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At six years out, it’s unclear where the asteroid will strike. You think Americans will throw their national budget behind doing “amazing things” for the Caribb

At six years out, it’s unclear where the asteroid will strike. You think Americans will throw their national budget behind doing “amazing things” for the Caribbean?

deleted 7y ago
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tyingq 7y ago
How localized would the effects of a 700 megaton impact be?
- toss1 7y ago
  You can get a decent idea of the effects up to 100MT here https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Excellent calculator & visualization
- SEJeff 7y ago
  Horrible mental exercise... As localized as a 700 megaton nuke (compared to the 13-18 kiloton nuke that his Hiroshima). Reliable sources say that virtually everything within a 3 mile radius from the impact was heavily damaged in Hiroshima and everything within 1.6km / ~1 mile radius was obliterated so you should be able to extrapolate from that. For comparison, the entire USA is ~3.797 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 184.35 entire United States would be utterly obliterated. 700000000 - 18000 = 699,982,000 sq miles of totally obliterated things For comparison, the entirety of planet earth is 196.9 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 10 planet earths would be heavily damaged. (700000000 - 18000) * 3 = 2,099,946,000 sq miles of heavily damaged things Update: My math is totally wrong and people smarter than me explained it. Yay for internet people!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    I'm a bit skeptical of your math. 700 megatons would be a bit over 10x the size of the biggest nuke ever detonated, which was still a city-killer, not a country-killer.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    Yield isn't linear. It's a cube root relationship. The difference between 100MT, 10MT and 1MT is hardly insignificant, but it's smaller than many people realise. FWIW a ballpark estimate says 700MT would have a 1 psi overpressure radius - which would break windows but not buildings - of less than 100km. It would be a huge bang and the noise would circle the world a few times. But if it landed on land, the total obliteration region would be smaller than a state. And the explosion itself wouldn't be extinction-level - although the winter that followed it would cause some severe problems. Tambora, which is the biggest explosion in modern records, was estimated around 33GT, and the blast effects from that were very, very, very bad, but still relatively localised. Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event.
    - SEJeff 7y ago
      > Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event. Unless you were a dinosaur living at the time :) Thanks for the cluebat, I've put an update on my post to note the math is all bollocks.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Depends where it hits. An ocean hit would wipe out coastal communities all around the ocean. A land hit would send up huge amounts of dust and plunge the world into a nuclear winter for some time. A hit in the right kind of coastal shelf could replicate the K-T impactor.
- trhway 7y ago
  200 megaton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa Such a huge asteroid may be exactly what we need to slow down global warming - fighting one catastrophe with another: "In the year following the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, average Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F).[12] Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.[12] The record rainfall that hit Southern California during the water year from July 1883 to June 1884 – Los Angeles received 38.18 inches (969.8 mm) and San Diego 25.97 inches (659.6 mm)[13] – has been attributed to the Krakatoa eruption.[14] There was no El Niño during that period as is normal when heavy rain occurs in Southern California,[15] but many scientists doubt that there was a causal relationship.[16] The Krakatoa eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere, which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) reflected more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cooled the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation."
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ClumsyPilot 7y ago
If your government is willing to spend trillions on adventures in syria and other countries, and they have no real impact on the life of an average american, they they will scrape together a few billion to save their collective asses.
Reedx 7y ago
That seems likely, considering the US provides the most foreign and humanitarian aid. http://devinit.org/post/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2018/ http://devinit.org/post/global-humanitarian-assistance-repor... "...the US remained the single largest donor, providing almost a third (32%) of all assistance"

At six years out, it’s unclear where the asteroid will strike. You think Americans will throw their national budget behind doing “amazing things” for the Caribbean?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tyingq 7y ago

How localized would the effects of a 700 megaton impact be?

toss1 7y ago
You can get a decent idea of the effects up to 100MT here https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Excellent calculator & visualization
SEJeff 7y ago
Horrible mental exercise... As localized as a 700 megaton nuke (compared to the 13-18 kiloton nuke that his Hiroshima). Reliable sources say that virtually everything within a 3 mile radius from the impact was heavily damaged in Hiroshima and everything within 1.6km / ~1 mile radius was obliterated so you should be able to extrapolate from that. For comparison, the entire USA is ~3.797 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 184.35 entire United States would be utterly obliterated. 700000000 - 18000 = 699,982,000 sq miles of totally obliterated things For comparison, the entirety of planet earth is 196.9 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 10 planet earths would be heavily damaged. (700000000 - 18000) * 3 = 2,099,946,000 sq miles of heavily damaged things Update: My math is totally wrong and people smarter than me explained it. Yay for internet people!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  I'm a bit skeptical of your math. 700 megatons would be a bit over 10x the size of the biggest nuke ever detonated, which was still a city-killer, not a country-killer.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Yield isn't linear. It's a cube root relationship. The difference between 100MT, 10MT and 1MT is hardly insignificant, but it's smaller than many people realise. FWIW a ballpark estimate says 700MT would have a 1 psi overpressure radius - which would break windows but not buildings - of less than 100km. It would be a huge bang and the noise would circle the world a few times. But if it landed on land, the total obliteration region would be smaller than a state. And the explosion itself wouldn't be extinction-level - although the winter that followed it would cause some severe problems. Tambora, which is the biggest explosion in modern records, was estimated around 33GT, and the blast effects from that were very, very, very bad, but still relatively localised. Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event.
  - SEJeff 7y ago
    > Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event. Unless you were a dinosaur living at the time :) Thanks for the cluebat, I've put an update on my post to note the math is all bollocks.
jandrese 7y ago
Depends where it hits. An ocean hit would wipe out coastal communities all around the ocean. A land hit would send up huge amounts of dust and plunge the world into a nuclear winter for some time. A hit in the right kind of coastal shelf could replicate the K-T impactor.
trhway 7y ago
200 megaton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa Such a huge asteroid may be exactly what we need to slow down global warming - fighting one catastrophe with another: "In the year following the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, average Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F).[12] Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.[12] The record rainfall that hit Southern California during the water year from July 1883 to June 1884 – Los Angeles received 38.18 inches (969.8 mm) and San Diego 25.97 inches (659.6 mm)[13] – has been attributed to the Krakatoa eruption.[14] There was no El Niño during that period as is normal when heavy rain occurs in Southern California,[15] but many scientists doubt that there was a causal relationship.[16] The Krakatoa eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere, which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) reflected more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cooled the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation."

deleted 7y ago

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deleted 7y ago

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ClumsyPilot 7y ago

If your government is willing to spend trillions on adventures in syria and other countries, and they have no real impact on the life of an average american, they they will scrape together a few billion to save their collective asses.

Reedx 7y ago

That seems likely, considering the US provides the most foreign and humanitarian aid. http://devinit.org/post/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2018/ http://devinit.org/post/global-humanitarian-assistance-repor... "...the US remained the single largest donor, providing almost a third (32%) of all assistance"