This approach of apocalypse, due to a heavenly body, found much favor during the late 90s, possibly due to the sighting of the Hale Bopp comet and the Shoemaker Levy colliding into Jupiter. There were a couple of high profile films that depicted the possible annihilation of life due to the collision of a comet with earth. Deep Impact and Armageddon, both released within a couple of months of each other, dealt with the same problem and gave almost identical solutions (blasting the core of the comet/asteroid with a nuclear bomb). Both were highly talked about films of their times and really did make us think whether earth can come to an end this way.