[OT] 17 years left. What to do?

[ForceUser]

I dont get what you people are worried about.

If it comes too close the goverments of the world will put together a crack team of miners, they will give them a state of the art shuttle and a few nukes. The miners, after a few days of training, which usually takes several years, will go up in space, land on the astroide, make holes in it, drop the nukes and blow it to smitherines. It will be a wonderful adventure with lots of flag waving and good music for those dramatic moments.

So don't worry, be happy.

Man I hated that sorry excuse for a movie. I wish I could get back the three hours of my life I spent watching it.

 

[Tjaden]

Size of explosion?

I don't see how it could possibly make a continental-size explosion as they say in the article...considering the asteroid is only 1.2 miles wide... But I guess I will believe what the government tells me to believe.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

If it comes too close the goverments of the world will put together a crack team of miners, they will give them a state of the art shuttle

Let's not forget that the state-of-the-art shuttles would only be revealed to exist right before the miners are ready to go into space...

That was the part of the movie that bugged me the most. "Oh yeah, by the way, we have these two brand-new shuttles we never mentioned before sitting right here ready to go!"

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Re: Size of explosion?

I don't see how it could possibly make a continental-size explosion as they say in the article...considering the asteroid is only 1.2 miles wide... But I guess I will believe what the government tells me to believe.

"Continent-wide devastation" is different from a continent-sized explosion.

The asteroid thought to have helped bring about the demise of the dinosaurs wasn't much larger. Besides, even a fairly small (half a kilometer) rock moving at such speeds could cause atomic-bomb size explosions.

 

[BlackMoria]

I don't see how it could possibly make a continental-size explosion as they say in the article...considering the asteroid is only 1.2 miles wide... But I guess I will believe what the government tells me to believe

It is not continental-size explosion - it is continental-size destruction zone.

A show a while back on Discovery Channel had a scenario where a two mile wide asteriod hit in the Atlantic (a water hit given the water to land ratio is a more probable scenario).

The result tidal wave was calculated to be 1/2 mile in high. It would completely innudate all of Florida and swamp all the eastern seaboard of the US - in places, as far as the Mississippi River. Portugal and Spain would be heaviest hit on that side of the ocean but most of Europe would be severly impacted.

The death toll was projected to be in the tens of millions.

This is completely discounting the long term climatic and enviromental damage.

Yes, getting hit with a 2 mile asteriod travelling at 28 km per second truly sucks on a global scale.

 

[Numion]

No worries, mate!

Oil drillers have been known to divert asteroids the size of Texas!

It was on the document "Armageddon". Didn't know before though that Bruce Willis worked at oilfields, too.

 

[Joker]

Movie?

 

[Umbran]

Re: Size of explosion?

I don't see how it could possibly make a continental-size explosion as they say in the article...considering the asteroid is only 1.2 miles wide...

As others noted, the phrase was "continent wide devastation". That includes the explosion and all the ancilliary effects.

As for how it does it...
A sphere of quartz (not a dense mineral) half that size (about 0.6 miles across) will weigh in at... 315 million tons or so by my quick calculation. And it's speed is likely to be measured in neighborhood of ten thousand miles per second or more.

It's blasted huge, and moving faster than the human mind can really imagine. That's how it does it.

 

[Numion]

Movie?

Nah, I'm pretty sure it really happened.

 

[Joker]

And even if it hits, it wont mean the end of the world. Just the end of the region that it hits like that one in Siberia that dropd on us in the beginning of the century...err last century. I dont think this one is big enough to cause a massive cloud that will hang suspended in the atmosphere for several years.

Maybe a week or two. Still enough to kill a lot, just not the total extermination of all species.

I think a few creatures at the bottom of the sea that dont need sunlight will survive.

And me.