End Day
2005 television film directed by Gareth Edwards

End Day is a 2005 docu-drama produced by the BBC. It aired on the National Geographic Channel, on the TV series National Geographic Channel Presents, and BBC Three. It depicts a set of five doomsday scenarios. The documentary follows the fictional scientist Dr. Howell, played by Glenn Conroy, as he travels from his London hotel room to his laboratory in New York City, and shows how each scenario affects his journey as well as those around him, with various experts providing commentary on that specific disaster as it unfolds. After each 'End Day' runs its course, the day repeats, this time with the next scenario panning out.
The following descriptions of the program were released by the BBC:
"Imagine waking up to the last day on Earth..."
"Inspired by the predictions of scientists, End Day creates apocalyptic scenarios that go beyond reality. In a single hour, explore five different fictional disasters, from a giant tsunami hitting New York to a deadly meteorite strike on Berlin."
Scenarios
Mega-Tsunami
A volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands triggers a massive landslide. A sizable portion of the island collapses into the sea, causing a massive tsunami, 500 feet (150 m) tall, to race across the Atlantic Ocean. The United States Navy searches for the wave and locates it, predicting that the mega-tsunami will strike the East Coast of the United States. An evacuation of New York City is ordered but not completed by the time the wave arrives and inundates the city, killing thousands of people but leaving many sturdier buildings intact, which proved to be crucial in providing a means of escape.
“End Day” enters the record as 2005 television film directed by Gareth Edwards. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what television, film and directed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“End Day” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, television, film and directed provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1340225. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “End Day” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.