Comet impact in the Eastern United States - Feasibility of Evacuation
Matt Browne SFW
living there? Can FEMA prepare for this and actually organize an
evacuation if it becomes necessary? (on a much smaller scale this
didn't go so well before Katrina hit New Orleans). What would be the
general prerequisites?
The assumptions are the following: Four weeks before the impact, it's
clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States. Every day the
comet's trajectory can be calculated more precisely. Two weeks before
it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area. The
comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
description:
There is only one natural disaster that has the potential to destroy
all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet. This spectacular docu-
drama envisages the consequences of such an impact. Based on
contributions from NASA, the US military and leading scientists,
Impact Earth pieces together fact and fiction to show how humans would
cope with a catastrophic interplanetary event. The film tells the
story of two scientists who discover that a comet is on a collision
course with Earth. They propose two radically different plans to
counter the threat: a nuclear strike to deflect the comet; and an
evacuation of the threatened zone.
The drama begins when an unidentified Near Earth Object (NEO) hurtles
through Earth's atmosphere and plunges into the sea off the west coast
of Ireland. Air hostess Marcie photographs the object on her mobile
phone as her plane prepares to land at Shannon airport. Her flight
narrowly misses disaster as a huge tsunami engulfs the airport and
vast areas of the West Coast. The gigantic wave leaves hundreds of
thousands dead, injured and homeless.
Upon hearing news of the Irish tsunami, two leading scientists rush to
the scene. Englishman Josh Hayden and American Neil Gant work for the
NEO department of NASA. Arriving in Galway, they link up with resident
scientists Brendan Kelly and Ly Tam to try and establish what
happened.
As the team witnesses the devastation wrought, Neil is tormented by
guilt that such a deadly object could have slipped through their
radar. "Our job is to watch objects in space," he says. "If it's not
our responsibility, whose is it?" Using evidence from the scene and
images from Marcie's phone, the team realises that the NEO was a
comet. It seems that the comet's approach was such that the sun's
glare hid it from view.
Heading back to America, Josh concludes that they have witnessed an
event that occurs once every few thousand years - but Neil is not so
sanguine. He becomes obsessed with the idea of another comet heading
to Earth, and spends his time scanning data from astronomers around
the globe. Before long, he accumulates evidence that another comet is
on a collision course with Earth - due to strike almost a year after
the Galway disaster. "One year on, Earth could be right back in the
firing line again," Neil tells a sceptical Josh. It would seem that
the Irish comet was part of a larger string of objects. "What hit
Ireland was a fragment," Neil says. "What we're looking at now is the
rest of the mass."
Josh refuses to believe Neil's conjectures, forcing Neil to go behind
his friend's back to leak the story to the press. Panic spreads like
wildfire and, with the Dow Jones plunging, General Harris (Don
Warrington, 'New Street Law', 'Rising Damp') of the US military seeks
advice on how to confront the threat. Josh recommends a plan to
deflect the comet using controlled nuclear explosions, but Neil
believes this plan could end in disaster. If the comet is too fragile,
Neil posits, the explosions could shatter it into a thousand deadly
pieces that would rain down across the planet. "It would be comparable
to a nuclear war," he says.
Neil's advice, however, is radical: "America has to take to take the
hit," he says. His plan is to evacuate the population of the impact
zone, moving 100 million people from the East to the West Coast of
America and away from the predicted impact site around Pennsylvania.
But the exact location of the comet's strike and the extent of the
devastation cannot be calculated until the last moment, creating a
tense race against time to complete the biggest exodus in history.
Any thoughts about this?
--
Matt Browne
My webpage is at http://www.meet-matt-browne.com
"As a race, we survive on planet Earth purely by geological consent."
Bill McGuire
James Nicoll
Matt Browne SFW <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>There is only one natural disaster that has the potential to destroy
>all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet.
Pft. The interval between impact caused sterilization events
at this point in the solar system's history is much larger (by a factor
about two hundred) than the Sun's remaining time on the main sequence.
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.
Sterilization events that any half-way competent SF writer
should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening, something
that should kick the Earth over into runaway greenhouse in the next
billion years or so, and gamma ray bursters, which in theory could
have much the same effect on the Earth as putting it in a (very large)
microwave oven.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Matt Browne SFW
> In article <606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
> Matt Browne SFW <matt.h.bro...@googlemail.com> 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?
James Nicoll
>> In article <606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
>> Matt Browne SFW <matt.h.bro...@googlemail.com> 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.
Then why did you say "There is only one natural disaster that
has the potential to destroy all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet"?
clayl...@comcast.net
wrote:
snip doomsday...
> Any thoughts about this?
>
> --
> Matt Browne
> "As a race, we survive on planet Earth purely by geological consent."
> Bill McGuire
Yes, I have a thought. Do NOT borrow trouble....
Lonnie Courtney Clay
David T. Bilek
Nicoll) wrote:
>In article <606fddac-d790-45bb...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
>Matt Browne SFW <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>There is only one natural disaster that has the potential to destroy
>>all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet.
>
> Pft. The interval between impact caused sterilization events
>at this point in the solar system's history is much larger (by a factor
>about two hundred) than the Sun's remaining time on the main sequence.
>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.
>
> Sterilization events that any half-way competent SF writer
>should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening, something
>that should kick the Earth over into runaway greenhouse in the next
>billion years or so, and gamma ray bursters, which in theory could
>have much the same effect on the Earth as putting it in a (very large)
>microwave oven.
Couldn't we manage the sun's brightening relatively easily,
particularly at the tech levels we would (presumably) have attained by
the time it becomes a problem?
-David
James Nicoll
David T. Bilek <david...@att.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 17:37:33 +0000 (UTC), jdni...@panix.com (James
>Nicoll) wrote:
>>
>> Sterilization events that any half-way competent SF writer
>>should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening, something
>>that should kick the Earth over into runaway greenhouse in the next
>>billion years or so,
>
>
>particularly at the tech levels we would (presumably) have attained by
>the time it becomes a problem?
Well, we don't actually know what the upper level of attainable
technology is for us but it does seem at least conceivable that the time
scale involved makes it possible to move the Earth.
The time scale is also a problem, in that it's much larger than
the maximum duration of any human project to date. Even mere terraforming
seems to involve time-scales not generally seen in human planning.
Gene Ward Smith
news:iic8t3llgee15ileg...@4ax.com:
> Couldn't we manage the sun's brightening relatively easily,
> particularly at the tech levels we would (presumably) have attained by
> the time it becomes a problem?
It would get progressively harder. But what's a good way of getting a reverse
greenhouse barrier in place? Sounds like the germ of an sf plot.
James Nicoll
You could put a mirror at the Earth-Sun L1 but eventually
the Sun will be close enough to 1AU in diameter that friction could
be a problem (Although I think there's evidence of at least one planet
that survived its star's red giant phase despite having been close enough
to have been within the outer parts of the star. I will look this up
later).
Moving the Earth by transfering momentum between the Earth,
an asteroid and Jupiter seems only horrifically difficult.
Joetheone
"Matt Browne SFW" <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:360958ab-857f-4e1b...@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
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.
Don Bruder
<606fddac-d790-45bb...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
Yeah, real simple: The area to be evacuated can't possibly be. Too much
area, too many bodies, not enough transport to take them away, and not
enough places to stack them even if there was enough transport.
There are going to be a shitload of dead bodies. (On second thought,
there may be very few *BODIES*, but there are still gonna be a shitload
of deaths)
The fireball will likely be visible in Colorado, DC, and even Maine.
Might even se it in Atlanta.
The shockwave will likely level Chicago, and will almost certainly
destroy Detroit, just to name the two biggies, and would likely erase
Ohio from the map. Never mind everything else closer. The Virginias
would take a HUGE hit. I'd expect New York would feel it, even if the
damage there wasn't huge. The shockwave MAY even cause the New Madrid
fault to let go, which has a more-than-reasonable chance of unleashing a
flood down the entire Missisippi river valley like has never been seen
as the Great Lakes head south for the Gulf of Mexico en masse. The
"fallout" will blanket pretty much everything east, and it wouldn't
surprise me if most of it came down as molten/flaming chunks out to 500+
miles downrange, creating a firestorm that would make the Dresden
firebombing or the Hiroshima/Nagasaki nuke hits look like a kid playing
with a book of matches in a sandbox the size of a football field by
comparison.
In short, regardless of evacuation attempts, I'd expect casualties in
the millions, and that most of the northeast corner of the US would
essentially cease to exist as a habitable piece of land.
--
Don Bruder - dak...@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd> for more info
Matthias Warkus
> Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
> living there?
Just thinking aloud about some of the logistics:
The highest throughput achieved by any transportation system in the
world on a single route is about 2.6 million travellers per day, if we
want to believe Wikipedia (Mumbai Suburban Railway's Western line). This
goes along well with theoretical estimates, as it means approx. one
1800-passenger train every minute over 24 hours. An evacuation means
that all passengers go in one direction and empty trains go back, so the
capacity is halved to 1.3 million per day. With the kind of schedule
that is used in wartime, i.e. minimal headways and the same very low top
speed for all trains, capacity can probably be raised to 2 million per
day. The question is whether broken-down trains can be shunted out
quickly and how in the world people are supposed to embark at this kind
of rate. Most US railways are single-track, you'd have to use separate
lines for trains moving out and empty trains moving in.
Probably, to evacuate just one million per day, you'd already need a
total of four to five lines radiating out from the evacuation area and
about 1500 to 3000 trainsets of ten to 15 cars. It should be possible to
cobble these together from commuter rail stock and boxcars.
AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the
capacities of rail transport; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway
that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably,
even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used,
because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles
that cannot be pushed off the road. Maybe on US highways with large
medians, the two innermost lanes can be used as well. If we assume
vehicles loaded with an average of five persons (counting in vans,
trucks, requisitioned school buses etc.), on four lanes, with 10-second
headways, about 170.000 people can travel on a single highway in one
day. There are many more highways than railway lines, but keeping
traffic going at Red Ball Express rates in an evacuation scenario with
layman drivers will be nightmarish. Maybe 100.000 people per day per
route can move out on twenty routes. Maybe.
