Asteroid on a direct collision course with earth

Winky

Well-Known Member
Actually in some ways an asteroid on a direct collision course with earth
might be the best news ever. Imagine it!! How cool would that be?
I'd hope it would be detected and positively confirmed to be
on course for collision long before it got here.
Say eight to ten months?
That would give the worlds population plenty of time for hand wringing
and soul searching. Not to mention that with our abilities
in orbital mechanics we could also pin point the exact time and location
of the impact. You pick it the middle of an ocean, smack dab in the middle of a large city? (Evacuation, looting, falling real estate values, oh a funtime had by all)

C'Mon it would rock.
We'd even have a somewhat accurate
estimate of the damage it would do!
If we could determine it’s composition and mass.

All the silly things people concern themselves with.
All the totally dumb stuff that is on the news day in, day out.
Heck after a half a year of hearing about the impending impact most people
would become bored with it and focus on other issues?
 

PT

Off 'Motherfuckin' Topic Elite
From a sociological perspective, I would love to see what would happen. Would we forget about all the petty shit in the world and actually live in peace for the last 10 months, or would the world evolve into a giant loot and riot fest. I'm sure the super wealthy would be looking at moving their domiciles to the moon or orbiting while the rest of us would have to just sit and wait.

Of course then theres the situation with the space shuttles, would they release the hold so they could fill them full of texan oil men and nuclear bombs? Would Steven Tyler be at the launch? Or would the Government try to hide the whole thing from us for as long as possible?
 

IDLEchild

Well-Known Member
Another one? One just passed Earth not too long ago. Only passed by 250,000 miles...which is mere inches in space measure.
 

Inkara1

Well-Known Member
Think Taco Bell will put a big target in the ocean again and give everyone a free taco if it hits the target?
 

Spunky

New Member
Hmmm, I could sure go for a free taco right now, but people fail to realize all the other nasty stuff left out, like the looting of maube YOUR HOUSE! :p or the random riots destroying your town or a family member or loved one getting all caught up in it.

Nah, Screw that last statement....


I WANT MY TACO! :lol2:
 

chcr

Too cute for words
A couple of points that no one seems to get. 1. If it were a big enough asteroid (or comet), whether it hits land or ocean is meaningless. It would set off a tsunami in the magma (see ya later, in other words). 2. In a smaller collision, it's not the impact that will do the most damage. It's the crap tht gets blasted into space with less than orbital velocity. The best way I've ever seen it put was "duck's eye view of a shotgun blast." :D A fair amount of people might survive the initial impact, but afterwards...

Oh yeah, composition is also more or less meaningless as well. Mass and velocity will determine the damage. At the speeds they travel, they aren't in the atmosphere long enough for ablativeness to be much of a factor.

Science out of the way, I would expect (with some certainty) looting, pillaging and war.
 

Oz

New Member
Eight to ten months eh?

Yeah......I should be able to deplete quite a bit of the worlds vodka stockpile in that time :) :drink:
 

tonksy

New Member
Spunky said:
What if its already happening, we could be in month seven now!
you could go to sleep tonight and your house could burn to the ground with you in it...you could step of the curb and get struck down by the ice cream man...you could choke on your big mac...you are always one step away from brutal death :shrug:
*wanders off muttering "ain't scared of no interstellar pebble.
 

Winky

Well-Known Member
Sorry my dear but the examples you used are completely under my control.
My house isn’t a fire hazard and has functional smoke detectors.
I make it a habit not to step in front of cars (just like the song lyrics)
nobody walks in LA or Phoenix. I don’t eat my Big Mac’s like Mama Cass.
(I don’t eat big Mac’s anyway) And if there was warning I’d simply not be where the
space rock impacted. I don’t stand out in an open area during a lightening storm
holding up a metal object like Hmm say a Golf club so even the lightening
strike thing is wholly minimized.
I’m gonna live to be a hundred and three,
I play safe for you and me cuz I’m no fool.

Now the traffic in this town!
That’s another matter entirely!
Well you’d stand a better chance in
Ambush alley in an unarmored Humvee during
insurgent rushhour than you’d have here.
 

