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

In article <6ONBj.75858$pM4.66167@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Bryan Derksen  <bryan.derksen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>So I guess if you pile enough gamma rays into the planet enough will get 
>through to ruin peoples' day. But even if a typical GRB is likely to be 
>able to put out enough, I already accounted for that in part of the post 
>that you snipped; a gamma ray burst has a very brief duration so only 
>one hemisphere of the planet would be directly exposed. So it's still 
>not going to sterilize Earth.

According to Greg Egan, who I assume would have checked, it would 
dump enough energy into the atmosphere to make all or most of the
oxygen react with the nitrogen.  This would be Bad.  It probably
wouldn't kill the single-celled organisms in the lower crust,
but I wouldn't lay odds on anything multicellular living much longer.

-- 
   David Goldfarb          |"English cuisine is the cuisine of fear."
goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  | 
goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 |              -- Andrew Conway