Aerial transport will make a modest contribution at best as even the
busiest airports have trouble handling 200000 passengers a day. Boats
won't be able to contribute much at all, there not being enough
passenger vessels to go round, and besides, the next safe destinations
are rather far away.
Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three
million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
Don Bruder
<360958ab-857f-4e1b...@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
Matt Browne SFW <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 9, 6:37 pm, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> > In article
> > <606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
> > Matt Browne SFW <matt.h.bro...@googlemail.com> 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?
We can't and won't. It's simply not doable.
> How can we prepare for this?
We can't. We can try to prepare for the aftermath, but doing anything
about the event itself is a concept so ludicrous it defies even
semi-serious consideration.
> Is evacuation an option?
Only on the "I'm packin' my wife and kids in the car, and we're heading
for Arizona - dunno what you got in mind!" scale - As far as organized
evac, there's not enough transport, and no place to put the transportees
(never mind the logistics of tying to feed 'em all)
> Should FEMA have a plan ready when needed?
FEMA should have a plan to hunker down and hide, because they're not
going to be able to do anything except get in the way (See also :
Katrina)
Gene Ward Smith
news:4JSdnX3CZclxpEna...@comcast.com:
> Yeah, real simple: The area to be evacuated can't possibly be.
A year isn't long enough?
Don Bruder
Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
At a year out, I defy *ANYBODY* to say where the impact is going to be,
even down to a resolution of 30 degrees of longitude/latitude, never
mind anything as precise as "it's gonna hit the Greater Pittsburgh
area". I wouldn't expect 5 degrees of lat/long precision until, at best,
weeks out, and the idea of making an accurate "city specific" prediction
prior to (at most) a few hours before actual impact is a joke so lame
that even Conan O'Brien wouldn't have tried it during the writers'
strike.
So...
The headlines blare:
THE END IS COMING! Impact in 365 days!
NASA has just announced that scientists at the JPL have discovered a 1
kilometer space object traveling at approximately 40 K/s, on a course
that will impact the earth at this time next year. Further observations
and calculations are ongoing in an attempt to determine precisely where
this "killer meteor" will touch down. Initial indications are that it
may hit somewhere in North America on March 9th, 2009. FEMA has invoked
their Asteroid Emergency protocol, and will begin evacuations
immediately. The public is urged to remain calm during this difficult
time.
OK, FEMA, Who are you going to evacuate? And where are you going to put
them? And is where you're putting them a safe zone, a fallout zone, or
ground zero?
You're up... Where you going to start loading people, and who should
expect to start receiving them?
Joel Olson
"Joetheone" <joet...@dontchabespamminme.com> wrote in message
news:UHWAj.5690$Sa1....@news02.roc.ny...
I disagree. Given a reasonable time interval, the trajectory and mass
can be observed to almost total accuracy. Slowing/deflection as it enters
the atmosphere would also be quickly simulated, a little less accurately.
The result will be a calculated impact zone that will most likely be a long
elipse, smaller if the angle of descent is steep. The approach trajectory
may make a difference.
Six months sounds like a reasonable lead time for evacuation.
David V. Loewe, Jr
>Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
?
Huh? Why?
>Maybe on US highways with large
>medians, the two innermost lanes can be used as well. If we assume
>vehicles loaded with an average of five persons (counting in vans,
>trucks, requisitioned school buses etc.), on four lanes, with 10-second
>headways, about 170.000 people can travel on a single highway in one
>day. There are many more highways than railway lines, but keeping
>traffic going at Red Ball Express rates in an evacuation scenario with
>layman drivers will be nightmarish. Maybe 100.000 people per day per
>route can move out on twenty routes. Maybe.
>
>Aerial transport will make a modest contribution at best as even the
>busiest airports have trouble handling 200000 passengers a day. Boats
>won't be able to contribute much at all, there not being enough
>passenger vessels to go round, and besides, the next safe destinations
>are rather far away.
>
>Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three
>million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
>with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
>
>Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
>carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
--
"Why is it, Scott, that we always have to respect their cultural context?
Why is it that they never seem to respect ours?"
President John P. Ryan in Executive Orders
David DeLaney
> 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.
And didn't Asimov, in one of his science essays, analyze things and figure
out that a comet/large object hit in the ocean would be a good deal worse for
the entire Earth than one on land would? Land -> large molten area, crater,
and rock dust all over the atmosphere. Water -> small molten area under the
water, crater under the water, rock dust _and steam_ all over the atmosphere:
instant winter for a few years, most mammals die out, etc etc.
> Sterilization events that any half-way competent SF writer
>should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening, something
>that should kick the Earth over into runaway greenhouse in the next
>billion years or so, and gamma ray bursters, which in theory could
>have much the same effect on the Earth as putting it in a (very large)
>microwave oven.
Especially since someone thinks they've just found a possible future one of
the latter, depending on _how_ exactly aligned the axis of the system is with
us.
Dave "we just have to put up a 10,000-mile wide lead sheet half a mile thick
between us and it ... or possibly tow Jupiter into the correct position ...
right? Or maybe invoke gravitational lensing" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
David DeLaney
> Well, we don't actually know what the upper level of attainable
>technology is for us but it does seem at least conceivable that the time
>scale involved makes it possible to move the Earth.
Which will, finally, decouple some of the metric _and_ English system of
measure from their origins completely, instead of this namby-pamby "insert
a leap second every few years" stuff. For SCIENCE!
Dave
David DeLaney
> Matt Browne SFW <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Two weeks before
>> it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
>> later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area.
>
>Might even se it in Atlanta.
>The shockwave will likely level Chicago, and will almost certainly
>destroy Detroit, just to name the two biggies, and would likely erase
>Ohio from the map. Never mind everything else closer. The Virginias
>would take a HUGE hit. I'd expect New York would feel it, even if the
>damage there wasn't huge.
Look at your map plz. If it levels Chicago, it's going to at least half-
destroy Atlanta, level Knoxville, Albany, and Charlotte, and all the
skyscrapers in Manhattan will be knocked over. Washington DC is half as far as
Chicago is from Pittsburgh, and Ottawa and Montreal aren't much farther.
(Caveat: distances judged by eye on map, not by plugging into Google driving
directions.) Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati are also goners, as are
Richmond, Roanoake, and Philadelphia, on the 'Chicago gets leveled' scale.
>In short, regardless of evacuation attempts, I'd expect casualties in
>the millions, and that most of the northeast corner of the US would
>essentially cease to exist as a habitable piece of land.
At least the Civil War reenactors will finally get closure.
David DeLaney
>>AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the
>>capacities of rail transport; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway
>>that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably,
>>even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used,
>>because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles
>>that cannot be pushed off the road.
>
>?
>
>Huh? Why?
The traffic _cannot stop_. Not at all. Anyone who breaks down in an inner
lane and can't manage to get to an outer lane will have their car stay in
the inner lane, causing flow congestion. There won't be enough emergency
repair vehicles and tow trucks around to repair or move the wrecks - this is
larger-than-traffic-jam volume, over an extended period, and most places don't
really have enough to cover their inner city area, let alone all the suburbs
AND the interstates between cities. People won't have had time to tune up the
family car for a long journey. Thus there'll be a small but steady dropout
rate, which will pile up along the outskirts of the road _and_ the innermost
lanes, because people won't have time to take care of them in the normal
manner.
Wayne Throop
::: Pennsylvania; then a week later it's clear the comet will hit the
::: greater Pittsburgh area.
:: The fireball will likely be visible in Colorado, DC, and even Maine.
:: Might even se it in Atlanta.
:: The shockwave will likely level Chicago, and will almost certainly
:: destroy Detroit, just to name the two biggies, and would likely erase
:: Ohio from the map. Never mind everything else closer. The Virginias
:: would take a HUGE hit. I'd expect New York would feel it, even if
:: the damage there wasn't huge.
: d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
: Look at your map plz. If it levels Chicago, it's going to at least
: half- destroy Atlanta, level Knoxville, Albany, and Charlotte, and all
: the skyscrapers in Manhattan will be knocked over.
http://www.georgeglazer.com/archives/maps/archive-nyc/nyersideasm.html
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/72-the-world-as-seen-from-new-yorks-9th-avenue/
Or more seriously, does it matter that DC and norther virginia and such
are on the opposite side of the appalachian mountains? Eh, prolly not.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
James Nicoll
>clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States. Every day the
>comet's trajectory can be calculated more precisely. Two weeks before
>it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
>later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area. The
>comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
>States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
>is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
>description:
>
Plugging in the numbers, that breaks windows in Toronto.
Joel Olson
"David DeLaney" <d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in message
news:slrnft92f...@gatekeeper.vic.com...
The rate will accelerate as cars start running out of gas.
johan.g...@gmail.com
wrote:
> Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
>
> > Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
> > living there?
>
> million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
> with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
>
> Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
> carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
The figure I came up with, just back-of-the-envelope, was 20,000
people per hour per lane of traffic. That's guessing high; poorly
organized traffic might be an order of magnitude slower. So we need
between 6 and sixty lanes of traffic flowing continuously to evacuate
all those people.
Overall, I agree with your assessment. It's possible, but it's going
to be tight, and keeping things moving in an orderly fashion will be
essential.
Stepping back a bit, I think this is a great idea for a setting. A
panic-stricken evacuation of half a continent, and our heroes just
_have_ to get into the middle of it, and out again, because someone
left the McGuffin in Boston.
Johan Larson
Matthias Warkus
> On Mar 9, 3:27 pm, Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de>
> wrote:
>> Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
>>
>>> Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
>>> living there?
>> Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three
>> million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
>> with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
>>
>> Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
>> carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
>
> The figure I came up with, just back-of-the-envelope, was 20,000
> people per hour per lane of traffic. That's guessing high; poorly
> organized traffic might be an order of magnitude slower. So we need
> between 6 and sixty lanes of traffic flowing continuously to evacuate
> all those people.
>
> Overall, I agree with your assessment. It's possible, but it's going
> to be tight, and keeping things moving in an orderly fashion will be
> essential.