Camelyn

New Member
I have always loved the "post apocalyptic" storyline on TV, and in movies and books. It's fascinating to see the kinds of scenarios that might be possible if the slate gets wiped almost clean.

As for that event happening in real life, call me a pessimist, but I would bet that there would be looting and rioting on a global scale, not an effort towards global peace in the final hours. Most individuals would in fact cease to think globally at all, as the survival instincts kicked in, and people scrambled to find a way to survive, by any means.

Globally on the political front, mayhaps the economically powerful nations would unite to try and determine a way to counter the threat, or mayhaps they would play the politics game until the end, and fight amongst themselves to use the situation to try to maneuver for political and economic supremacy. :shrug:

I doubt it would be fun, but I'd like to be among the handful of survivors around after the planet-smasher hit. I'm a curious creature by nature, and I would just *have* to know how the story ended :)
 

chcr

Too cute for words
Camelyn said:
I have always loved the "post apocalyptic" storyline on TV, and in movies and books. It's fascinating to see the kinds of scenarios that might be possible if the slate gets wiped almost clean.

As for that event happening in real life, call me a pessimist, but I would bet that there would be looting and rioting on a global scale, not an effort towards global peace in the final hours. Most individuals would in fact cease to think globally at all, as the survival instincts kicked in, and people scrambled to find a way to survive, by any means.

Globally on the political front, mayhaps the economically powerful nations would unite to try and determine a way to counter the threat, or mayhaps they would play the politics game until the end, and fight amongst themselves to use the situation to try to maneuver for political and economic supremacy. :shrug:

I doubt it would be fun, but I'd like to be among the handful of survivors around after the planet-smasher hit. I'm a curious creature by nature, and I would just *have* to know how the story ended :)

It's not pessimistic, Cam, it's cynical. I agree though, but then I'm a cynic.

I'm afraid the major powers, even if they did work together, would have a very small chance of success. You never know though, there are brilliant people out there, just not working for the governments. The physics involved is staggerng.

As for survival, the one that would set up a magma wave would also send a wall of superheated gasses completely around the earth. pretty much everything that survives the global earthquake gets vaporized. I'm pretty sure one that big would destroy all life down to and including microbes. I've heard theories both ways. A smaller one, like the one that killed the dinosaurs? The impact doesn't really kill that many on a global scale. It triggers pretty much every fault line and volcano on earth though (even the ones we aren't aware of). It also ejects millions of tons of molton rock out of the atmosphere, most of which falls back and set fire to everything it touches. Continental firestorms kill most of us. Then it gets dark (all that smoke and ash makes "nuclear winter" look like a cloudy day). Really dark, for years. All the plant life dies or goes dormant and everything else starves, probably in well under a year. I think I'd rather go quickly. :)
 

Mirlyn

Well-Known Member
PuterTutor said:
Of course then theres the situation with the space shuttles, would they release the hold so they could fill them full of texan oil men and nuclear bombs? Would Steven Tyler be at the launch? Or would the Government try to hide the whole thing from us for as long as possible?
With or without Liv, that is the question. Can anyone say sequel?
 

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
First a big roar..and then the silence.

The roar of the explosion, the earthquakes, the volcanic eruptions. The roar of people scrrambling to get to food, to water, to shelter. The fights erupting in stores when the looting begins, the killing for the sake of killing. The mass exoduses and the millions stuck on roads trying to get anywhere but 'here', the hospitals turning people away and the crush of bodies trying to get in, the power outages, the fires and the floods. The cries of vengeance, and the blast of gunpowder. All of this, one big roar...a final scream into the oncoming night...then the silence.

A choking silence...a deathly silence.

In a few thousand years, or perhaps a hundred-thousand...life will begin again, and evolve, and grow to wonder...what were these humans whose remnants we find, and what killed them off? Why were their skeletons on the inside and not the outside?

'Awe fuckit', said one roach to the other. 'let's go get us some Taco Bell'.
 

pc_builder

New Member
but there is one on a collision course. it's something like thousands or maybe only hundreds of years out?

rioting and looting. if it were to happen, i'd probably be the last one out there and the only one arrested to sit in a cell until the final second
 
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