this threat for a time, and for them, there's no doubt that they could very well see humanity and all life on Earth become ashes in just under a year. So what does this mean? It's raised a real question to what would happen if such an event were to happen in real life.

Just Like Our Protagonists, the Show Co-Executives Were Crunched for Time

There's also a bit of a deadline that came for both Kruger and Shapiro. Their script was an on the fly ordeal. With a limited time to right it, 12 days to be exact since CBS brought them the concept at the last minute. That's where these two got to work and came up with a script for the series in just a matter of days.

Because of this, Shapiro stated in an interview with Space.com a bit about how the show came to life.

From the first time we ever heard about the project until it was a go was about three weeks. Just totally insane. It allowed our imaginations to run wild,"

In addition, Kruger threw in a bit of feedback in their interview

Because we realized that everybody knew this was such a crazy idea, to try to come up with an entire series in such a short time. It's been a wild ride since day one.

With their idea came some old science fiction tropes that we are well known for seeing, but also attempt, without a doubt, would use in order to save our world. These tropes include and aren't limited to destroying an asteroid with a nuclear detonation (you and I both know this is a really bad idea as it can cause a smaller, but more wide-spread event) or using a gravity tractor.

While the gravity tractor sounds as messed up as it could be, there's no doubt that the idea of pulling and bending an asteroids trajectory could be plausible with humanity trying to preserve itself. So how did the plausibility of this come to light? Real-life scientific advances that NASA researches are investigating in case such an event were to happen. Their research involves a supposedly physics-violating EmDrive.

According to Kruger, there are quite a bit of science-fact filled moments that are part of the shows adventure. Let alone do they managed to bring in real-life fact, but they also manage to bring in some of their own science to make things become to reality. So what did Kruger have to say? Lets take a look.

A big part of our — we like to call it the science-fact adventure part of the show — is watching our characters invent new technology to solve the problem. It's very exciting, because we've been taking the existing technology and trying to advance it in the context of the series.

How Did They Bring Reality to the Show?

Both Kruger and Shapiro consulted astronomer Phil Plait who works on Slate.com's website writing the blog, "Bad Astronomy" in order to make sure that their ideas regarding both real and near-future technology could become accurate and highly plausible.

To bring the level of reality needed to make the show believable, they consulted the smash-hit novel The Martian (eventually became a Hollywood blockbuster featuring Matt Damon), which tells the story of an astronaut whom has been stranded upon Mars, and must fight against all odds in order to survive.

Salvation humanizes the scientific work, because there is a lot of pressure to solve the problem. It's really thrilling to achieve this kind of breakthrough in science and see it happen on screen. It's like they're launching a version of the Manhattan Project in which we must solve an incredibly difficult problem in an extremely short period of time or we may all die. That's quite a motivator for people.

The geopolitical angle is an interesting one, Kruger said, because different solutions could potentially put different parts of the Earth in danger; it becomes a question of who controls space. And beyond just different governments, there's a question of private industry's role as well.

How Does it Start a Geopolitical Fire?

There's no doubt that trust with the government is walking on thin ice. Many have little want to deal with the current administration and even many of those whom would even know this information before it went public. Even Kruger touches up on the ideology behind this in the interview with Space.com

In today's [political] climate, there's a lot of chaos, and there is a sense sometimes of people feeling a little bit hopeless and unsettled — Salvation is about, in the face of hopelessness, how do you prevail?It's also about what one individual can do in the face of an extinction-level event. This is a story about resistance on a lot of levels, and it's about people pushing through the bureaucracy to make a difference. It's about people pushing through and breaking the rules to make a difference, and I think that does speak to our times.

While there is no doubt that it brings in the questions as she (Kruger) states, there's still a lot of questions to be asked with the current stance on things such as the Paris Accord and even the global initiative for space exploration. Who will we trust when the time comes and someone goes public? What will humanity do? And how will we survive if such an event happens?

These are all questions that the show Salvation dares to look at and will do so over it's 10-episode first season airing on CBS.