It might perhaps be preferable to do all the centrally organised
evacuating by rail, as there is much less to go wrong. Also, locomotives
are very good at pushing obstacles away; a train can push a broken-down
train along up to the next siding. Top speeds should indeed be limited
to about 15-20 kph, also to limit the damage by inevitable derailments.
The eastern US rail network looks tight enough to do it, there is
certainly enough rolling stock and it should be possible to find enough
drivers.
The road network could be put to the exclusive use of ferrying evacuees
to railheads.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
il...@rcn.com
> people per hour per lane of traffic. That's guessing high; poorly
> organized traffic might be an order of magnitude slower. So we need
> between 6 and sixty lanes of traffic flowing continuously to evacuate
> all those people.
>
> Overall, I agree with your assessment. It's possible, but it's going
> to be tight, and keeping things moving in an orderly fashion will be
> essential.
>
> Stepping back a bit, I think this is a great idea for a setting. A
> panic-stricken evacuation of half a continent, and our heroes just
> _have_ to get into the middle of it, and out again, because someone
> left the McGuffin in Boston.
If McGuffin is in Boston, the heroes should get in and out by water.
Or at least *out*. There will be plenty of abandoned boats.
Joseph Nebus
>> Stepping back a bit, I think this is a great idea for a setting. A
>> panic-stricken evacuation of half a continent, and our heroes just
>> _have_ to get into the middle of it, and out again, because someone
>> left the McGuffin in Boston.
>If McGuffin is in Boston, the heroes should get in and out by water.
>Or at least *out*. There will be plenty of abandoned boats.
Well, if McGuffin *is* in Boston won't he be able to whip up a
comet-deflecting laser by using a couple simple components, like some
string, a squirrel, and a megaphone, and thus save everyone from the
whole comet problem?
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martha Adams
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:fr2a0b$bhu$1...@reader2.panix.com...
A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
response to Katrina -- Gaah! About the most productive thing
they would find to do would be a Presidential Prayer Session;
and 2) too many people would be running away disregardless of
the cost or of the overall social picture; and 3) the people
who actually got to somewhere safe, standing cheek-to-jowl with
others, would be quickly overwhelmed by a tide of their sewage
with absence of water fit to drink.
I think that as mentioned above, the species would survive, but
that the cost and result of this surviving is only a topic for
bigger and better dystopias from writers' worktables. And that
there are more immediate topics better to be working on. Of
which the principal one in my mind, is the consequences of the
two pork wars we have going on; and of the intended and
deliberate destruction of the Constitutional checks and
balances system of government that we had up to about Regan
time.
Titeotwawki -- mha [rasfw 2008 Mar 10]
David V. Loewe, Jr
DeLaney) wrote:
>David V. Loewe, Jr <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>>>AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the
>>>capacities of rail transport; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway
>>>that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably,
>>>even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used,
>>>because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles
>>>that cannot be pushed off the road.
>>
>>?
>>
>>Huh? Why?
>
>The traffic _cannot stop_. Not at all. Anyone who breaks down in an inner
>lane and can't manage to get to an outer lane
Why not?
Are cars breaking down on the roads at the rate you describe anywhere?
Why can't the brokendown cars be pushed over to the shoulder by a
couple of men?
Even if a car becomes disabled and can't be moved out of the fast
lane, why is the road now completely blocked?
Both you and Matthias seem to be assuming things that are quite
foreign to my experience.
>will have their car stay in
>the inner lane, causing flow congestion. There won't be enough emergency
>repair vehicles and tow trucks around to repair or move the wrecks - this is
>larger-than-traffic-jam volume, over an extended period, and most places don't
>really have enough to cover their inner city area, let alone all the suburbs
>AND the interstates between cities. People won't have had time to tune up the
>family car for a long journey. Thus there'll be a small but steady dropout
>rate, which will pile up along the outskirts of the road _and_ the innermost
>lanes, because people won't have time to take care of them in the normal
>manner.
--
"A good reputation is more valuable than money."
Publius Syrus
David V. Loewe, Jr
>il...@rcn.com writes:
>
>>> Stepping back a bit, I think this is a great idea for a setting. A
>>> panic-stricken evacuation of half a continent, and our heroes just
>>> _have_ to get into the middle of it, and out again, because someone
>>> left the McGuffin in Boston.
>
>>If McGuffin is in Boston, the heroes should get in and out by water.
>>Or at least *out*. There will be plenty of abandoned boats.
>
> Well, if McGuffin *is* in Boston won't he be able to whip up a
>comet-deflecting laser by using a couple simple components, like some
>string, a squirrel, and a megaphone, and thus save everyone from the
>whole comet problem?
IYM MacGyver...
--
"We are the Republican Party Reptiles. We look like Republicans, and
think like conservatives, but we drive a lot faster and keep vibrators
and baby oil and a video camera behind the stack of sweaters on the
bedroom closet shelf." P. J. O'Rourke
Wayne Throop
:: comet-deflecting laser by using a couple simple components, like some
:: string, a squirrel, and a megaphone, and thus save everyone from the
:: whole comet problem?
: "David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net>
: IYM MacGyver...
ITYM ITYM. But in any event, that particular trick is Dave the Barbarian's.
"But I don't wanna be a barbarian!"
"You did when you were ten!"
"Yes, but I thought it meant a librarian that also cuts hair."
--- Dave the Barbarian, and his sister Fang
"I'm sure many of you are wondering why I tied a squirrel
to a megaphone. Well... goodbye!"
--- Dave, um... explaining
"Not a monkey!" --- Fang
Bryan Derksen
> 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. Temporarily 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 transport 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.
Don Bruder
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> In article <606fddac-d790-45bb...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
> Matt Browne SFW <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> >The assumptions are the following: Four weeks before the impact, it's
> >clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States. Every day the
> >comet's trajectory can be calculated more precisely. Two weeks before
> >it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
> >later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area. The
> >comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
> >States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
> >is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
> >description:
> >
> http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
>
> Plugging in the numbers, that breaks windows in Toronto.
Handy gizmo...
Looks like about 2 minutes after impact, Chicago sees a magnitude 8.3
earthquake, 5 minutes after impact, the dust starts falling, and half an
hour after impact, any intact windows blow out as the air-shock finally
arrives. I suspect "Chicago gets leveled" is a pretty close estimate,
since I doubt there's much of anything there that's capable of dealing
with an 8.3 shaker... (Heck, there's stuff in California that wouldn't
cope with an 8.3...)
I'm not sure about the earthquake though... That page doesn't really
make clear whether the ground-shake is "as felt at distance entered", or
if it means "at point of impact" - Although I doubt anybody is going to
notice much at the impact site, since, according to the calculations,
that's going to turn into a roughly half mile deep by 13 mile wide
crater paved with about 150 feet of molten rock...
Detroit, on the other hand, is definitely toast... Between the "cookout"
starting at .5 seconds after the hit, and the blast damage that arrives
17 minutes later, it's game over. And let's not even discuss the
earthquake damage, since Detroit is probably even worse off than Chicago
as far as seismic hardening. At the very least, both Lake Erie and
Ontario are going to be sloshing around pretty bad - I'd expect that the
tsunami that gets funneled up the west end should put out the fires in
Detroit - and wash a good bit of whatever remains of the town halfway to
Lansing... (Which is going to be having problems of its own with the
fires and blast effects...)
Toledo's in a world of hurt, too...
And Cedar Point ain't gonna be running the roller coasters that summer!
Bryan Derksen
> If McGuffin is in Boston, the heroes should get in and out by water.
> Or at least *out*. There will be plenty of abandoned boats.
If there's a mass evacuation of the North American continent I wouldn't
expect to see any abandoned vehicles left behind (modulo fuel supplies).
With a boat one could head down the coast and avoid all the frenzied
traffic jams, or if it's big enough just strike out across the ocean
directly.
Where's everyone going? Since land transport is being focused on I
imagine everyone's funneling down through Panama, seems to me like
that'll be a major choke point. If the strike's been narrowed down to
just somewhere in the United States, moving to Canada and Mexico will be
easier but will place a rather high strain on local resources that won't
be sustainable for long; we're going to need to diffuse the refugees out
to the rest of the world as quickly as possible.
Cargo ships converted to passenger transport may be the best bet, since
fuel may be in limited supply.
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
>"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Matt Browne SFW <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>The assumptions are the following: Four weeks before the impact, it's
>>>clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States. Every day the
>>>comet's trajectory can be calculated more precisely. Two weeks before
>>>it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
>>>later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area. The
>>>comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
>>>States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
>>>is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
>>>description:
>>>
>> http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
>>
>> Plugging in the numbers, that breaks windows in Toronto.
>A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
>faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
>would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
>response to Katrina -- Gaah!
Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
>About the most productive thing
>they would find to do would be a Presidential Prayer Session;
>and 2) too many people would be running away disregardless of
>the cost or of the overall social picture; and 3) the people
>who actually got to somewhere safe, standing cheek-to-jowl with
>others, would be quickly overwhelmed by a tide of their sewage
>with absence of water fit to drink.
>
>I think that as mentioned above, the species would survive, but
>that the cost and result of this surviving is only a topic for
>bigger and better dystopias from writers' worktables. And that
>there are more immediate topics better to be working on. Of
>which the principal one in my mind, is the consequences of the
>two pork wars we have going on; and of the intended and
>deliberate destruction of the Constitutional checks and
>balances system of government that we had up to about Regan
>time.
--
"The flame rises but it soon descends
Empty pages and a frozen pen
You're not quite lovers and you're not quite friends
After the thrill is gone,"
Don Henley & Glenn Frey
David V. Loewe, Jr
<joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>"Joetheone" <joet...@dontchabespamminme.com> wrote:
>> "Matt Browne SFW" <matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mar 9, 6:37 pm, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>>> Matt Browne SFW <matt.h.bro...@googlemail.com> 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?
>> 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.
>
>I disagree. Given a reasonable time interval, the trajectory and mass
>can be observed to almost total accuracy.
Because, since it is a comet, there will be no randomly situated
outgassings which will not produce random jinks and jukes in the
motion of the incoming comet...
Right.
