ridiculous, insane... and plausible surv exercise?

Sorry for not having been around over the past few weeks. I hate not getting my equipped fix lol. That being said something's been chewing at me for a while and building up into a sort of crescendo. I realized that at bare minimum, it begs the question and I figured I'd put it to you guys to see what you think.

The scenario: Cometary impact.

Yep, that's right. Comet strike on the world. I know, I know. You're thinking "He said plausible" ... well, it is

I've been reading a few books recently, more specifically one called uriel's machine. And while they make some debatable claims they do however make one hell of a case of MULTIPLE comet strikes on planet earth over the past 10-20,000 years. The after effects are pretty well documented both in geology and oral history which is bizarre and sobering. I highly recommend reading the book

Anyways, that being said we have good old comet Elenin on it's way for a near by pass (by that I mean a razor's width) to earth. .24 au on the light side though I've heard some estimates of it being as close as .0004au. For those who are unaware - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit

It's due in early october, btw.

Moreover the angle of intersection with the earth's orbit is what REALLY gives me the heebie jeebies. When I think "intersecting the earth's orbit" I think of two great big lines in space perfectly perpendicular to each other. Unfortunately that's not the case. Per nasa's JPL it's coming in a shallow angle.. which any layperson can see gives it a better shot at us.

So let's just say it's NOT going to happen as I'm not here to really debate that per se. I have my beliefs, you have yours and you're welcome to do your own research. But the question, point, and purpose of this thread is:

Scenario: Comet strike
Timeline: 6 months to prepare
Resources: Absolutely anything and everything you have, including your kitchen sink. I mean after all, it's survival

First off from what I know from the discovery channel you have about a 50/50 shot right off the bat based on hemisphere/land/ocean/water. So for the sake of argument let's say it's going to hit ocean. You will not be incinerated in nuclear fire. You might, however, get rolled by a 2-3 mile high tidal wave. Or die from nuclear winter effects. Etc.

Chew on it and reply

There is plenty of good evidence for cometary strikes in the past. However, Uriel's Machine is not a credible source and personally I think the claims presented in the book are so much baloney. If the data presented therein is the source of your concern, you can rest easy.

It is an interesting subject. I have been involved, very peripherally, in some of the field work behind a recent proposal of another meteor strike at 12,900 years ago. There is actual physical evidence to support this claim (unique impact compounds in well dated layers in several localities). Let's just say that even this event is rather controversial - it is definitely not currentlyaccepted by a majority of scientists working in the field.

Even earlier, we have Meteor Crater in Arizona (some 50,000 years old) and the Cretaceous extinction event, the undoing of the dinosaurs, 69 million years ago. This by no means exhausts the list of accepted or controversial events in the past.

If yet another extraterrestrial object comes calling? If there is any kind of warning, I would move or at least climb to higher ground (my residence is a mere 200 feet above MSL) so I would be in trouble in the event of a mile high tsunami. I am afraid my folding kayak would not be of much use to me.

If no warning, or I cannot move, well I have had a long and generally productive life, and nothing lasts forever.

I understand we get close fly bys rather frequently, and I believe there is some interest in tracking near earth objects and considering measures to avoid impacts. Someone more knowledgeable can fill in the gaps.

Just one other thing -if we have to run for our lives, be sure and take fire starting materials. Might be a good idea to pack along some shelter basics as well. You just never know..

If I'm older and can't snowboard, bike, etc., then a massive comet strike would be an awesome way to die, compared to others ways to die (e.g., painful hospital death). I'd live life to the absolute fullest until the comet strike, and I wouldn't worry my mind with preparing to survive the comet strike. My only survival preparation would be directed toward living until the comet strike.



That puts a different spin on things. Let me thing about that one...

If I know it's going to hit, I can probably figure out where. So Step One is to do that, and use it to inform Step Two. Step Two is to find a tectonically stable place away from the coast to put my shelter. Step Three is to build and stock the best underground shelter I can afford after selling everything I can and maxing out my (excellent) credit.

Realistically, if I know, a lot of people know, so this kind of plan is less likely to succeed. I might be better off banding together with others to build and stock the shelter.

