Expanse #5 Game done changed.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

The point is that there's no doubt that the entire US East coast is wrecked.

There's every reason to doubt it.
We have two characters who escape the blast zone on foot (one of them quite sick, at least initially) rather quickly (they have no gear, no food... etc), and go through landscapes that are largely intact (forests and buildings).
Although the explosions are impressive, we never get a good idea of how big those asteroids were. The problem is compounded by the fact that the numbers given for the yield are low: they estimate 1 to 4 megatons in episode 3, and then talk about 200 to 300 kilotons for one of them after its impact in episode 4 (on TV).
There is fallout in the sky (partially blocking the light of the sun), but without knowing the yield we don't know how long that's going to last and whether that'll have a long-term impact. It's cold, but then it seemed to be chilly in Baltimore already before the impact, which makes it really difficult to know how much temperatures have dropped specifically because of the attack.
People are worried and dying, but in itself that is not helpful as panic alone could explain much of what we see. Baltimore is flooded, but there's obviously lots of survivors, including Erich's entire operation. Generally speaking, it seems people are worried about i) food and ii) energy for heating, two problems that could be temporary and/or limited geographically.

I hadn't read the books yet when I started watching season 5 and I found the episodes confusing as I wasn't sure how bad the attack was supposed to be. I definitely did not get the impression the entire East coast was wrecked. Quite the contrary: that there were so many survivors in Baltimore and that Avasarala did not automatically assume her husband dead quite clearly told me that the tsunami(s) had been rather small after all. In fact, when Amos and Clarissa reach Baltimore, two cranes are still standing in the background.
Quite honestly, I'd been expecting toppled forests like after Mt St Helens' eruption or the Tunguska event, coastal towns entirely wiped out by the tsunamis (basically kind of like on Ilus), and the sunlight to be completely blocked out for days. By contrast, what we do see on the show corresponds to rather small asteroid impacts.

All in all I agree with @john above: based on everything we have, the show is clearly different from the books and has deliberately chosen to have much smaller impacts.
I think we will only know for certain with season 6, but I expect the "final" death toll to be much lower than in the books.

Edit to explain where the difference lies exactly:

 

In the books, the asteroid that hits North Africa utterly devastates it. Like... a significant portion of the continent. In the show that's the asteroid that's only 200-300 kilotons.

[karaddin]

I find it funny that the criticism that the scale of the disaster wasn't made clear enough in the show contrasts that with the idea that it was clearly spelled out in the book. When the book came out we had very similar discussions around the depiction and whether the scale of the crisis had been sufficiently spelled out.

I think the "several billion" short term death toll was spelled out more, but the long term forecast was not. I looked the thread back up and I think this post gives the best indication of what we were directly shown and when and I think it maps reasonably well onto what we saw in the show - just lacking that updated death toll at the end.

The books don't spell out the true scale of the disaster (which was pretty close to what I was arguing on the previous page in that thread :P) until in Babylon's Ashes

Spoiler

When the modelling from the Free Navy scientist which said they'd survive it starts being drastically wrong and the updated modelling shows the entire belt is going to die as well. That's what prompts Micio to strike out against Marco.

Also Ty did confirm on Twitter late in the season that the coverage downplaying the damage compared to what book readers were expecting was intentional, which I interpreted as meaning the damage is indeed worse. Need to find the context of the question he was answering though as it could have meant something else.

[Corvinus85]

50 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I find it funny that the criticism that the scale of the disaster wasn't made clear enough in the show contrasts that with the idea that it was clearly spelled out in the book. When the book came out we had very similar discussions around the depiction and whether the scale of the crisis had been sufficiently spelled out.

I think the "several billion" short term death toll was spelled out more, but the long term forecast was not. I looked the thread back up and I think this post gives the best indication of what we were directly shown and when and I think it maps reasonably well onto what we saw in the show - just lacking that updated death toll at the end.

The books don't spell out the true scale of the disaster (which was pretty close to what I was arguing on the previous page in that thread :P) until in Babylon's Ashes

  Hide contents

When the modelling from the Free Navy scientist which said they'd survive it starts being drastically wrong and the updated modelling shows the entire belt is going to die as well. That's what prompts Micio to strike out against Marco.

Also Ty did confirm on Twitter late in the season that the coverage downplaying the damage compared to what book readers were expecting was intentional, which I interpreted as meaning the damage is indeed worse. Need to find the context of the question he was answering though as it could have meant something else.

Haha, from the same thread, I'm glad I'm being consistent.

Quote

And count me among those who were not bothered by the lack of description of the horrors facing Earth's population. For me it was enough whenever a reference was made to the Earth dying. I kept thinking the Earth will be okay, just a few small rocks fell, but then the Earth dying phrase kept getting used, and my hopes started dying, too. I kept having to repeat to myself "Well this doesn't mean the end of humanity."

 

[Rippounet]

2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Haha, from the same thread, I'm glad I'm being consistent.

I 100% share your reading experience, and what bothers me is that I don't remember these words being uttered in the show.

I can live with the apocalypse merely being suggested rather than explicitly shown but I think the show has left us really uncertain about how bad things are. Amos' viewpoint alone does not condemn Earth (in both the show and the book) so you need to be told and in the book it's only through repetition that you can accept it.

Which would mean... that they may open season 6 with it. Images will achieve the same impact that the repetition had in the book.

[karaddin]

Yeah I'll grant you that - I definitely don't recall the phrase being used in the show. Given we got an on screen reference to the scientists modelling Marco used to justify how the belt will survive I'm pretty confident we're still going somewhere in that ballpark.

I think how you interpret what we're shown so far is very subjective which is why we have such strongly differing opinions. What I take away from it is that the criticism which I've seen leveled at other things so often that they spell things out too much is as unreasonable criticism, that wanting to ensure the audience gets everything you're doing is an entirely reasonable concern and precaution for show runners and movie directors.

And that's not a criticism of people who don't feel this was adequately spelled out, just that the desire for clarity and lack of ambiguity is reasonable. You never know what details people will be looking out for and what will go over their heads.

[Corvinus85]

45 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I 100% share your reading experience, and what bothers me is that I don't remember these words being uttered in the show.

I can live with the apocalypse merely being suggested rather than explicitly shown but I think the show has left us really uncertain about how bad things are. Amos' viewpoint alone does not condemn Earth (in both the show and the book) so you need to be told and in the book it's only through repetition that you can accept it.

Which would mean... that they may open season 6 with it. Images will achieve the same impact that the repetition had in the book.

I fully expect them to show more at the beginning of season 6. And they may bring back a character to do it.

Spoiler

Anna. Book 6 prologue is about her and her family deciding that it was time to leave Earth.