>Slowing/deflection as it enters
>the atmosphere would also be quickly simulated, a little less accurately.
>The result will be a calculated impact zone that will most likely be a long
>elipse, smaller if the angle of descent is steep. The approach trajectory
>may make a difference.
>
>Six months sounds like a reasonable lead time for evacuation.
--
"What can you do when your dreams come true
And it's not quite like you planned?
What have you done to be losing the one
You held it so tight in your hand?"
Gene Ward Smith
news:fi3bt39fbslt0fao0...@4ax.com:
> Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
Shouldn't that be dredging out shibboleths?
Matthias Warkus
> On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:49:21 -0400, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
> DeLaney) wrote:
>
>> David V. Loewe, Jr <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>
>>>> AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the
>>>> capacities of rail transport; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway
>>>> that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably,
>>>> even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used,
>>>> because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles
>>>> that cannot be pushed off the road.
>>> ?
>>>
>>> Huh? Why?
>> The traffic _cannot stop_. Not at all. Anyone who breaks down in an inner
>> lane and can't manage to get to an outer lane
>
> Why not?
>
> Are cars breaking down on the roads at the rate you describe anywhere?
You bet enough will be breaking down to make it an issue. Nobody was
predicting any actual rate.
> Why can't the brokendown cars be pushed over to the shoulder by a
> couple of men?
They can, but only on the outermost lanes. Which is what we're saying.
> Even if a car becomes disabled and can't be moved out of the fast
> lane, why is the road now completely blocked?
It isn't, and nobody ever claimed that. It just blocks the lane it can't
be moved out of.
> Both you and Matthias seem to be assuming things that are quite
> foreign to my experience.
Please check how things were done on the Voie sacrée and the Red Ball
Express. There are real-world examples for ultra-high-throughput road
logistics.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
Richard R. Hershberger
> In article <606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,> >There is only one natural disaster that has the potential to destroy
> >all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet.
>
> Pft. The interval between impact caused sterilization events
> at this point in the solar system's history is much larger (by a factor
> about two hundred) than the Sun's remaining time on the main sequence.
> 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.
>
> should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening, something
> that should kick the Earth over into runaway greenhouse in the next
> billion years or so, and gamma ray bursters, which in theory could
> have much the same effect on the Earth as putting it in a (very large)
> microwave oven.
How many of these are sterilization events in the strict sense? Would
that gamma ray burst kill off creatures at deep-ocean vents or
microbes living in rock?
Charlton Wilbur
DVL> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:47:12 GMT, "Martha Adams"
DVL> <mh...@verizon.net>
DVL> wrote:
>> A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
>> faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
>> would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
>> response to Katrina -- Gaah!
DVL> Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
and extrapolate.
I think a smoothly-running evacuation that uses all the available
highway lanes and rails out of the area is about the *least* likely
thing that will happen.
Charlton
--
Charlton Wilbur
cwi...@chromatico.net
Joel Olson
"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:3l3bt311liar51m3v...@4ax.com...
Moving toward or away from the sun?
Oh! If it's that easy to deflect ...
--------------------
We turn the past into the present here in Hollywood
even before it's finished being the future. - Harlan Ellison
--------------------
WaltBJ
> On Mar 9, 3:27 pm, Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de>
> wrote:
>
> > Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
>
> > > Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
> > > living there?
>
> > Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three
> > million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
> > with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
>
> > Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
> > carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
>
> The figure I came up with, just back-of-the-envelope, was 20,000
> people per hour per lane of traffic. That's guessing high; poorly
> organized traffic might be an order of magnitude slower. So we need
> between 6 and sixty lanes of traffic flowing continuously to evacuate
> all those people.
>
> Overall, I agree with your assessment. It's possible, but it's going
> to be tight, and keeping things moving in an orderly fashion will be
> essential.
Getting a stuck car out of a traffic lane? Piece of cake. Line up men
all around it and pick the bloody thing up and get it out of the way.
We did just that, twice, once with a delivery truck ('bread wagon')
that dropped a rear wheel into a ditch.
The second time a young GI high-centered his vehicle and 20 guys just
picked it up and set it straight.
Walt BJ
WaltBJ
giant impacts. I haven;t seen anything yet that surpasses what he
wrote. And all the 'artist's conceptions' are so far off base - nobody
yet has managed to depict what a 40 kps object would look like
impacting nor how the splash and fireball would appear. Visualize a
searing line of plasma taking all of three seconds to come vertically
down through the atmosphere and then a blinding actinic flash blooming
outwards at many times the speed of sound that slowly coalesces and
cools into a seemingly slowly rising ball of fire.
Striking solid ground, the splash will be mostly a spreading sheet of
magma whose fragments will reach the far side of the Earth If it
strikes deep ocean, it will be worse. A giant tsunami will develop,
followed by a series of smaller ones, as the center recoil column
falls back down. Then massive rains will follow, and Fimbulwinter
begins. Evacuate? Why? Sort of like living on a B52 base back in the
60s. Precautions for WW3? Why bother . . .a 20MT TNW had all our names
on it.
Why don't we talk about a survivable impact? Just only a county
buster, forex.
BTW how many of y'all have a GTH plan actually really truly in effect?
Walt BJ
Scott Lurndal
>Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
>evacuation if it becomes necessary? (on a much smaller scale this
>didn't go so well before Katrina hit New Orleans). What would be the
>general prerequisites?
>
>The assumptions are the following: Four weeks before the impact, it's
>clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States.
[snip]
>. The
>comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
>States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
>is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
>description:
This thing hits the earth, assuming a rocky center; there ain't
nowhere to evacuate to that won't be adversely effected.
scott
Matthias Warkus
> On Mar 10, 5:12 am, johan.g.lar...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Mar 9, 3:27 pm, Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
>>>> Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
>>>> living there?
>>> Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three
>>> million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
>>> with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
>>> Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
>>> carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
>> The figure I came up with, just back-of-the-envelope, was 20,000
>> people per hour per lane of traffic. That's guessing high; poorly
>> organized traffic might be an order of magnitude slower. So we need
>> between 6 and sixty lanes of traffic flowing continuously to evacuate
>> all those people.
>>
>> Overall, I agree with your assessment. It's possible, but it's going
>> to be tight, and keeping things moving in an orderly fashion will be
>> essential.
> SNIP:
> Getting a stuck car out of a traffic lane? Piece of cake. Line up men
> all around it and pick the bloody thing up and get it out of the way.
Of course that works. People pick up and move cars all the time in order
to get tourist buses through narrow roads in Italian towns. But you
won't be able to do that kind of stunt on a road where you're supposed
to maintain a throughput of four to six vehicles per minute, and having
to carry that car across a lane where traffic is moving makes it much,
much worse.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
William December Starr
Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de> said:
> The highest throughput achieved by any transportation system in
> the world on a single route is about 2.6 million travellers per
> day, if we want to believe Wikipedia (Mumbai Suburban Railway's
> Western line). This goes along well with theoretical estimates, as
> it means approx. one 1800-passenger train every minute over 24
> hours. An evacuation means that all passengers go in one direction
> and empty trains go back,
For a while. The closer you get to impact time, the less
enthusiastic your train crews might be about making another trip
back _into_ the death zone.
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
William December Starr
johan.g...@gmail.com said:
> Stepping back a bit, I think this is a great idea for a setting.
> A panic-stricken evacuation of half a continent, and our heroes
> just _have_ to get into the middle of it, and out again, because
> someone left the McGuffin in Boston.
Coming this fall: "The Hot Rock 2!"
Howard Brazee
Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote:
> It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
> at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
> look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
> and extrapolate.
>
> I think a smoothly-running evacuation that uses all the available
> highway lanes and rails out of the area is about the *least* likely
> thing that will happen.
Probably. But now that FEMA has been subordinated under the Department
of Homeland Defense, it has to be more ready than before to handle
disasters, natural or man-made.
The man-made part made the need to get it right so important - this was
the first and best test of our Leaders' response to 9/11.
William December Starr
WaltBJ <walt...@mindspring.com> said:
> Way back in ASF (now Analog) J. Enever wrote a scientiic article
> about giant impacts. I haven;t seen anything yet that surpasses
> what he wrote. And all the 'artist's conceptions' are so far off
> base - nobody yet has managed to depict what a 40 kps object would
> look like impacting nor how the splash and fireball would appear.
How about the CGI simulation/visualization they did in "The
Violent Past," the first episode (of six) of "Miracle Planet," for
a 500-kilometer rock coming in at 20 kps? The full episode (45
minutes, sans commercials) is available online in five 9-minute
segments at:
1. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=BJmg7DPaZUU>
2. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=tAwxynE99hk>
3. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=YS13RCOklMI>
4. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=mSsMjsG2HV8>
5. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=84InsUbWvyQ>
...with the collision scenario starting at about the 7-minute mark
in part 2 and continuing, with interruptions, well into part 3.
As I said about this last July[*1], "That's it, man, game *over*!"
*1: <http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/06cf2fbbff3ad3a1>
> Visualize a searing line of plasma taking all of three seconds to
> come vertically down through the atmosphere
Would it necessarily be vertical, if the approach while in space was
on line for a "glancing blow" meeting of the two bodies?
William December Starr
"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> said:
> "Martha Adams" <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
>> faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
>> would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
>> response to Katrina -- Gaah!
>
> Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
As long as there's the slightest danger that anyone is going to
forget, dismiss or minimize the vast breadth and depth of this
administration's mis-, mal- and non-feasance in office, the frequent
reminding of same does seem like a good idea. After all, the lying
liars of the right never seem to sleep.
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>,
proud to be one of "you people."
Joel Olson
"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:howard-B84AE1....@newsgroups.comcast.net...
> In article <87k5kat...@mithril.chromatico.net>,
> Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote:
>
>> It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
>> at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
>> look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
>> and extrapolate.
>>
>> I think a smoothly-running evacuation that uses all the available
>> highway lanes and rails out of the area is about the *least* likely
>> thing that will happen.
>
> Probably. But now that FEMA has been subordinated under the Department
> of Homeland Defense, it has to be more ready than before to handle
> disasters, natural or man-made.
>
???