Chaos, an underground shelter? Really? With Fimblewinter on the way?

And Garland,if I remember correctly, your .0004 AU is "only" about 60 THOUSAND kilometers. Considering that the Earth's diameter 12.5 thousand miles, that's like having someone with a rifle miss you by ten feet. Annoying, concerning, but not in and of itself lethal.

Read "Lucifer's Hammer" by Niven and Pournelle. Answers most of your questions, with some easy to understand science thrown in.

Better would be to build a planetary defense system, but I don't think my credit is THAT good. I'm entirely confident that I can't afford to relocate to Proxima Centauri.

My concerns include severe weather the likes of which the human race has never seen.

I have to admit, it's one of the things I throw my hands up to. It's happened before and will happen again but it's something that I feel pretty much powerless against so I try not to think about it beyond the residual after-glow of works of fiction. I've got my preps for the threats I think are realistic and survival, and am consistenly working on improving those. That's about the best I can do.

If the situation did arise I'm certain a number of factors would come into play and I'd have to make my decisions with those in mind. (i.e. local, national and international actions)

I imagine a lot of people wouldn't survive to see the comet. Once word got out there'd be worldwide panic, hoarding, looting, martial law, and severe rationing. If you didn't already have a few years of food, medications, and citical supplies stockpiled you might be SOL. How would you buy enough food if govenrments around the world were stockpiling every available resource? Life would definitely suck for the average person, myself included. I imagine living on an abundant coastline would be easier as you could fish and forage but who knows. Plus, everyone would probably be relocating inland so you might have the place all to yourself.

It's happened before and will undoubtedly happen again. I think preparation is preparation, no matter what you're prepping for. But there are some things no amount of prep can save you from.

Even thinking about a comet impact gives me a headache. World wide impact, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires raging around the globe, possibly years of “nuclear” winter, perhaps an ice age,? There’s the immediate effects, and then the aftermath to deal with.

What would I do ? PANIC !
Then start reading and researching: relocate, stockpile, team up with others, plant a garden, orchard and start up a farm.

I guess my approach is that I’d start to prepare as best I could to survive through the ordeal. In movies and fiction you always have a few characters who elect to just sit calmly on the front porch, hold hands and enjoy the show, I don’t relate to that at all, but I do accept that some people will want that.

I have a family to care for and I don’t think I’m ready to just give up, so its “prepare and struggle on” for me.

Ironraven:
Just how long do you think a comet's tail is, anyways?

A simple google search produces:
http://spaceobs.org/en/2011/03/12/dlinna-xvosta-komety-elenina-uzhe-prevysila-900-000-km/

900000 KM, approx.

Your analogy is pretty uninformed, aside from being outright derisive. A shotgun blast would be more appropriate though still inaccurate.

I understand my post borders on the nonsensical, and that's fine. Yet we debate all manner of hypotheticals, including 'ridiculous' topics such as bioterrorism or nuclear warfare. Why not this? Moreover, let's be frank: mother/father nature is far more dangerous than any man-made disaster if it ever wakes up and really wants to be.

And yes, I've read lucifer's hammer. I like niven's work, if not for his real life attitude.

I go by an 80/20 principle - 80 pct bs .. 20 pct worth listening to. So that's about how much of Uriel's Machine I took as worthwhile - but it was a very interesting 20 pct for me

I think that at 20 pct you are giving this stuff way too much credit. But that is not to say that we are immune from extraterrestrial impacts in the future. Our technology might be able to avert a potential catastrophe if we can get it together. Makes life interesting....

Metro 2033....All I got ta say.

So it is time to move nearer the equator to avoid the incoming Ice Age?

side comment- the entire MASS of the tail of that comet is damn near nothing- Its mostly water vapor and dust- and not all that much of either. You need to worry about the ice cream and the nuts, not the whip cream on the outside ( I LOVED THAT BOOK - Lucifer's Hammer

QUOTE FROM THE BOOK- online at Baen.com
Hot fudge sundae," said Forrester.

"Hah?"

Forrester's grin was wide through his beard. "A cubic mile of hot fudge sundae. Cometary speeds."

