Re: Comet impact in the Eastern United States - Feasibility of Evacuation

"Matt Browne SFW" <matt.h.browne@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:360958ab-857f-4e1b-adae-50027f6a792b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Mar 9, 6:37 pm, jdnic...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (James Nicoll) wrote:
>> In article 
>> <606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>> Matt Browne SFW  <matt.h.bro...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>> It is very unlikely that the Earth will be struck by a large enough
>> object in the next five billion years.
>>
>>         In fact, even if we move the goal posts to mere mass
extinctions,
>> there's only one mass extinction that is thought to have been caused by
>> an impact and lots of large craters that are not associated with 
>> extinctions
>> at all. Your garden variety flood basalt seems to be worse for the
>> environment and any cooling event that leads to a snowball or slushball
>> Earth would also be very bad.
>>
>
> I'm actually not talking about mass extinctions here. Our species will
> survive. Most species will suvive this. I'm talking about a comet
> which is larger than the meteorite that hit Tunguska in 1908, but a
> lot smaller than Chicxulub. An impact that is far less dangerous than
> the flood basalt events you mentioned. I'm talking about impacts which
> are quite possible in a timeframe of several thousand years. How would
> we deal with this? How can we prepare for this? Is evacuation an
> option? Should FEMA have a plan ready when needed?
>
> --
> Matt Browne

If you do any map and compass work, you find that 1 degree=100 feet in a 
mile. What's that work out to, say, from the Moon? They couldn't plot the 
impact zone even to "Greater Pittsburg Area" with any real confidence, at 
best, hours before impact. You'd have just as good a chance of evacuating 
people into, rather than out of the impact zone.And ther's still just as 
good a chance of it hitting in the ocean or the desert, or the Canadian 
tundra.
The only thing to do would be to hope it hit someone else.
Like the quote in your sig.
Disaster movies, whether SciFi, Discovery or History channel are all bull.
There are more variables working on a body falling from space than there
are 
on a 30-06 bullet trying to hit a pie plate at 1000 yards. Not many can 
predict how that will end up, either. And there's generally somebody that 
cares about that outcome.