> The man-made part made the need to get it right so important - this was
> the first and best test of our Leaders' response to 9/11.
>
There was a pretty accurate simulation of the event a couple years earlier,
involving all levels of Federal, State and Local authority. Did ANYONE do
what they were supposed to?
Heck of a job.
johan.g...@gmail.com
wrote:
> It might perhaps be preferable to do all the centrally organised
> evacuating by rail, as there is much less to go wrong.
I'm a bit sceptical. The US highways and airways are in decent shape;
the passenger railway system is a sad remnant.
> The road network could be put to the exclusive use of ferrying evacuees
> to railheads.
The thing is, people _are_ going to try to use the roads to get away.
Are you proposing to stop them, or just withold aid and let the
highways clog up on their own?
Johan Larson
John F. Eldredge
Not all locations have breakdown lanes on both sides. There are numerous
places on the US interstate system where the traffic flow in both
directions is divided only by a concrete wall, with a shoulder two to
three feet wide between the innermost driving lane and the wall. In some
cases, this is because a former breakdown lane was later converted to a
driving lane because of increased traffic. Plus, if a car breaks down in
a construction zone, there may not be a breakdown lane available on the
outer side of the road, either, only another concrete divider. In such a
case, a driving lane has now been blocked.
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
Joy Beeson
<War...@students.uni-marburg.de> wrote:
> Also, locomotives
> are very good at pushing obstacles away; a train can push a broken-down
> train along up to the next siding.
A quote from
http://www.railroad.net/articles/columns/hottimes/hottimes_20061021.php
---------------------------------------
I told him that wasn’t going to happen reiterating the part about it
being a big tree. I think I might have embellished it a bit by adding
the adjective really in front of big. Then the Trainmaster joined in
and suggested we try to shove it out of the way using the locomotive.
Oh ya, that’s brilliant. And to think they pay him to make decisions.
I guess he figured a big heavy tree versus switch engine with 1000
horsepower, locomotive wins. Perhaps if I had a big scraper blade like
a D-9 Caterpillar tractor I could win the battle, but I didn’t and I
couldn’t therefore I wouldn’t. When I asked if was going to assume any
and all responsibility for all the damage the locomotive was likely to
incur in such an undertaking he failed to answer. When I prompted him
again for an answer in a rather heated tone he responded for us to not
do anything and stand by. And so we did.
---------------------------------------
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
David DeLaney
>SNIP:
>Getting a stuck car out of a traffic lane? Piece of cake. Line up men
>all around it and pick the bloody thing up and get it out of the way.
>We did just that, twice, once with a delivery truck ('bread wagon')
>that dropped a rear wheel into a ditch.
>The second time a young GI high-centered his vehicle and 20 guys just
>picked it up and set it straight.
...Then you have to get these 20 guys over to the -next- stuck car. And the
next and the next. Or else you have to repeatedly recruit 20 guys (or 6 or
whatever) from the cars slowed down or stopped by the current stuck car. On
top of all the other logistics and planning that needs doing A Week Before
Yesterday because of all these food-consuming gas-consuming toilet-needing
people, and their pets, trying to move along roads that normally don't see
nearly this much traffic...
It's not really a matter of 'one stuck car in one inside lane stymies the
whole project'. It's a matter of "gotta be able to deal with the small
percentage of brokedown cars that, times the amount of cars you've got
involved, beats anything ever seen before".
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Dimensional Traveler
> WaltBJ <walt...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> SNIP:
>> Getting a stuck car out of a traffic lane? Piece of cake. Line up men
>> all around it and pick the bloody thing up and get it out of the way.
>> We did just that, twice, once with a delivery truck ('bread wagon')
>> that dropped a rear wheel into a ditch.
>> The second time a young GI high-centered his vehicle and 20 guys just
>> picked it up and set it straight.
>
> ...Then you have to get these 20 guys over to the -next- stuck car.
> And the next and the next. Or else you have to repeatedly recruit 20
> guys (or 6 or whatever) from the cars slowed down or stopped by the
> current stuck car. On top of all the other logistics and planning
> that needs doing A Week Before Yesterday because of all these
> food-consuming gas-consuming toilet-needing people, and their pets,
> trying to move along roads that normally don't see nearly this much
> traffic...
>
> It's not really a matter of 'one stuck car in one inside lane stymies
> the whole project'. It's a matter of "gotta be able to deal with the
> small percentage of brokedown cars that, times the amount of cars
> you've got involved, beats anything ever seen before".
>
it really a problem in the Katrina evacuations of Florida and the Gulf
Coast? I remember seeing news footage of traffic on packed highways slowly
but steadily moving. One would think that if highways were getting chocked
and jammed by broken down vehicles that would have been mentioned.
--
Sig under construction
Dimensional Traveler
Are you volunteering to remain close enough to the impact point to look and
find out? *grin*
--
Sig under construction
Matthias Warkus
There's a difference between trying to push away a tree and trying to
push away a train or even a car. Trees in fact are probably the worst
thing to put across a railway track next to a tank.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
Matthias Warkus
Hm. Isn't the moment of impact pretty precisely determined? I guess
people will start to hesitate in the last three days or so, when most of
the work is already done, hopefully.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
Matthias Warkus
> On Mar 10, 10:07 am, Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de>
> wrote:
>> It might perhaps be preferable to do all the centrally organised
>> evacuating by rail, as there is much less to go wrong.
>
> I'm a bit sceptical. The US highways and airways are in decent shape;
> the passenger railway system is a sad remnant.
The state of the passenger railway system is pretty much irrelevant to
an operation where top speeds won't exceed 15-25 kph. And the US rail
network is very, very good at handling lots of long, slow trains, rail
has an enormous modal share in US freight transportation.
>> The road network could be put to the exclusive use of ferrying evacuees
>> to railheads.
>
> The thing is, people _are_ going to try to use the roads to get away.
> Are you proposing to stop them, or just withold aid and let the
> highways clog up on their own?
You will have to impose strict regulations on all roadways anyway,
mainly because it will be insane to allow vehicles with free seats, and
because a network of free lanes will have to kept clear for the
authorities to move around in the zone to be evacuated. When you need to
put checkpoints on all the motorway exits anyway, you can as well go
all-out.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
Jasper Janssen
<matt.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
>living there? Can FEMA prepare for this and actually organize an
>evacuation if it becomes necessary? (on a much smaller scale this
>didn't go so well before Katrina hit New Orleans). What would be the
>general prerequisites?
Not even if FEMA were competent. As it is, not a snowball's chance in
lucifer's anus.
Jasper
Crown-Horned Snorkack
wrote:
> Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
>
> > living there?
>
>
> The highest throughput achieved by any transportation system in the
> world on a single route is about 2.6 million travellers per day, if we
> want to believe Wikipedia (Mumbai Suburban Railway's Western line). This
> goes along well with theoretical estimates, as it means approx. one
> 1800-passenger train every minute over 24 hours. An evacuation means
> capacity is halved to 1.3 million per day. With the kind of schedule
> that is used in wartime, i.e. minimal headways and the same very low top
> speed for all trains, capacity can probably be raised to 2 million per
> day. The question is whether broken-down trains can be shunted out
> quickly and how in the world people are supposed to embark at this kind
> of rate. Most US railways are single-track, you'd have to use separate
> lines for trains moving out and empty trains moving in.
> Probably, to evacuate just one million per day, you'd already need a
> total of four to five lines radiating out from the evacuation area and
> about 1500 to 3000 trainsets of ten to 15 cars.
How many rail lines cross the Mississippi now? That is going to be a
bottleneck...
It should be possible to
> cobble these together from commuter rail stock and boxcars.
>
> AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the
> capacities of rail transport; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway
> that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably,
> even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used,
> because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles
> that cannot be pushed off the road. Maybe on US highways with large
> medians, the two innermost lanes can be used as well. If we assume
> vehicles loaded with an average of five persons (counting in vans,
> trucks, requisitioned school buses etc.), on four lanes, with 10-second
> headways, about 170.000 people can travel on a single highway in one
> day. There are many more highways than railway lines, but keeping
> traffic going at Red Ball Express rates in an evacuation scenario with
> layman drivers will be nightmarish. Maybe 100.000 people per day per
> route can move out on twenty routes. Maybe.
>
> Aerial transport will make a modest contribution at best as even the
> busiest airports have trouble handling 200000 passengers a day. Boats
> won't be able to contribute much at all, there not being enough
> passenger vessels to go round, and besides, the next safe destinations
> are rather far away.
>
> Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three
> million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely,
> with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.
>
> Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal
> carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.
>
Consider a real-life mass evacuation.
France in 1940.
How long did it last?
The Germans attacked on 10th of May. But they struck at Abbeville and
Dunkerque at first. It was only on 5th of June that they dealt with
Dunkerque and turned on France proper, giving people reason to
evacuate from large areas.
France surrendered on 22nd of June. But it was looking like this for
several days, with Paris made open town and falling on 14th of June,
Reynaud resigning, Petain in power, de Gaulle running for England and
wanted at home...
So, how long were the French civilians - after they realized that the
Germans were not contained in Flanders and before they realized that
France would fall and they better stay home and collaborate with
occupation there? A week? Two weeks?
The total amount of refugees was 5 millions. How far did they get -
that is, does it include people who did set out from homes and were
promptly overtaken by German blitzkrieg?
France of 1940 did have roads and cars. But I expect that France of
1940 had far fewer family cars than USA of 1942.
How would USA of 1942 have handled Japanese or German land forces
landing on US mainland and imminent military occupation?
USA of 1960-s and later would have had far more highways and somewhat
more cars than in 1942.
How would western USA, Canada or Mexico handle 100 millions of US
refugees?
Did the Mexican army have contingency plans for interning the US Army,
should USA lose a nuclear war?
Brion K. Lienhart
> In article <Xns9A5C70175CAA9ge...@207.115.17.102>,
> Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
>> David T. Bilek <david...@att.net> wrote in
>> news:iic8t3llgee15ileg...@4ax.com:
>>
>>> Couldn't we manage the sun's brightening relatively easily,
>>> particularly at the tech levels we would (presumably) have attained by
>>> the time it becomes a problem?