Sharps's eyes lit up. "I like it! Let's hit Earth with a cubic mile of hot fudge sundae."

Lord God, they've gone bonkers, Harvey thought. The two men raced each other to the blackboard. Sharps began to draw. "Okay. Hot fudge sundae. Let's see: We'll put the vanilla ice cream in the center with a layer of fudge over it . . ."

He ignored the strangled sound behind him. Tim Hamner hadn't said a word during the whole interview. Now he was doubled over, holding himself, trying to hold in the laughter. He looked up, choked, got his face straight, said, "I can't stand it!" and brayed like a jackass. "My comet! A cubic mile of hot . . . fudge . . . sun . . . dae . . ."

"With the fudge as the outer shell," Forrester amplified, "so the fudge will heat up when the Hammer rounds the Sun."

"That's Hamner-Brown," Tim said, straight-faced.

"No, my child, that's a cubic mile of hot fudge sundae. And the ice cream will still be frozen inside the shell," said Sharps.

Harvey said, "But you forgot the—"

"We put the cherry at one pole and say that pole was in shadow at perihelion." Sharps sketched to show that when the comet rounded the Sun, the cherry at the oblate spheroid's axis would be on the side away from Sol. "We don't want it scorched. And we'll put crushed nuts all through it, to represent rocks. Say a two-hundred-foot cherry?"

"Carried by the Royal Canadian Air Force," Mark said.

"Stan Freberg! Right!" Forrester whooped. "Shhhh . . . plop! Let's see you do that on television!"

"And now, as the comet rounds the Sun, trailing a luminous froth of fake whipped cream, and aims itself down our throats . . . Dan, what's the density of vanilla ice cream?"

Forrester shrugged. "It floats. Say two-thirds."

"Right. Point six six six it is." Sharps seized a pocket calculator from the desk and punched frantically. "I love these things. Used to use slide rules. Never could figure out where the decimal point went.

"A cubic mile to play with. Five thousand two hundred and eighty feet, times twelve for inches, times two point five four for centimeters, cube that . . . We have two point seven seven six times ten to the fifteenth cubic centimeters of vanilla ice cream. It would take a while to eat it all. Times the density, and lo, we have about two times ten to the fifteenth grams. Couple of billion tons. Now for the fudge . . ." Sharps punched away.

Happy as a clam, Harvey thought. A very voluble clam equipped with Texas Instruments' latest pocket marvel.

"What do you like for the density of hot fudge?" Sharps asked.

"Call it point nine," Forrester said.

"Haven't any of you made fudge?" Charlene demanded. "It doesn't float. You test it by dripping it into a cup of cold water. Or at least my mother did."

"Say one point two, then," Forrester said.

"Another billion and a half tons of hot fudge," Sharps said. Behind him Hamner made more strangled noises.

"I think we can ignore the rocks," Sharps said. "Do you see why, now?"

"Lord God, yes," Harvey said. He looked at the camera with a start. "Uh, yes, Dr. Sharps, it certainly makes sense to ignore the rocks."

"You're not going to show this, are you?" Tim Hamner sounded indignant.

"You're saying no?" Harvey asked.

"No . . . no . . ." Hamner doubled over and giggled.

"Now, she's coming at cometary speeds. Fast. Let's see, parabolic speed at Earth orbit is what, Dan?"

"Twenty-nine point seven kilometers per second. Times square root of two."

"Forty-two kilometers a second," Sharps announced. "And we've got Earth's orbital velocity to add. Depends on the geometry of the strike. Shall we say fifty kilometers a second as a reasonable closing velocity?"

"Sounds good," Forrester said. "Meteors go from twenty to maybe seventy. It's reasonable."

"Right. Call it fifty. Square that, times a half. Times mass in grams. Bit over two times ten to the twenty-eight ergs. That's for the vanilla ice cream. Now we can figure that most of the hot fudge boiled away, but understand, Harvey, at those speeds we're just not in the atmosphere very long. If we come in straight it's two seconds flat! Anyway, whatever mass you burn up, a lot of the energy just gets transferred to the earth's heat balance. That's a spectacular explosion all by itself. We'll figure twenty percent of the hot-fudge energy transfers to Earth, and"—more buttons pressed, and dramatic rise in voice—"our grand total is two point seven times ten to the twenty-eighth ergs. Okay, that's your strike."

