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I have a serious question about the meteorite extinction case... People talk about populating mars as insurance against a devastating meteor attack wiping out

I have a serious question about the meteorite extinction case... People talk about populating mars as insurance against a devastating meteor attack wiping out the population. Wouldn’t it also work to create a large shock-absorbing facility on earth? If a meteorite is headed toward earth, you could simply enter the shelter, wait for it to hit, and then come back out. Of course then you’re dealing with interrupted ecosystems, but it’s hard for me to believe that they would be worse than Mars. P.s. I know populating Mars is considered diversification for other reasons, but a mass extinction is certainly a reason given.

jayalpha 8y ago
"Wouldn’t it also work to create a large shock-absorbing facility on earth?" Yeah, sure. would be possible. Simple physics. The crater Chicxulub absorbed more Energy than a billion times the energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[1] So you basically would just need a hell of an airbag. Hey, if you do it right and you can harvest the energy then you can run the world electricity supply on it for a few years. [1] http://doc.rero.ch/record/210367/files/PAL_E4389.pdf http://doc.rero.ch/record/210367/files/PAL_E4389.pdf
- hanniabu 8y ago
  Not to mention we would need to survive the aftermath - possibility of debris kicked up into the atmosphere blocking the sun for months or years, chain reaction of volcanic eruptions with the same side effect plus lava, mass plant and wildlife die-off leading to possible global ecosystem collapse, raised global temperatures and water levels, and shifting tectonic that could possibly shift elevations and flood wherever this 'facility' is located. I'm sure there's many other issues I haven't thought of off the top of my head.
  - tejtm 8y ago
    well there is the glow from the returning ejecta turning the entire sky into a broiler oven for a few days ... hate it when that happens, control of the planet goes back to to the meek who were hiding deep underground at the time.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
tzs 8y ago
You may be underestimating the damage to ecosystems. The Yucatan Peninsula asteroid strike threw a massive amount of small particles of rock and other junk high into the atmosphere, which burned up due to atmospheric friction falling back. It would have appeared on the ground as an amazing meteor shower, so intense the the sky would be glowing from the light of the burning particles. This was widespread enough to surround the planet. That lasted for hours, bathing the surface in intense infrared radiation. It was on the surface like being in an oven with the broiler on. Animals and plants not underground, underwater, or well sheltered such as in caves were killed either by heating from the infrared radiation, or by not being able to cope with breathing an atmosphere that was now something like 200 C. If we arranged for all humans to be sheltered during such an event so we don't get wiped out during the worldwide broiling, we'd have lost pretty much all of our food chain except maybe seafood. So lets assume we also make sure to shelter plants and animals, so that when we can come out of the shelter we can start replanting and start breeding food animals. The climate would be wonky for a long time. That's one of the things that doomed many species that were not killed during the broiling phase after the Yucatan Peninsula strike. The climate where they live changed to something they could not cope with. Humans could deal with that better. After we get out of the shelters and want to replant food crops, we would not be constrained to just planting them where they had been before the impact. We can examine the whole world and plant our recovery crops where they have the best chance of surviving. Same with breeding recovery animals. This would require a level of cooperation that I doubt current governments can achieve peacefully. I'd expect several wars would be involved in settling the resource allocation issues. My guess is that far future galactic anthropologists will discover that when civilizations that have reached a technology level that allows them to see a big strike coming far enough ahead to prepare for it, but have not reached a level where they can stop it get hit, their survival chances go way up if either (1) they have a strong planet-wide government, or (2) they have a strong sense of being one people, without dividing themselves by race, religion, politics, or region (they may have different races, religions, and so on but treat differences in them the way we treat differences in, say, what kinds of food you like or what genres of movies you like). Both of those help enable the kind of cooperation needed to recover.
JshWright 8y ago
It wasn't the pressure wave from the impact that caused the extinction. It was the sun-blocking cloud of dust and debris that got thrown into the atmosphere for years afterwards, dramatically cooling the climate and killing the vegetation that forms foundation of the food chain.
brownbat 8y ago
It always seemed to me that if we could populate Mars, we should be able to populate a self-sustained under-water or subterranean colony. Such a colony would provide practice at designing biospheres, and could be pretty robust against space hazards, with much shorter round trip times while testing it, if we're really convinced we need a lifeboat for Earth using existing tech. (Though I suspect we partly want to colonize Mars because space is cool, which is fine too.)