>> It would get progressively harder. But what's a good way of getting a reverse
>> greenhouse barrier in place? Sounds like the germ of an sf plot.
>
> You could put a mirror at the Earth-Sun L1 but eventually
> the Sun will be close enough to 1AU in diameter that friction could
> be a problem (Although I think there's evidence of at least one planet
> that survived its star's red giant phase despite having been close enough
> to have been within the outer parts of the star. I will look this up
> later).
Not a single large mirror, but a gazillion small solar cell panels. Then
you can beam the energy back to Earth as Microwaves! :)
By the time the photosphere gets out to Earth orbit, you should probably
relocate to the moons of Jupiter and/or Saturn. Or just disassemble
Jupiter and make a bunch of nice little custom planetoids.
> Moving the Earth by transfering momentum between the Earth,
> an asteroid and Jupiter seems only horrifically difficult.
Lets see, Really big hooks at the axis of rotation, and a REALLY REALLY
big solar sail.
Joseph Nebus
>"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
>news:howard-B84AE1....@newsgroups.comcast.net...
>> Probably. But now that FEMA has been subordinated under the Department
>> of Homeland Defense, it has to be more ready than before to handle
>> disasters, natural or man-made.
>???
What he *means* is that come the Comet, people are going to
have to leave their new Apple laptops behind lest they scare the
Department of Homeland Security Theater.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David V. Loewe, Jr
<joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Side to side, front to back.
>Oh! If it's that easy to deflect ...
It's amusing how we've gone from "total accuracy" of the impact to
"easy to deflect."
--
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
- Albert Einstein
Bryan Derksen
> On Mar 9, 1:37 pm, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>> Sterilization events that any half-way competent SF writer
>> should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening, something
>> that should kick the Earth over into runaway greenhouse in the next
>> billion years or so, and gamma ray bursters, which in theory could
>> have much the same effect on the Earth as putting it in a (very large)
>> microwave oven.
>
> How many of these are sterilization events in the strict sense? Would
> that gamma ray burst kill off creatures at deep-ocean vents or
> microbes living in rock?
Runaway greenhouse would probably do it, since the entire crust would
wind up hotter than the boiling point. Earth would be Venus Lite.
Gamma ray bursts are overrated in terms of sterilization power, IMO. The
gamma rays can't penetrate the atmosphere so they won't cause any direct
effect, they get absorbed in the upper layers. Of course it's still
pretty nasty since they produce copious nitrous oxides as a result,
destroying the ozone layer and making lots of acid rain. So it'll suck,
but it should be quite survivable. Especially by humans who can
stockpile large amounts of food to wait out the rain and will know not
to go outside during the daytime. Even if the gamma rays _were_ strong
enough to directly kill people at ground level it would still only toast
one hemisphere.
A very nearby supernova could be worse since the radiation comes in over
a longer period, giving the planet time to rotate and spread it around
(assuming the supernova's near the celestial equator). But there aren't
any stars capable of producing such a supernova within range of us.
Gene Ward Smith
news:u76dnWmtXaALfEva...@comcast.com:
> Or just disassemble
> Jupiter and make a bunch of nice little custom planetoids.
Practically a triviality to do that. I guess you use either a vopal blade or
an eldritch cleaver.
David V. Loewe, Jr
<War...@students.uni-marburg.de> wrote:
>David V. Loewe, Jr schrieb:
>> On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:49:21 -0400, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
>> DeLaney) wrote:
>>> David V. Loewe, Jr <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>>
>>>>> AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the
>>>>> capacities of rail transport; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway
>>>>> that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably,
>>>>> even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used,
>>>>> because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles
>>>>> that cannot be pushed off the road.
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Huh? Why?
>>> The traffic _cannot stop_. Not at all. Anyone who breaks down in an inner
>>> lane and can't manage to get to an outer lane
>>
>> Why not?
>>
>> Are cars breaking down on the roads at the rate you describe anywhere?
>
>You bet enough will be breaking down to make it an issue. Nobody was
>predicting any actual rate.
It doesn't happen now. Why should it then?
>> Why can't the brokendown cars be pushed over to the shoulder by a
>> couple of men?
>
>They can, but only on the outermost lanes. Which is what we're saying.
?
Most US expressways have inner shoulders and, to a lesser degree,
inner grass medians. Therefore, most Lane One disabled vehicles have
a place to be moved to without crossing a traffic lane.
>> Even if a car becomes disabled and can't be moved out of the fast
>> lane, why is the road now completely blocked?
>
>It isn't, and nobody ever claimed that. It just blocks the lane it can't
>be moved out of.
For ONE car length.
>> Both you and Matthias seem to be assuming things that are quite
>> foreign to my experience.
>
>Please check how things were done on the Voie sacrée and the Red Ball
>Express. There are real-world examples for ultra-high-throughput road
>logistics.
Vehicles back in the Red Ball Express days were a LOT less reliable
than they are now. Vehicles in the Voie sacrée days were in their
infancy. And roads are generally wider in the US circa 2008 than in
France circa 1916 OR 1944. Some of their experience applies,
Matthias, but not all of it.
--
"Are you hiding somewhere behind those eyes?"
Ira Davies and John Oates
Bryan Derksen
> I'm wondering if massive numbers of cars really would be breaking down. Was
> it really a problem in the Katrina evacuations of Florida and the Gulf
> Coast? I remember seeing news footage of traffic on packed highways slowly
> but steadily moving. One would think that if highways were getting chocked
> and jammed by broken down vehicles that would have been mentioned.
It's also not as much of a problem if you're not concerned about ever
coming back to _fix_ the broken car. If a car breaks down, just have the
still-functioning car behind it move forward and shove it off the
road. A few dings in the fender and some scraped paint are irrelevant.
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_standards
"# Minimum lane width. Minimum lane width of 12 ft (3.62 m).
# Shoulder width. Minimum outside paved shoulder width of 10 ft (3.0
m) and inside shoulder width of 4 ft (1.2 m). With three or more lanes
in each direction, the inside paved shoulder should be at least 10 ft
(3.0 m) wide. If truck traffic is over 250 Directional Design Hour
Volume, shoulders at least 12 ft (3.6 m) wide should be considered. In
mountainous terrain, 8 ft (2.4 m) outside and 4 ft (1.2 m) inside
shoulders are acceptable, except when there are at least four lanes in
each direction, in which case the inside shoulders should also be 8 ft
(2.4 m) wide."
Maximum non-permitted vehicle width is 8' 6". So, ONE vehicle up
against the New Jersey Barrier on the inside lane should still allow
traffic to pass (sticks out 4' 6" into Lane One and 10' available on
the outside shoulder).
BTW, don't you think if we had a year's notice (as per the movie
scenario originally presented), that we'd wrap up almost all
construction projects?
--
"A good reputation is more valuable than money."
Publius Syrus
David V. Loewe, Jr
<cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote:
>>>>>> "DVL" == David V Loewe, <dave...@charter.net> writes:
>
> DVL> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:47:12 GMT, "Martha Adams"
> DVL> <mh...@verizon.net>
> DVL> wrote:
>
> >> A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
> >> faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
> >> would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
> >> response to Katrina -- Gaah!
>
> DVL> Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
>
>It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
>at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
>look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
>and extrapolate.
I don't think you understand how competent it was.
As a related aside, do you still believe gangs were roaming the
Superdome killing people?
>I think a smoothly-running evacuation that uses all the available
>highway lanes and rails out of the area is about the *least* likely
>thing that will happen.
Most of the problems of Katrina happened to people who wouldn't leave.
--
"Why is it, Scott, that we always have to respect their cultural context?
Why is it that they never seem to respect ours?"
President John P. Ryan in Executive Orders
David V. Loewe, Jr
<joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>> Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote:
>>
>>> It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
>>> at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
>>> look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
>>> and extrapolate.
>>>
>>> I think a smoothly-running evacuation that uses all the available
>>> highway lanes and rails out of the area is about the *least* likely
>>> thing that will happen.
>>
>> Probably. But now that FEMA has been subordinated under the Department
>> of Homeland Defense, it has to be more ready than before to handle
>> disasters, natural or man-made.
>>
>
>???
>
>> The man-made part made the need to get it right so important - this was
>> the first and best test of our Leaders' response to 9/11.
>>
>There was a pretty accurate simulation of the event a couple years earlier,
>involving all levels of Federal, State and Local authority. Did ANYONE do
>what they were supposed to?
>
>Heck of a job.
Better than you seem to understand. And not all that applicable,
actually.
--
"I still see her standing by the water
Standing there lookin' out to sea
And is she waiting there for me?
On the beach where we used to run..."
Jimmy Webb
David V. Loewe, Jr
Starr) wrote:
>"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> said:
>> "Martha Adams" <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
>>> faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
>>> would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
>>> response to Katrina -- Gaah!
>>
>> Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
>
>As long as there's the slightest danger that anyone is going to
>forget, dismiss or minimize the vast breadth and depth of this
>administration's mis-, mal- and non-feasance in office, the frequent
>reminding of same does seem like a good idea. After all, the lying
>liars of the right never seem to sleep.
Do you still believe that gangs roamed the Superdome raping and
killing people?
Repeating YOUR lies does not make them any closer to becoming true,
Bill.
--
"Many receive advice, few profit by it."
Publius Syrus
David V. Loewe, Jr
Exactly my point. This vision of blocked lanes due to car breakdowns
does not agree with what I've seen.
--
"Same dances in the same old shoes
Some habits that you just can't lose.
There's no telling what a man might lose,
After the thrill is gone."
Don Henley & Glenn Frey
Michael S. Schiffer
news:7PBBj.71734$w94.70993@pd7urf2no:
> Richard R. Hershberger wrote:
>> On Mar 9, 1:37 pm, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>> Sterilization events that any half-way competent SF
>>> writer
>>> should know about include the Sun's progressive brightening,
>>> something that should kick the Earth over into runaway
>>> greenhouse in the next billion years or so, and gamma ray
>>> bursters, which in theory could have much the same effect on
>>> the Earth as putting it in a (very large) microwave oven.
>> How many of these are sterilization events in the strict sense?
