UrsusArctos: Nevada, of course, is home to the legendary Area 51, and it was also the location of the Wildfire Facility in the Andromeda Strain. The disappearance into a sea of red is pretty creepy looking. As a little scientific nitpick, geosynchronous satellites only ever orbit above Earth's equator, so to get a view overhead would require the services of a satellite in tundra or molniya orbit, neither of which are properly geosynchronous.
Dr. Nick: The disappearance effect looks violently energetic as opposed to Leliel's stealthily expanding maw, but of course in its case there was an intelligence in control. Here we even see an explosion-like pressure wave, which doesn't make sense to me - if a large area was suddenly dematerialized, the air would be moving in an opposite direction as it would be rushing in to fill the void.
Incidentally, if we assume that Nerv's Nevada branch is supposed to be located at Area 51, a radius of 89 kilometers means that Las Vegas was narrowly spared from being swallowed.