"Doesn't mean much to me," Harvey said. "It sounds like a big number . . ."

"One followed by twenty-eight zeros," Mark muttered.

"Six hundred and forty thousand megatons, near enough," Dan Forrester said gently. "It is a big number."

"Good God, pasteurized planet," Mark said.

"Not quite." Forrester had his own calculator out of the belt case. "About three thousand Krakatoas. Or three hundred Thera explosions, if they're right about Thera."

"Thera?" Harvey asked.

"Volcano in the Mediterranean," Mark said. "Bronze Age. Where the Atlantis legend comes from."

"Your friend's right," Sharps said. "I'm not sure about the energy, though. Look at it this way. All of mankind uses about ten to the twenty-ninth ergs in a year. That's everything: electric power, coal, nuclear energy, burning buffalo chips, cars—you name it. So our hot fudge sundae pops in with about thirty percent of the world's annual energy budget."

"Um. Not so bad, then," Harvey said.

"Not so bad. Not so bad as what? A year's energy in one minute," Sharps said. "It probably hits water. If it hits land, it's tough for anyone under it, but most of the energy radiates back out to space fairly quickly. But if it hits water, it vaporizes it. Let's see, ergs to calories . . . damn. I don't have that on my gadget."

"I do," Forrester said. "The strike would vaporize about sixty million cubic kilometers of water. Or fifty billion acrefeet, if you like that. Enough to cover the entire U.S.A. with two hundred and twelve feet of water."

"All right," Sharps said. "So sixty million cubic kilometers of water go into the atmosphere. Harvey, it's going to rain. A lot of that water is moving across polar areas. It freezes, falls as snow. Glaciers form fast . . . slide south . . . yeah. Harvey, the historians believe the Thera explosion changed the world's climate. We know that Tamboura, about as powerful as Krakatoa, caused what historians of the last century called 'the year without a summer. Famine. Crop failure. Our hot fudge sundae will probably trigger an ice age. All those clouds. Clouds reflect heat. Less sunlight gets to Earth. Snow reflects heat too. Still less sunlight. It gets colder. More snow falls. Glaciers move south because they don't melt as fast. Positive feedback."

I love that book.
-Blast

If you Enjoy video games especially FPS You should Play the video game based off it. Also Stalker SOC and Stalker COP.

I doubt that it would be possible to survive a direct impact by a large comet.
Short term survival might be posible in an underground shelter, half way up a mountain, but what about afterwards ?
The destruction would include virtually all modern infrastructure, and with no hope of rebuilding with almost all the population dead. Even growing crops would be likely imposible owing to the clouds of dust/ash/smoke blocking sunlight.
Even a near miss would be as bad, tidal effects would result in waves MILES high that could wash away mountains, let alone man made structures.

That is the worst case though, a smaller impact might be surviable with some preps and a lot of luck.
The effects of a small meteor or comet strike would be a bit like the detonation of a large nuclear weapon.
Surviable near by ? no way ! but at a distance, yes surviable.

I cant think of many preps specific to a meteor strike, all the usuall preps of food, water, fuel, tools, and so on would help.
Food is arguably of greater importance since crop yields would be much reduced, perhaps for years.

What would a cockroach do?

Actually, it seems to me that the human species will survive.
But the survivors just might not be you or me. Too many variables to how it could go to be able to improve the odds.

Better to try to survive the commute to/from work. It's a much bigger threat to life and limb anyway.

Fun, but not useful. I plan and prepare for the much more boring things; Summer storms, flat tire, Water out for 24 hours....

If this is the end of the world as we know it, I doubt that it is, then regardless of what house of worship you belong to, make sure your life is right with the Deity you serve.

Jeanette Isabelle

You lost me in the first line mentioning cometary impact.
IF so, I hope it hits the lower 48!

I am much more concerned the creek overflowing and washing away our access road, power outage when nobody is home to start the generator to keep the freezer going.
Things that are important in life, not some drug indused nonsens!