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

Joetheone wrote:
> 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.

Even if one has no idea at all where the thing's going to hit (and one 
would probably be able to narrow it down at least somewhat) there are 
still better and worse places to be. An impact anywhere in an ocean will 
result in devastating waves along the ocean's shoreline, so getting away 
from shorelines is good. Tem****arily dispersing people away from dense 
population centers might also be a good idea, it makes it more likely 
that a few will be killed but less likely that a _lot_ will be killed. 
And moving people to places where emergency relief can reach them more 
easily will be good for dealing with disruptions to cargo trans****t that 
might result from the impact.

The disruption from all this might wind up being worse than the impact 
itself, though, so I wouldn't enforce evacuations unless I was more 
certain about what areas would be hit. Give people advice and facilitate 
their movements, but let life go on as much as possible otherwise.