Chelyabinsk, Russia.
My old stomping ground* doing it Armageddon style (*not really).
Well, Armageddon in the sense that a meteor hit it, which in the Michel Bay movie was pre-bang to the larger Texas sized one that was to destroy earth.
Not Armageddon in the sense that Bruce Willis (of The Whole Ten Yards fame), Ben Affleck (of Gigli fame) and Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) et al did something to stop it…
…Steve Buscemi and his weird face didn’t even attempt to ride a nuke like a bull…
…Also, Aerosmith produced no new music for this, so that’s a win for everyone…
But yea, a meteor entered the atmosphere above the Ural Mountains breaking into fragments which fell in Chelyabinsk, a few other Russian regions and Kazakhstan.
In addition to the 200+ buildings that have been damaged, mostly broken windows due to the shockwave, nearly 1,000 people have sought medical attention.
While it seems fairly obvious to the untrained (and trained) eye that this was a rock from space hitting earth, according to the BBC, one Russian politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, played the Cold War card, ‘Meteors are falling. Those are not meteors, it is Americans testing their new weapon.’
Spot on Vlad.
Anyways, lunacy aside, it’s pretty amazing that so much footage of this abounds, check out this dramatic video of the blinding light caused by the meteor interacting with the atmosphere:
Some video of the extraordinary shockwave:
More video at The Blaze and The Daily Beast
P.S. On the very, very off chance that Deb Feyerick of CNN reads this, no, this meteor strike was not caused by global warming. No meteor strikes are.
Idiot.