# How well would modern society handle the dinosaur killing meteor if it happened today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 27, 2021, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856 "2021-02-27T00:30:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2021, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/321 "2021-04-14T13:18:40Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Not really, terminal velocity being what it is. Tektites have a _Vt_ of 200 mph, so yeah, they’re bad news, but I don’t know how lethal they’d be. Not very, I assume, they’re not usually large. But the proverbial Empire State penny only has a _Vt_ of ~50 mph (I find numbers from [25](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-a-penny-dropped-off/) to [90](https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/10/12/an-empire-state-penny-of-mind/)) and apparently wouldn’t even hurt. > > With tektites, it’s the red-hot part that matters more, I’d think. For dropped objects from aircraft and up to up to suborbital ejecta I agree completely. Vt is our friend. Although size isn’t; the Vt of a refrigerator-sized hunk of rock or glass is still fast enough to only hurt briefly when it lands on you and you splat like a bug. I did a lousy job of making what was mostly a humorous point that incoming stuff like satellite hunks, comets, and meteorites coming down from earth orbit or solar orbit can be _loosely_ described as falling from a truly great height and having speeds such that atmospheric drag has a small or negligible effect. And yes, I do understand that for stuff in solar orbit the actual contribution of Earth’s gravity well to the impact speed at the top of our atmosphere is itself small to negligible. It seemed funny at the time. Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2021, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/322 "2021-05-13T17:26:10Z")
> **[A NASA simulation revealed that 6 months' warning isn't enough to stop an...](https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-how-many-years-in-advance-we-d-need-to-stop-a-killer-asteroid-coming-for-earth/amp)** > > In a recent NASA simulation, scientists had six months to stop a hypothetical asteroid from hitting Earth, and they failed. That wasn't enough time. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2021, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/323 "2021-05-13T18:23:34Z")
And in that simulation nothing much went wrong with the engineering and there wasn’t any political dithering. So we’ve established that 6 months is a very loose lower bound; the true lower bound is IMO significantly larger/longer. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2021, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/324 "2021-05-13T21:02:41Z")
I don’t think anyone’s ever claimed that six months would be enough for a deflection. On that sort of timescale, the only question is going to be how many you can save from the meteoric winter, and the answer is going to be “not very many”. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/325 "2021-05-14T02:08:11Z")
Not reading the entire thread to see if this has been mentioned, but based on what I’ve seen in society, half the population would refuse to believe that there even _was_ a meteor. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/326 "2021-05-14T10:19:05Z")
As the article says: > Five years is the minimum, according to Chodas. Others, like MIT astronomer Richard Binzel, say we’d need at least a decade. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856/327 "2021-05-14T16:17:56Z")
Thanks for the cite. Normally Business Insider is behind a paywall / no adblock wall for me, so I didn’t even bother clicking **Darren** ’s link. Having just tried it, much to my surprise the link actually leads to the non-paywalled [sciencealert.com](http://sciencealert.com) website. D’oh! 🤦‍♂️ . [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-would-modern-society-handle-the-dinosaur-killing-meteor-if-it-happened-today/933856.md?page=16)