Vorl Bek <vorl....@antichef.com> wrote:
> So 1500 years ago a rock falling into the ocean caused a couple of cold > years, about the equivalent of the Tambora explosion of 1815. European > civilization survived that with nary a hiccup. > > If it had hit land (30 percent chance) it would have caused worse crop > failures . . . ; still, our European civilization today, with its abundance > of food and fuel, would sail through it like it was a summer breeze. The object was roughly 200 m in length. As noted in the article, if a 300 m object -- somewhat bigger -- were to hit land, it would have the force of roughly 20,000 Hiroshima bombs and it would destroy an area the size of France. That's ~400 MT, or 10 times the size of the Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear bomb in history. The shock wave would be spread over a much larger area than the Tsar Bomb, the way today's meteor was. I would not call that sailing through like a summer breeze. If the 1908 Tunguska meteor had struck a city, it would have completely destroyed it. Even the largest city such as London, Paris or New York would have been completely leveled. > "much of a continent would be leveled; years of winter and mass > starvation would ensue." > > It sounds like gross exaggeration . . . I do not think you know enough about this to judge whether that is gross exaggeration or not. In fact, I get the impression you are jumping to conclusions about a subject you know nothing about, and dismissing the opinions of scientific experts who have spent years studying these subjects. People often do that with cold fusion and with global warming. It irks me. > ; and anyway, if the thing hit > 5000 years ago, when did the previous one hit? We don't know. We should find out. More to the point, we should find out when the next one is likely to hit. > Was it 10000 years previous, 20,000? Should I lie awake nights about this? > No, you should advocate sensible scientific research aimed at preventing it. > This speculation strikes me as chicken little stuff, and not to > be concerned about. > You strike me as someone who has no qualifications whatever to hold that opinion. - Jed