>> Would that gamma ray burst kill off creatures at deep-ocean
>> vents or microbes living in rock?
> Runaway greenhouse would probably do it, since the entire crust
> would wind up hotter than the boiling point. Earth would be
> Venus Lite.
Would the temperature be such that extremophiles might survive to
evolve a new, high-temp ecosphere, at least for a while? (And is
the time scale before things get completely impossible long enough
that they might manage to reinvent multicellularity, and spread out
into the newly vacated territory?) Not much comfort to us, but
interesting in an abstract sense.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Dimensional Traveler
> James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article <Xns9A5C70175CAA9ge...@207.115.17.102>,
>> Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
>>> David T. Bilek <david...@att.net> wrote in
>>> news:iic8t3llgee15ileg...@4ax.com:
>>>
>>>> Couldn't we manage the sun's brightening relatively easily,
>>>> particularly at the tech levels we would (presumably) have
>>>> attained by the time it becomes a problem?
>>> It would get progressively harder. But what's a good way of getting
>>> a reverse greenhouse barrier in place? Sounds like the germ of an
>>> sf plot.
>>
>> You could put a mirror at the Earth-Sun L1 but eventually
>> the Sun will be close enough to 1AU in diameter that friction could
>> be a problem (Although I think there's evidence of at least one
>> planet that survived its star's red giant phase despite having been
>> close enough to have been within the outer parts of the star. I will
>> look this up later).
>
> Not a single large mirror, but a gazillion small solar cell panels.
> Then you can beam the energy back to Earth as Microwaves! :)
Does the term "world's largest microwave oven" apply anymore when you've
turned the entire world in to said microwave oven? :P
> By the time the photosphere gets out to Earth orbit, you should
> probably relocate to the moons of Jupiter and/or Saturn. Or just
> disassemble Jupiter and make a bunch of nice little custom planetoids.
>
>
>> Moving the Earth by transfering momentum between the Earth,
>> an asteroid and Jupiter seems only horrifically difficult.
>
> Lets see, Really big hooks at the axis of rotation, and a REALLY
> REALLY big solar sail.
--
Sig under construction
Don Bruder
"Dimensional Traveler" <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
> Brion K. Lienhart wrote:
> > James Nicoll wrote:
> >> In article <Xns9A5C70175CAA9ge...@207.115.17.102>,
> >> Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
> >>> David T. Bilek <david...@att.net> wrote in
> >>> news:iic8t3llgee15ileg...@4ax.com:
> >>>
> >>>> Couldn't we manage the sun's brightening relatively easily,
> >>>> particularly at the tech levels we would (presumably) have
> >>>> attained by the time it becomes a problem?
> >>> It would get progressively harder. But what's a good way of getting
> >>> a reverse greenhouse barrier in place? Sounds like the germ of an
> >>> sf plot.
> >>
> >> You could put a mirror at the Earth-Sun L1 but eventually
> >> the Sun will be close enough to 1AU in diameter that friction could
> >> be a problem (Although I think there's evidence of at least one
> >> planet that survived its star's red giant phase despite having been
> >> close enough to have been within the outer parts of the star. I will
> >> look this up later).
> >
> > Not a single large mirror, but a gazillion small solar cell panels.
> > Then you can beam the energy back to Earth as Microwaves! :)
>
> Does the term "world's largest microwave oven" apply anymore when you've
> turned the entire world in to said microwave oven? :P
OK, would you believe "largest microwave oven in the Sol system"? :)
--
Don Bruder - dak...@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd> for more info
Joel Olson
"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:c0qdt3tkf2bmdt2l5...@4ax.com...
You don't read sarcasm well, do you?
If the comet is moving away from the sun, it's less likely to outgass
than if its moving into a warmer regime.
I'm not claiming total accuracy, just that a reasonable risk zone can be
defined.
You're saying its impossible?
Joel Olson
Were you there? In what capacity?
And why shouldn't such a large-scale simulation exercise be applicable?
Because it will be ignored?
David V. Loewe, Jr
<joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:49:42 -0500, "Joel Olson"
>> <joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 16:45:10 -0500, "Joel Olson"
>>>> <joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
<Pittsburgh Impactor>
>>>>>I disagree. Given a reasonable time interval, the trajectory and mass
>>>>>can be observed to almost total accuracy.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>>
>>>> Because, since it is a comet, there will be no randomly situated
>>>> outgassings which will not produce random jinks and jukes in the
>>>> motion of the incoming comet...
>>>>
>>>> Right.
>>>
>>>Moving toward or away from the sun?
>>
>> Side to side, front to back.
>>
>>>Oh! If it's that easy to deflect ...
>>
>> It's amusing how we've gone from "total accuracy" of the impact to
>> "easy to deflect."
>You don't read sarcasm well, do you?
Perhaps. But, I can authoritatively state that you don't WRITE it
well.
>If the comet is moving away from the sun, it's less likely to outgass
>than if its moving into a warmer regime.
Are you saying if it moving away from the sun at Earth it CAN'T
outgas?
>I'm not claiming total accuracy, just that a reasonable risk zone can be
>defined.
That wasn't YOU I responded to saying "I disagree. Given a reasonable
time interval, the trajectory and mass can be observed to almost total
accuracy."? There is some other Joel Olson in this thread? The two
of you should use your middle names to enable us to distinguish
between the two of you.
>You're saying its impossible?
Sure, it's possible. If it isn't a comet or if it never outgasses.
--
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know
that you would lie if you were in his place."
- Robert Heinlein
David V. Loewe, Jr
<joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:21:57 -0500, "Joel Olson"
>> <joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>>>> Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
>>>>> at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
>>>>> look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
>>>>> and extrapolate.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think a smoothly-running evacuation that uses all the available
>>>>> highway lanes and rails out of the area is about the *least* likely
>>>>> thing that will happen.
>>>>
>>>> Probably. But now that FEMA has been subordinated under the Department
>>>> of Homeland Defense, it has to be more ready than before to handle
>>>> disasters, natural or man-made.
>>>>
>>>???
>>>
>>>> The man-made part made the need to get it right so important - this was
>>>> the first and best test of our Leaders' response to 9/11.
>>>>
>>>There was a pretty accurate simulation of the event a couple years
>>>earlier, involving all levels of Federal, State and Local authority.
>>>Did ANYONE do what they were supposed to?
>>>
>>>Heck of a job.
>>
>> Better than you seem to understand. And not all that applicable,
>> actually.
>Were you there? In what capacity?
What does that have to do with anything?
Many of the horror stories about murders and deaths in the Superdome
and Convention Center were WILDLY overblown. After action reports
indicate that response was far better than any of the morons reporting
from the scene indicated.
For example...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2315076.html?page=2
"Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of
general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors.
In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and
fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency
personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's
landfall."
Let me emphasize - "...the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far
the largest--and FASTEST-rescue effort in U.S. history..."
However, I expect you people to keep lauding Ransom Stoddard, ignoring
Tom Doniphon and saying to yourselves, "When the legend becomes fact,
print the legend."
>And why shouldn't such a large-scale simulation exercise be applicable?
Think about it. Most of the complaints had to do with restoring
services in the affected zone. How does the experience of being
flattened by a hurricane even remotely begin to be applicable to being
destroyed by an impactor fireball?
>Because it will be ignored?
Howard Brazee
<0c81eb22-aee9-4b84...@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
johan.g...@gmail.com wrote:
> > It might perhaps be preferable to do all the centrally organised
> > evacuating by rail, as there is much less to go wrong.
>
> I'm a bit sceptical. The US highways and airways are in decent shape;
> the passenger railway system is a sad remnant.
On the other hand, the amount of money spent by Homeland Security to
interfere with U.S. air travelers is several orders of magnitude greater
than what they spend to interfere with rail riders.
Despite the fact that terrorists have targeted rail more than air.
Howard Brazee
"John F. Eldredge" <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
> Not all locations have breakdown lanes on both sides. There are numerous
> places on the US interstate system where the traffic flow in both
> directions is divided only by a concrete wall, with a shoulder two to
> three feet wide between the innermost driving lane and the wall. In some
> cases, this is because a former breakdown lane was later converted to a
> driving lane because of increased traffic.
Sometimes this is a car pool lane (social engineering), and pay lane
(the rich can also avoid airport lines)
> Plus, if a car breaks down in
> a construction zone, there may not be a breakdown lane available on the
> outer side of the road, either, only another concrete divider. In such a
> case, a driving lane has now been blocked.
That is a very real danger.
Howard Brazee
"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
> >As long as there's the slightest danger that anyone is going to
> >forget, dismiss or minimize the vast breadth and depth of this
> >administration's mis-, mal- and non-feasance in office, the frequent
> >reminding of same does seem like a good idea. After all, the lying
> >liars of the right never seem to sleep.
>
> Do you still believe that gangs roamed the Superdome raping and
> killing people?
Is that the criterion that should be used to find out if Homeland
Security is ready to handle a man-made disaster?
Joel Olson
"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:kt2et394sp15bvp4u...@4ax.com...
If you go back in the thread to before your selective editing, you'll find
I said a little more than that.
Clearly, the orientation of the trajectory, relative to the earth and to
the sun, is important. So are the atmospheric conditions during its
descent, possibly more so as the comet will be less dense than an
asteroid. Ice vs. rock, I suppose.
Anyone know of any papers describing the effect of outgassing on a
comet's trajectory? Is it really significant?
Scott Lurndal
Do you really think a Wikipedia article trumps reality? All you have
to do is take a quick look at I5 in east LA, I880 in Oakland, I80 in
San Francisco and dozens of other examples to find significant stretchs
of interstate highway that do not conform to the above criteria. And
most of these places are in the densely populated urban areas most
in need of evacuation (which would be pointless in this example anyway).
scott
David V. Loewe, Jr
<joel_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Which made no difference to my comment.
>Clearly, the orientation of the trajectory, relative to the earth and to
>the sun, is important. So are the atmospheric conditions during its
>descent, possibly more so as the comet will be less dense than an
>asteroid. Ice vs. rock, I suppose.
At cometary speeds?!?