jayalpha 8y ago

"Wouldn’t it also work to create a large shock-absorbing facility on earth?" Yeah, sure. would be possible. Simple physics. The crater Chicxulub absorbed more Energy than a billion times the energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[1] So you basically would just need a hell of an airbag. Hey, if you do it right and you can harvest the energy then you can run the world electricity supply on it for a few years. [1] http://doc.rero.ch/record/210367/files/PAL_E4389.pdf http://doc.rero.ch/record/210367/files/PAL_E4389.pdf

hanniabu 8y ago
Not to mention we would need to survive the aftermath - possibility of debris kicked up into the atmosphere blocking the sun for months or years, chain reaction of volcanic eruptions with the same side effect plus lava, mass plant and wildlife die-off leading to possible global ecosystem collapse, raised global temperatures and water levels, and shifting tectonic that could possibly shift elevations and flood wherever this 'facility' is located. I'm sure there's many other issues I haven't thought of off the top of my head.
- tejtm 8y ago
  well there is the glow from the returning ejecta turning the entire sky into a broiler oven for a few days ... hate it when that happens, control of the planet goes back to to the meek who were hiding deep underground at the time.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

tzs 8y ago

You may be underestimating the damage to ecosystems. The Yucatan Peninsula asteroid strike threw a massive amount of small particles of rock and other junk high into the atmosphere, which burned up due to atmospheric friction falling back. It would have appeared on the ground as an amazing meteor shower, so intense the the sky would be glowing from the light of the burning particles. This was widespread enough to surround the planet. That lasted for hours, bathing the surface in intense infrared radiation. It was on the surface like being in an oven with the broiler on. Animals and plants not underground, underwater, or well sheltered such as in caves were killed either by heating from the infrared radiation, or by not being able to cope with breathing an atmosphere that was now something like 200 C. If we arranged for all humans to be sheltered during such an event so we don't get wiped out during the worldwide broiling, we'd have lost pretty much all of our food chain except maybe seafood. So lets assume we also make sure to shelter plants and animals, so that when we can come out of the shelter we can start replanting and start breeding food animals. The climate would be wonky for a long time. That's one of the things that doomed many species that were not killed during the broiling phase after the Yucatan Peninsula strike. The climate where they live changed to something they could not cope with. Humans could deal with that better. After we get out of the shelters and want to replant food crops, we would not be constrained to just planting them where they had been before the impact. We can examine the whole world and plant our recovery crops where they have the best chance of surviving. Same with breeding recovery animals. This would require a level of cooperation that I doubt current governments can achieve peacefully. I'd expect several wars would be involved in settling the resource allocation issues. My guess is that far future galactic anthropologists will discover that when civilizations that have reached a technology level that allows them to see a big strike coming far enough ahead to prepare for it, but have not reached a level where they can stop it get hit, their survival chances go way up if either (1) they have a strong planet-wide government, or (2) they have a strong sense of being one people, without dividing themselves by race, religion, politics, or region (they may have different races, religions, and so on but treat differences in them the way we treat differences in, say, what kinds of food you like or what genres of movies you like). Both of those help enable the kind of cooperation needed to recover.

JshWright 8y ago

It wasn't the pressure wave from the impact that caused the extinction. It was the sun-blocking cloud of dust and debris that got thrown into the atmosphere for years afterwards, dramatically cooling the climate and killing the vegetation that forms foundation of the food chain.

brownbat 8y ago

It always seemed to me that if we could populate Mars, we should be able to populate a self-sustained under-water or subterranean colony. Such a colony would provide practice at designing biospheres, and could be pretty robust against space hazards, with much shorter round trip times while testing it, if we're really convinced we need a lifeboat for Earth using existing tech. (Though I suspect we partly want to colonize Mars because space is cool, which is fine too.)