When Spacewatch Director Henry Jackson suspects the largest asteroid in 65 million years will strike America during the 2012 presidential campaign, he must figure out how to save a skeptical public from mile-high tsunamis, nuclear-like pressure blasts, record-breaking earthquakes, and a trillion tons of falling molten rock called regolith that will destroy billions of roofs and roads, sending civilization back centuries. Facing global hysteria that cripples society, he tries to evacuate millions to special asteroid shelters near the poles. Then Jackson -- famous for his plans to catapult capsules from the highest point on Earth, convert the biggest NEO into a space port, softland trillion-dollar metallic asteroids on the Moon, terraform Mars, and re-orbit our largest moons to increase the solar system's carrying capacity from 10 to 100 billion people -- then loses his escape plane just hours before impact, stranding his family near Ground Zero, where they must improvise to survive.