ESA Carries Out Asteroid Impact Drill 69
Zothecula writes: If there were any dinosaurs around, they could tell you that an asteroid impact can ruin your whole day. But if we did learn that one was actually going to strike the Earth in a month, what would the authorities do? To find out, the European Space Agency held its first ever mock asteroid drill to work on solutions and identify problems in how to handle such a catastrophe.
how to handle such a catastrophe? (Score:1)
Duck!
*ducks*
I believe... (Score:2)
...the somewhat tounge-in-cheek poster from cold war has this covered in its last step:
o Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye
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The impact force of a large asteroid would be much larger, but no worse than a near miss with an ICBM warhead would be
Que? The impact force from a small asteroid impact is equivalent to a large nuke. The 20m Russian Chelyabinsk impact was about half a megaton equivalent.
A large asteroid would outstrip the effects of the entire global nuclear arsenal all detonated at the same time on a single site. Asteroids can punch through the ocean crust.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/ [ic.ac.uk]
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Plenty of ionizing radiation from an impact like that.
But aside from that, a major impact would very likely crack the crust of the planet, and shroud any part that wasn't outright baked in sunlight-blocking suspended particulates. We could, entirely reasonably, expect the human race to survive a major nuclear war. There have already been 500+ megatons of nuclear we
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Don't worry, one of these days tinfoil hats will (Score:1)
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The only survivable outcome for humanity is to have multiple self sustaining colonies away from earth, and an infrastructure to nudge objects from an intersecting earth orbit, or just plai
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Actually the ESA does collaborate on programs with NASA-US. The ESA lacks the funding for their own manned space programs so they partnered up with NASA on the Orion manned mission project. Their biggest contribution to date is the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The recent ISRO Mars orbiter program included US-NASA advanced radar and imaging subsystems. So cooperation between agencies go both ways and it is usually better for this cooperation to stay quietly in the background to avoid getting caught up i
Duck & Cover? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I suggest going "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die" when that happens then.
Feel free to substitute in your favorite deity as you wish, Haruhi Suzumiya, the Tooth Fairy, Ronald Reagan, Zombie Ronald Reagan, the Batman, that Thing Wot Lives in the Basement, it's your choice.
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Bert the Turtle has a plan! https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Jibbers will take care of all of us! He's very inclusive.
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Because cowering under your desk will protect you from a nuclear blast!
That's got to be one of the more effective fear-mongering campaigns ever deployed - got a whole generation indoctrinated from childhood to cower in fear under the skirts of a commensurately empowered government.
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It wasn't so much protection from the blast but from falling debris. If we assume one was far enough away from the blast to not be fried, getting under a desk would offer some protection from ceiling tiles and such which might fall, similar to how standing in a doorway during an earthquake offers some protection if you can't immediately get out.
This idea is still orders of magnitude better than former head of Homeland Security
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nothing dumb about the duct tape suggestion; research that before spewing
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Re:Duck & Cover? (Score:5, Interesting)
Except the people stuck on the surface are likely to take offence and bury those rich and greedy types as well as politicians and leave them there. Likely best action apart from trying to deflect the asteroid, give everyone a free supply of happy pills to last until the impact, lots and lots of happy pills. It wont help with the impact but most certainly will mitigate the harm caused by people acting out against other people. In fact inserting the happy drugs right into the food and water supply would make sense.
In a more serious vein, establishment of distributed localised support system that well seek and readily accept volunteers, so individuals can focus on supporting their local community rather than dwelling upon their own circumstance. Establishing that mutual support network well before hand, one that includes the whole community, would make sense.
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I am going to have to go with the lots of Happy pills idea.
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The problem with "give everybody X" schemes is where are all the X going to come from?
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I'm a libertarian and I don't want to be forced to "support my local community".
That's ok, there will be nearby tribe that will shoot you and steal all your stuff, so you don't have to worry. Oh wait, they could also make you a slave.
You think this is harsh? When central government breaks down this is what you get: libertarian paradise.
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You're not thinking thing through; libertarians are generally armed.
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that loon in Sydney attacked a store full of unarmed citizens. In the USA, that would just be impromptu poll of who's concealed carrying.
Sure, might not survive armed terrorist attack even carrying a weapon, but what would you rather have when someone determined to kill starts their rampage, some chance or no chance?
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I'm not so sure these concealed-carry fantasies work so well in practice, but that's beside the point.
The point is that if civilisation breaks down, as a lone wolf you don't stand a change, even when you're armed. You'll have to sleep sometimes, you'll run out of ammo, you'll run out of food, you may get ill. There will always be a `local community to support', whether you like it or not.
If you're unlucky the local community is a tribe of bandits that kills or enslaves you.
If you're lucky the local communit
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true that
It's worth pointing out the libertarian types I know are great neighbors, believing family and then neighborhood the building blocks of a nation
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For small "nuclear strike" class asteroids, the best response is to do nothing. Virtually all of them come down in the ocean or in remote areas overland; the odds of hitting a population center are _tiny_. Remember that the recent one in Russia basically just broke a bunch of windows. We can't predict their paths very well, and I think there are enough of them that trying to track and stop them all would be expensive. You'd save more lives and damage by spending that money fighting malaria and wheat rus
Re:Duck & Cover? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Actually dinosaurs evolved from reptiles, not the other way around. Hence the "age or reptiles" coming before the "age of dinosaurs". Reptiles couldn't compete with their more advanced, probably at least somewhat warm-blooded relatives, and lost their position as the dominant class of land-dwelling animal life.
And of course birds are descended from only one small class of dinosaurs that included such notable examples as the T-rex, the vast majority of dinosaur gene-lines vanished forever, and it's hard to
Drill? Damn you Slashdot! (Score:2)
You had me thinking the lander came back to life.
wagd (Score:2)
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Too bad Ray Nagin never practiced shit hitting the (Score:3)
The odds of a significant asteroid impact any time soon seem quite remote, but I think the exercise of having many agencies practice their coordination for a major event might come in handy. Here in Texas we drill all sorts of unlikely scenarios. We probably never drilled a major' fertilizer plant explosion in West, but we were prepared to mobilize anywhere, for any reason.
Official Transcript of Drill (Score:5, Funny)
Moderator: OK folks, drill is beginning. ... ... ...
Breathless Lacky: Attention important people! Deep space radar shows that a major asteroid strike is due in less than a week! It is likely to have global damage potential, scouring the seas and filling the skies with fire. All human life, in fact all life on earth is potentially at risk.
VIP1: Thank you. Do we have a spaceship that we can use to get away?
VIP2: No, sir.
VIP1: OK, well then, let's call this one complete. Drill ended after 0 minutes, 28 seconds:, Asteroid 1, Earth 0. Thank you all for your participation. Please join us next year, we're shooting for 30 seconds.
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you are very funny. We can't live on Mars, it is unsuitable for indefinite human habitation for a long list of reasons.
My plan (Score:4, Funny)
In a Chicxulub sized impact event my plan is to die. I like to set achievable goals.
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My parents' basement and a pallet of chips and mountain dew will have to do :P
Strangelove went to America? WTF! (Score:1)
Symposium leader: Ok, anyone have any ideas other than "die" and "call NASA to see if they can launch a few hundred nukes at it?"
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I don't think NASA are allowed to launch military payloads. You'd be better off asking the US Navy.
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them too.
LOL ... (Score:2)
"we're all gonna die! we're all gonna die"
I hope they learned a lot. :-P
Impact Drill? (Score:2)
Check out (Score:2)
Check out the Last Policeman series - 3 books based on knowing the world will end in a year from an asteroid impact. Very bizarre and very good reading.