nbc’s miniseries "Asteroid" is a blast -- literally. The four-hour disaster flick must set some TV record for explosions. Every three minutes something else blows up. At the special-effects climax, when the giant asteroid annihilates Dallas, you've got your combined "Twister" blow-the-roof-off-the-sucker effect and "Dante's Peak" river-of-fire effect and damn, that stuff blows up real good! There hasn't been total TV movie destruction like this since "The Day After," except "Asteroid" doesn't get all preachy on you and make you feel like a bad person because you didn't sign that anti-nuke petition that time your arms were full of groceries. "Asteroid" says, "Hey, it's not your fault, it's a gigantic rock from outer space. Relax and enjoy the explosions!"

Freed from last decade's Cold War fear of nuclear war, disaster movies have reverted to good old '70s formula, in which a natural catastrophe or a transportation mishap carried no deep meaning: A towering inferno was just a towering inferno. Except this is not 1977, it's 1997, and that millennium thing is kind of hard to get around. So when a whole bunch of effects-driven movies depicting nature or technology out of control ("Twister," "Daylight," "Turbulence," "Dante's Peak," "Asteroid") hits theaters and TV at almost the same time, well, of course it starts looking like a doomsday highlight reel of the things that have freaked people out over the past 2,000 years. Fire on mountain! Spinning cloud of death! Sky falling! AARGH!

You'd think that exhaustive TV coverage of the real-life counterparts of these silly disaster flicks -- the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombing, the crash of TWA Flight 800, assorted deadly earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and wayward cargo ships smashing into oceanfront shopping malls -- would be enough to satisfy America's apparent need to be scared out of its wits. But no. Besides "Asteroid" (Sunday and Monday), this February sweeps period brings ABC's "Volcano: Fire on the Mountain" (Feb. 23), a "Dante's Peak" wannabe about a volcano that awakens beneath a busy ski resort ("turning Angel Summit into a hellish nightmare!"), as well as pseudo-news counterparts like NBC's Friday "Dateline NBC" report on asteroids and ABC's "Fire on the Mountain" pregame show, "The World's Deadliest Volcanoes."

But then, maybe it's impossible for Americans to be truly scared by anything anymore. (Not that "Asteroid" will scare anyone over the age of 6, unless they have deep-rooted fears of bad acting and big Styrofoam rocks.) We've lived through catastrophes almost unimaginable 100 years ago. People have survived things once thought unsurvivable, like toxic spills, radiation leaks, massive hurricanes and earthquakes, even plane crashes. We've gotten used to disasters, and the new disaster movies reflect this cockiness: If you have the will to survive, you will survive, and when you do, the government will be there to process your claims. The most amazing thing about "Asteroid" is not the special effects, it's that the movie's hero is the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- a Washington bureaucracy few outside the nation's hurricane and earthquake zones were familiar with 20 years ago, but a household name in the age of CNN.

In the movie, studly, blue-jeaned FEMA director Jack Wallach (Michael Biehn) is on the case the second he gets the first phone call from unflappable astronomer-single mom Lily McKee (a possibly sedated Annabella Sciorra); he jets to the asteroids' target spots to direct speedy and efficient evacuation and mop up efforts. A federal bureaucracy hasn't had PR this great since "The FBI" was on (although, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think that any FEMA director ever actually dangled from a helicopter to personally pluck someone out of the path of a raging wildfire).

But while "Asteroid" and its fellow doomsday-as-E Ticket-ride thrillers are getting all the attention, a more sinister TV trend is quietly asserting itself. Remember all those "When Animals Attack" specials last year? Well, animal snuff has evolved -- devolved -- into a new reality programming phenomenon, the brush-with-death show. Fox led the way (as usual) with "Close Call: Cheating Death," the sequel to which aired last Monday in prime time. The night before, ABC ran something similar called "I Survived a Disaster." CBS has also aired at least one of these things.

The brush-with-death show is made up of news and amateur video footage of assorted disasters and mishaps: Air show crashes, parachutists whose chutes fail to open, planes falling out of the sky, people caught in flash floods, wildfires, tornadoes and rock slides -- are you getting the picture? Basically, these are snuff videos, without (technically speaking) the snuff -- hence, the prominent use of words like "close call" and "I survived" in the titles. Apparently, it's OK to show a flailing helicopter plummeting to the ground over and over in slow motion as long as you don't see any dead bodies.

Where did these shows come from? It isn't enough to say that networks will do anything for ratings, because the brush-with-death shows haven't exactly been ratings blockbusters ("I Survived a Disaster" came in 27th, losing its time slot to "Touched By an Angel"). Their existence can partially be explained by the networks' need to find a titillating substitute for the action-show violence that ticks off TV watchdogs; despite its disturbing and graphic footage, "Close Call II" carried a TVPG rating, which translates to "Some material may be unsuitable for younger children."

But the most logical explanation for the brush-with-death shows may be this: They were inevitable. Almost-snuff has its roots in reality programming like "Cops," TV news magazines and live news coverage of disasters. For the time being, they seem to have replaced the true-story disaster TV movie (like the ones about Hurricane Andrew and the World Trade Center bombing) because they purport to show authentic catastrophes, not reenactments. These shows exist simply because they can.

While their work may fall on opposite ends of the ratings spectrum, the producers of almost-snuff and "Asteroid" are aiming for the same thing. Disaster coverage on CNN and other news channels gets huge ratings. People will and have sat transfixed for hours by frantic reports of catastrophe (remember how many times you saw the Challenger blowing up?), and the networks' sweeps programmers want a piece of that action. Almost-snuff may just be a more "honest" way than "Asteroid" to exploit viewers' morbid curiosity. But that doesn't make it any less putrid. Try watching one of these brush-with-death things. You feel the immediate urge to take a shower.

Anyway, maybe what we're dealing with here is a psychological need to internalize danger in order to live in our complicated world; watching people survive disasters certainly takes the mystery out of nature's fury and technological failure. Maybe these shows are the modern equivalent of sacrificing the maiden to keep the angry gods away from the rest of the tribe. Or maybe almost-snuff serves no higher purpose at all, it's just here to confirm the suspicion that if and when the asteroid puts our lights out for good, we won't even realize it. By that time, great one-eyed beast in living room will have eaten brain.
Feb. 14, 1997

"Asteroid" (9 p.m. Sunday and Monday, NBC)

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