For purpose of discussion, assume that due to bad luck, this asteroid has evaded the detection of all amateur and professional astronomers until about six months from impact. The asteroid is too large to deflect with humanity's current spacefaring capabilities, and the general scientific consensus is that the impact will end all multicellular life on Earth.
What do those six months look like?
I like how in The Road the description of the apocalyptic event is pretty clearly an asteroid but no-one knows what the fuck happened (presumably the govt didn't bother to tell them an asteroid was incoming). There are a bunch of movies about incoming asteroids too - deep impact, one by Abel Ferrara I cant remember the name of, Lars von triers Melancholia, Don't look up. In Ferrara's movie people just take drugs and have sex which I think is probably what id be aiming to do too
I've read that book several times and never really thought about what the event was. Now you're making me want another reread lol
The novel doesn't describe the event itself as much more than flashes of light in the sky, but apparently McCarthy did a bunch of research on what would happen to the earth in the event of a major impact before writinf the novel, and the descriptions of the sun being blocked out, the sea turning grey etc i think would fit with that
at the time I read it I thought it was a nuclear exchange. I recall a series of flashes but I'd have to check the text.
This what I remember (and generally leaned toward) but also... there wasn't really anything else that made me think it was nukes.
But then again, I don't remember The Man and The Boy going into any cities where it would make sense to describe the scene as "completely flattened" or with "shadows burned onto walls".
Thinking about it now, there's descriptions of flashes in the distance but nothing describing a asteroid burning through the atmosphere...