Plot
The film opens as a team of scientists in the year 2020 wander through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with the team leader calling for help on a radio, until they come upon the ruins of a city.
Forty-eight hours earlier, David Wyndham (Luke Goss), the same team leader, is informed by his UN superior, Paxton (Marina Sirtis) of a security breach involving another scientist on their project, David's friend and colleague Raja (Colin Salmon). Unauthorized access of the project's mainframe the night before was made using Raja's access codes. As a precaution he has been removed from the project.
Paxton holds a press conference about their project, codenamed "EVE" (for Electromagnetic Vacuum Energy), which has provided most of Europe's energy for the past ten years beginning in 2010. The project utilizes three high-power particle colliders, located in Geneva, Barcelona, Spain, and Orléans, France. With the project's continuing success, Paxton is enthusiastic that the technology can be utilized worldwide - although David confronts her afterward that she has no intention of sharing the technology with the Middle East, which she verifies.
Outside the meeting hall, David receives a mysterious phone call, then is approached by a reporter, whom he dismisses with a handshake. The reporter furtively copies David's fingerprint from his hand using a piece of tape and stores it in a case.
At home, David receives a visit from Raja, who has already surmised that Paxton's plans for the technology. Raja believes he is a scapegoat for the security breach because he is the only Arab with level 5 project clearance. When David rejects his claims, Raja angrily leaves.
That night, the "reporter" that accosted David sneaks into the Orléans facility, using a recording of David saying his name and the copied fingerprint to gain access to the lab, and enters a series of codes into the computer. A short time later, after the mysterious man has escaped, the plant explodes, destroying Orléans and a quarter of France including Paris, killing millions of people.
As he tries to sort out what happened the next day, David meets with Raja again. Raja has been named the top suspect and is running from the police and Paxton's men. Paxton shows David photos of Raja apparently meeting with the mystery man, a known terrorist named Aziz Khaled. A stunned David insists he be allowed to go to ground zero to investigate the explosion before judgments are made. Later, a massive earthquake strikes the Middle East, causing catastrophic destruction in Bahrain.
The next day, Raja calls David near the French-Spanish border, revealing that because the earthquake happened one day after the blast and hit where the EVE grid was absent, he has deduced that someone has discovered the Doomsday Equation, a set of codes for each collider that could destroy the planet if used.
David and his team travel to Orléans via helicopter but they crash, killing the pilot. They find evidence that a Higgs field has formed, confirming Raja's suspicions. Meanwhile, Raja's electric car runs out of power at the border, and he is soon abducted by Khaled. David's team, meanwhile, attempts to escape France in a Humvee sent to rescue them only to be caught in a meteor shower, which turns out to be falling satellites. The team barely escapes, and David is brought back to the Geneva facility by Paxton's men, where he is reunited with his family. He concludes that the only way to save the world is to shut down the entire EVE system.
Khaled takes Raja to the Barcelona facility. After murdering all the workers, he tries to force Raja into giving him the site's Doomsday Equation, believing the meltdown will not cause the end of the world, but Raja steadfastly refuses, and later kills Khaled by stabbing him with a pen and shoving him into the collider's core. Raja returns to the computer and opens an instant message to Geneva, telling David his suspicions about the Doomsday Equation were right and that the only way to save the world is to increase the system's output and choke the field out of existence, or else it will expand into a black hole. Paxton refuses to listen, still believing that Raja is a terrorist. Under immense pressure, David finally decides to go with his own plan and initiates the system shutdown.
As soon as the system shutdown is complete, the Geneva facility melts down in an explosion exponentially larger than the one that destroyed France. Everything and everyone within hundreds of miles of Geneva, including David, his family, the facility's staff, and Paxton, are incinerated in an instant. A view from outer space shows shock waves from the blast tearing the planet apart, with a gigantic crack forming in the immediate area of the blast. Moments later the planet's core is breached, causing it to explode.
The film concludes with a shot of pieces of what was once Earth floating through space, followed by a blank screen reading simply, Extinction.
