The biggest natural disaster

[Plane]

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-earth-passing-asteroid-entirely-beast-122459757.html



Lets say this thing strikes the center of the Pacific, as far as is possible from population centers.


There would be no survivors of the Tsunami all along all of the islands and coasts that face the Pacific , there might even be enough wave power crossing the Arctic and Cape of Good Hope and Tierra Del Fuego to drown a good number of Atlantic comunitys.

Worse than that, the steam and dust and heat would blanket the world with oven like heat followed by a winter a decade long, perhaps even an Ice age, global warming would not be enough help.

Surviving this would be a ragged and discouraged small remnant of humanity and a smatteering of life whereever some shelter from the prevailing harsh condition allowed survival.

There are hundreds of these beasts known , and very likely just as many still unknown.

Only recently have we learned how bad these things can be , even more recently have we developed a means to possibly influence the path of such a monster.

Lets do something effective , before we really need to.

Item one a complete map of large objects that have orbits intersecting the Earth's orbit.

Item two An effective means of changing such a orbit so that a hit can be converted to a miss if seen coming soon enough.

Item one is pretty cheap and the World has many nations and nongovernment agencys that are able to contribute.

Item two is fantasticly expensive and in the world there maybe four agencys that might produce such a thing.

But there doesn't seem to be a need for many , if a hit were diverted , it might produce a few centurys of safety.

[BSB]

"it might produce a few centurys of safety."

A few centuries? When was the last time one of these had a disastrous effect on Humanoids.?


BSB

[Plane]

"it might produce a few centurys of safety."

A few centuries? When was the last time one of these had a disastrous effect on Humanoids.?


BSB

1908
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

This area is so remote that there is no record of human deaths. There might have been a few, but they didn't complain.

Nothing prevented this from striking London or Peking . just lucky, and this one must have been a small one.

[BSB]

So, when was the last time one of these disastrously effected Humanoids?

BSB

[Plane]

So, when was the last time one of these disastrously effected Humanoids?

BSB

1908

Was this unclear?

[BSB]

What appears to be unclear is your understanding of the question.

When was the last time one of these had a disastrous effect on Humanoids? Better stated, on humans?


BSB

[Plane]

What appears to be unclear is your understanding of the question.

When was the last time one of these had a disastrous effect on Humanoids? Better stated, on humans?


BSB

These are not frequent events and untill pretty recently the Earth had huge tracts unpopulated by human beings. I know there was  one in Saudi Arabia about a century ago , though it would have devestated a city , the impact site was so far from population that it was practicly unnoticed.

Since the cold war included a nuclear threat we have had satilites on watch for big flashes , there was one unexplained flash in the Indian Ocean in the eightys , which might have been a meteor and might have been a test of an atomic wepon.

Give me a few minutes and I will see what I can find internet wise.

[BSB]

So then, historically speaking anyway, this wouldn't be true: "if a hit were diverted , >>>it might produce a few centurys of safety.<<<" One of these hasn't had a very significant effect on humans since? Lets just say maybe never.


BSB

[Plane]

I was seriously in error.

The right answer is Febuary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event

On February 15, 2013, an asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia as a fireball and exploded above the city of Chelyabinsk during its passage through the Ural Mountains region at 09:13 YEKT (03:13 UTC).[50][51] The object's air burst occurred at an altitude between 30 and 50 km (19 and 31 mi) above the ground,[52] and about 1,500 people were injured, mainly by broken window glass shattered by the shock wave. Two were reported in serious condition; however, there were no fatalities.[53] Initially some 3,000 buildings in six cities across the region were reported damaged due to the explosion's shock wave, a figure which rose to over 7,200 in the following weeks.[54][55] The Chelyabinsk meteor was estimated to have caused over $30 million in damages.[56][57] It is the largest recorded object to have encountered the Earth since the 1908 Tunguska event, by far the best documented, and the only such event known to have resulted in a large number of casualties.[58][59]

[BSB]

You a haven't seen the video of that? Look it up.

The point is they're rare. Might one have a disastrous effect on us at some point? Sure. It could take us out. So couldn't a volcano. Did you know that Yellowstone is an enormous volcano and that if it erupted it would kill millions?

BSB

[BSB]

The loosely defined term 'supervolcano' has been used to describe volcanic fields that produce exceptionally large volcanic eruptions. Thus defined, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is the volcanic field which produced the latest three supereruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot; it also produced one additional smaller eruption, thereby creating West Thumb Lake[8] 174,000 years ago.[9] The three super eruptions occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago, forming the Island Park Caldera, the Henry's Fork Caldera, and Yellowstone calderas, respectively.[10] The Island Park Caldera supereruption (2.1 million years ago), which produced the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, was the largest and produced 2,500 times as much ash as the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. The next biggest supereruption formed the Yellowstone Caldera (640,000 years ago) and produced the Lava Creek Tuff. The Henry's Fork Caldera (1.2 million years ago) produced the smaller Mesa Falls Tuff but is the only caldera from the Snake River Plain-Yellowstone (SRP-Y) hotspot that is plainly visible today.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera

[BSB]

By the way, these are the kinds of events, and possibilities, that should make it clear that we are all in fact citizens of the world.


BSB

[Plane]

They are not rare enough to treat the idea with casual contempt .

Each one that is big enough to be tracked is a potential city killer, if their rate is really one per century there is nothing preventing one from happening the same day as another.

So what this really means is that we don't need to interfere with a lot of them , once one is spotted on a collision course we will need one device to change its trajectory, and when we spot another on colision course we will need another.

Such devices are well within our reach already , we should build one or two , all the world may benefit , not just the doomed impact site.

The whole planet is potential impact site , and if the impactor is very large the whole world would be negatively affected.

Huge volcanic eruptions are simularly infrequent , but also inevitable, we are not totally helpless on that account either, in that it is slowly becoming more possible to predict the large events.

Of course knowing it is coming is only part of the problem, what can be done about it if we know?

[Plane]

By the way, these are the kinds of events, and possibilities, that should make it clear that we are all in fact citizens of the world.


BSB

I don't think all the nations of the world are equally willing to sholder this sort of responsibility.

Should the resorces of the US be used to benefit the entire world?

[BSB]

"I don't think all the nations of the world are equally willing to sholder this sort of responsibility."

Therefore what? Therefore we aren't all citizens of the world?

"Should the resorces of the US be used to benefit the entire world?"

Well, should they?


BSB