>Anyone know of any papers describing the effect of outgassing on a
>comet's trajectory? Is it really significant?
>
In light of your "total accuracy" comment? Yes.
>
>>>You're saying its impossible?
>>
>> Sure, it's possible. If it isn't a comet or if it never outgasses.
--
"Yes, John, but that is because you have to think the worst of everybody
else in order to avoid thinking about how much of a wanker *you* are."
David Chapman in <8kku9v$kee$4...@gxsn.com> on John S. Novak, III
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
Did you READ the article or did you just read the excerpt I provided?
>All you have
>to do is take a quick look at I5 in east LA, I880 in Oakland, I80 in
>San Francisco and dozens of other examples to find significant stretchs
>of interstate highway that do not conform to the above criteria.
Of course there are. It says so in the article.
>And
>most of these places are in the densely populated urban areas most
>in need of evacuation (which would be pointless in this example anyway).
And they also have the most alternate routes.
--
"The wheel has turned ... and it is time...it is time for them to go."
Republican VP Nominee Richard Cheney on Clinton - Gore
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
I'm trying gauge exactly how misinformed Billy is.
--
"What can you do when your dreams come true
And it's not quite like you planned?
What have you done to be losing the one
You held it so tight in your hand?"
John Schilling
wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:03:46 +0100, Matthias Warkus wrote:
>
>> David V. Loewe, Jr schrieb:
>>> On Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:49:21 -0400, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
>>> DeLaney) wrote:
>>>
>>>> David V. Loewe, Jr <dave...@charter.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Why not?
So what?
Driving lanes get blocked all the time; traffic adapts. Taking Greater
Los Angeles, even if *every* highway out of the area is reduced to *one*
functioning traffic lane at the *worst* possible point, the city can
still be evacuated by private automobile alone in under a week.
Obviously, it's best to have excess capacity to deal with inefficiencies
elsewhere in the system, and to help forestall panic. But it should be
just as obvious that you aren't actually going to have all-but-one-lane
blocking accidents at every chokepoint and that some accidents will be
cleared.
A random scattering of accidents blocking one lane at a time, even a whole
*lot* of such accidents, are not going to seriously impede the system.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
John Schilling
<War...@students.uni-marburg.de> wrote:
>johan.g...@gmail.com schrieb:
>> On Mar 10, 10:07 am, Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de>
>> wrote:
>>> It might perhaps be preferable to do all the centrally organised
>>> evacuating by rail, as there is much less to go wrong.
>> I'm a bit sceptical. The US highways and airways are in decent shape;
>> the passenger railway system is a sad remnant.
>The state of the passenger railway system is pretty much irrelevant to
>an operation where top speeds won't exceed 15-25 kph. And the US rail
>network is very, very good at handling lots of long, slow trains, rail
>has an enormous modal share in US freight transportation.
Except that people aren't actually freight, and the differences matter,
The problem isn't the speed of the trains, it's the shortage of proper
rolling stock, embarkation facilities, trained and dedicated personnel,
contingency plans, and public awareness. Railroads in the United States
are *not* like railroads in Europe - trust those of us who have used
both - and are not the solution to this problem.
>>> The road network could be put to the exclusive use of ferrying evacuees
>>> to railheads.
>> The thing is, people _are_ going to try to use the roads to get away.
>> Are you proposing to stop them, or just withold aid and let the
>> highways clog up on their own?
>You will have to impose strict regulations on all roadways anyway,
>mainly because it will be insane to allow vehicles with free seats,
"Insane" in the sense of, "most efficient way to evacuate the area on
short notice"?
There *will* be lots of people heading for the highways in private
automobiles with empty seats. Maybe that wouldn't happen in Germany,
but it absolutely will happen in the United States, no matter what
anyone says or does. It will be the single most common thing that
happens in the United States.
And we have enough cars and enough roads and enough skilled and
courteous drivers that this will probably suffice to evacuate most
of a city in a day, most of the Eastern Seaboard in a week, *if* we
let it happen.
But every time a traffic cop or a national guardsman decides to
stop or turn back a car for having too many empty seats, that will
delay the evacuation as a whole *far* more than would letting the
roads be "clogged" by one extra underutilized automobile.
>and because a network of free lanes will have to kept clear for the
>authorities to move around in the zone to be evacuated. When you need
>to put checkpoints on all the motorway exits anyway, you can as well
>go all-out.
Why do we need to put checkpoints on all the motorway exits anyway?
We've done this before, you know. We've evacuated cities. We've
evactuated cities predominately by private automobiles. And as far
as I know, we usually don't put checkpoints on *any* of the highway
entrances or exits.
Some, we block altogether. Checkpoints, never, not that I'm aware
of. And yet the system works - because it is set up to "evacuate"
a significant fraction of each city's population in a few hours,
every weekday, under normal circumstances.
We can evacuate 90% of a major American city just by having the
President[1] go on television two days in advance and say, "Everyone
needs to get out of town in 48 hours; here's why[2], each of you
figure out how to best get your own families clear and try to help
your neighbors if you can". That's all it takes. For a state or
a region, allow a couple weeks.
Mostly it will be done by private automobiles on open roads.
And we can find ways to get almost all of the remaining ten percent
out, too, if we put any thought into it. *Or* we can punish people
for being insufficiently civic-minded in their private evacuation
efforts.
But, however we rationalize it, we can't do both. Every person
whose private evacuation plans you block, becomes one more person
you have to evacuate according to your plan, and not a particularly
cooperative one.
[1] Maybe just the mayor, but that would depend on the city.
[2] It needs to be a really, really good reason, or half the city
will stay put regardless.
John Schilling
wrote:
>>>>>> "DVL" == David V Loewe, <dave...@charter.net> writes:
> DVL> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:47:12 GMT, "Martha Adams"
> DVL> <mh...@verizon.net>
> DVL> wrote:
> >> A.E. vanVogt's null-A Venus makes a good counterexample here:
> >> faced with an invasion, the people all respond rationally. It
> >> would never happen here because, 1) Look at the Bush people
> >> response to Katrina -- Gaah!
> DVL> Do you people HAVE to keep dredging up shibboleths?
>It's the closest example of what's likely to happen. It was clear for
>at least 48 hours that Katrina was going to hit the area. You can
>look up and find out what the response was, and how competent it was,
>and extrapolate.
Clear that Katrina was going to hit, not clear that evacuation was the
right response. The actual evacuation order didn't go out until less
than 24 hours before the hurricane hit, and the actual evacuation plan
seems to have been, "Uh, well, I'm leaving, you all should figure out
how to get out yourselves".
And even that was sufficient to evacuate something like eighty percent
of the city's population. Most people *did* respond rationally, and
effectively.
David V. Loewe, Jr
AND ordering that evacuation was not a FEDERAL job at that time. The
people that keep wanting to blame President Bush need to look lower
down the food chain (Mayor Ray Nagin).
--
"You're free to be as much of an asshole as you wish -- as long as I'm
not paying for it."
- Todd Masco
William December Starr
"Dimensional Traveler" <dtr...@sonic.net> said:
> William December Starr wrote:
>> WaltBJ <walt...@mindspring.com> said:
>>
>>> Visualize a searing line of plasma taking all of three seconds
>>> to come vertically down through the atmosphere
>>
>> Would it necessarily be vertical, if the approach while in space
>> was on line for a "glancing blow" meeting of the two bodies?
>
> Are you volunteering to remain close enough to the impact point to
> look and find out? *grin*
ObSF: A short story about a poet who willingly stays behind on an
evacuated Earth to transmit to the rest of mankind his description
as the Sun goes nova.
Notes:
1: No, the title wasn't "What a Fucking Moron."
2: Though it probably should have been.
3: This was from the days of the New Wave, I think; could it have
been in one of the <Dangerous Visions> books?
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Gene Ward Smith
@panix2.panix.com:
> ObSF: A short story about a poet who willingly stays behind on an
> evacuated Earth to transmit to the rest of mankind his description
> as the Sun goes nova.
Why is the Sun going nova such a popular device, given that we know it won't
happen?
William December Starr
Hmm. When _did_ we start knowing that, for "the entire relevant
scientific community except maybe for a few outliers accepts it as
almost certainly correct" values of "we know?"
Wayne Throop
:: evacuated Earth to transmit to the rest of mankind his description as
:: the Sun goes nova.
I'm not sure a report of "gee, the sun's getting awful bri...<static>"[1]
is really worth dying for, or qualifies as inspiring or romantic or nuttn.
: Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org>
: Why is the Sun going nova such a popular device, given that we know it
: won't happen?
Not sure. Love of large explosions? Is Niven's notion of a super-flare
in "Inconstant Moon" any better? Seems to me it probably is, but
not clear.
Um. Should we ask mythbusters to debunk that?
Seems like it's run up their alley, though I'd be nice to
have a spare star to use for it...
[1] Alternate report (eg, for the Farm Report)
"Sun blowed up."
"Yeah. Blowed up real good."
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Dimensional Traveler
Only until someone one ups you and cooks Jupiter. :)
--
Sig under construction
David DeLaney
>> How many of these are sterilization events in the strict sense? Would
>> that gamma ray burst kill off creatures at deep-ocean vents or
>> microbes living in rock?
>
>Runaway greenhouse would probably do it, since the entire crust would
>wind up hotter than the boiling point. Earth would be Venus Lite.
Then the thermophilic bacteria get THEIR chance to sweep out from the ocean
vents and radiate.
>Gamma ray bursts are overrated in terms of sterilization power, IMO. The
>gamma rays can't penetrate the atmosphere so they won't cause any direct
>effect, they get absorbed in the upper layers.
... Someone isn't thinking about the same gamma rays that physicists use. The
atmosphere is by no means a perfect defense (tm White Wolf) against gamma rays;
it absorbs some, and some get through, and some cause huge particle showers
because they pass near enough to a gas-atom nucleus to interact with it.
Perhaps you're thinking about ultraviolet rays, absorbed (mostly) by the ozone
layer?
Now it would be fairly difficult for the gamma rays to penetrate too deeply
into the CRUST of the Earth. But the atmosphere is not our Defense Shield for
them, as such.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.