Peter points to a picture of phone calls and one ball indicating one person, had received twenty calls. Frank says twenty is what Cheryl said. Cheryl did not say that. She speculated that maybe a doctor could clone twenty identical people from a divided fertilized egg, like has been done with cows.
Why does the father think that if he wasn't dying, he'd make it to the other side? If the planetary alignments caused what he said were catastrophic Earth changes and destruction, where would the electricity to power his iron lung come from?