# The Morning News -- How bad can it get? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 2, 2017, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734 "2017-05-02T18:15:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/21 "2017-05-02T23:29:13Z")
Those clowns in congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/22 "2017-05-03T01:44:18Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Dammit **Max! _I_** wanted to bring up the Yellowstone Supervolcano! > > But your post has me wondering. If full out nuclear war were to break out between, say, India and Pakistan, sure it would make the news. But how much news? Would we shake our heads, say, “Wow, that’s really horrible! Hundreds of millions dead or dying. Tsk!” And then go back to what we were doing? Or what? Some amount of fallout would be detected all over the globe, and the various news agencies would harp on it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/23 "2017-05-03T02:14:45Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > “A report from the US Geological Survey indicates that the Yellowstone Caldera has erupted. The previous eruption ejected approximately 240 cubic miles of rock, dust and ash into the sky covering the majority of North America in a layer of ash. It is expected that this eruption will disrupt travel, trade, and electronic communications for the majority of the United States, with a death toll expected in excess of xxxxzzzzz…” Like watchwolf said, there would be precursors to it, much like Mount St. Helens, which we knew for weeks/months could/would blow, but it still caught us by surprise when it finally did. Mine would be: “…the asteroid, measured at approximately 2.7 miles in diameter, is travelling towards Earth impact at 37,000 MPH and is expected to hit the Earth in 17 days time…” Would really be a bad, bad morning… ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/24 "2017-05-03T02:30:49Z")
> [@stillownedbysetters](#): > > I used to think the assassination of a sitting president and his family by a terrorist organization would be as bad as it could get. I no longer feel that way for evident reasons. > > However, a situation like that depicted in the tv show Designated Survivor would be a crushing blow and a horrific thing to wake up to in the morning. I don’t want Trump to be assassinated, and I certainly wish his family no misfortune. What’s the event in “Designated Survivor”? You can PM me if you wish, or spoiler it. (ETA: Never mind; I JFGI’d it.) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/25 "2017-05-03T02:33:51Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > “A report from the US Geological Survey indicates that the Yellowstone Caldera has erupted. The previous eruption ejected approximately 240 cubic miles of rock, dust and ash into the sky covering the majority of North America in a layer of ash. It is expected that this eruption will disrupt travel, trade, and electronic communications for the majority of the United States, with a death toll expected in excess of xxxxzzzzz…” I think that would be more like the Icelandic volcano that erupted a few years ago, the one that was about 20 letters in length and disrupted air travel all over northern Europe. We could see something like this coming in plenty of time to evacuate the immediate area, which is sparsely populated to begin with. I’m more concerned about the New Madrid fault, which would be harder to predict. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/26 "2017-05-03T02:38:10Z")
I’m not sure it would be morning news but my biggest fear is some group of nutjobs making a serious attempt on one of our branches of government at the federal level. Rocket at the White House, multiple members of Congress assassinated, several Supremes taken out at the same time. Something like that and I would skip breakfast and go right for panic. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/27 "2017-05-03T03:29:19Z")
The New York Yankees plane crashes. A morbidly unannounced fact, as I understand it, is the MLB has a contingency in place. If a team were wiped out, there would be an immediate draft of un-protected players (the list is maintained continuously), and there would be a new team of players, drawn from other teams, playing in Yankee uniforms within a day or two. This is the same MLB that postponed all games for a week after 9-11. According to Jim Bouton in “Ball Four” the Yankees used to joke about the news headlines if the plane crashed. “Mantle, Berra, 23 Others Die in Crash”. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/28 "2017-05-03T13:05:22Z")
A bomb hitting southern US military bases would be awful; my entire family live within ten miles of the Navy base in Jacksonville. > [@kopek](#): > > I’m not sure it would be morning news but my biggest fear is some group of nutjobs making a serious attempt on one of our branches of government at the federal level. Rocket at the White House, multiple members of Congress assassinated, several Supremes taken out at the same time. Something like that and I would skip breakfast and go right for panic. This. I’d skip breakfast and head out to a friend’s farm (it is my designated bug-the-fuck-out location, per agreement). Me, the cats, basic shit I need. I could be gone fast. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/29 "2017-05-03T13:09:22Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > I’m not sure it would be morning news but my biggest fear is some group of nutjobs making a serious attempt on one of our branches of government at the federal level. Rocket at the White House, multiple members of Congress assassinated, several Supremes taken out at the same time. Something like that and I would skip breakfast and go right for panic. These days, depending on which members of Congress and which Supremes, I’m not so sure “panic” would be my reaction. > [@jtur88](#): > > The New York Yankees plane crashes. Oh yeah, that’s right up there with nuclear annihilation. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/30 "2017-05-03T13:32:25Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > I’m not sure it would be morning news but my biggest fear is some group of nutjobs making a serious attempt on one of our branches of government at the federal level. Rocket at the White House, multiple members of Congress assassinated, several Supremes taken out at the same time. Something like that and I would skip breakfast and go right for panic. You might look at the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing to see how we Brits handled that sort of event. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/31 "2017-05-03T13:41:08Z")
One of the natural disasters which would worry me would be a major earthquake in the Kanto plains where Tokyo is located. I could lose a lot of friends there. The economic impact would be horrific. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/32 "2017-05-03T13:55:30Z")
Probably that North Korea landed a nuke on Tokyo. Bye bye North Korea, bye bye South Korea, bye bye world economy for the next twenty years. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/33 "2017-05-05T03:15:09Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I was off work on September 11, 2001 and was awakened to that news. My alarm clock was tuned to the local NPR station (still is) and they were running a feed from the BBC World Service. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I got up and turned on the TV, and yes, it was true. > > ☹ I had a similar experience for my brand new job I just started on 9/10/2001…at World Financial Center 2…in New York. > [@panache45](#): > > Oh yeah, that’s right up there with nuclear annihilation. :rolleyes: So…more of a Mets fan? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/34 "2017-05-05T04:15:13Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I think that would be more like the Icelandic volcano that erupted a few years ago, the one that was about 20 letters in length and disrupted air travel all over northern Europe. We could see something like this coming in plenty of time to evacuate the immediate area, which is sparsely populated to begin with. If such an event happened, the sparsely populated immediate area would be the least of your concerns. Most of the US population would need to be evacuated. The scale of such an eruption would be without comparison with ordinary volcanoes. Regardless of where you live in North America your prospects would be grim. And might become grim for me too in France due to the effect it would have on global climate. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/35 "2017-05-05T13:20:19Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > If such an event happened, the sparsely populated immediate area would be the least of your concerns. Most of the US population would need to be evacuated. The scale of such an eruption would be without comparison with ordinary volcanoes. Regardless of where you live in North America your prospects would be grim. And might become grim for me too in France due to the effect it would have on global climate. To echo this, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (is that so hard to remember?) was a 4 on the [Volcanic Explosivity Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index). The last Yellowstone Caldera eruption was an 8. It’s a logarithmic scale, so that means 10,000x as large. So…pretty big. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/36 "2017-05-05T13:44:28Z")
Fight my ignorance here, but prior to the last eruption of Yellowstone, wasn’t there significant mountain / volcano building - all of which except the periphery disappeared - which has yet to happen this time around? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/37 "2017-05-05T14:39:01Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Most people get up in the morning, and check some news source to see what happened while they slept. What, within realistic parameters, would be the worst news you could hear? News that would tell you that your life has just changed forever, for a reason that could not have been foreseen when you went to bed the night before? > > By realistic, I exclude things like the Sun has just supernovaed, and we will know about it in 3 minutes > > Rule out nuclear war, the only nations capable of reaching us with a nuclear weapon would give off diplomatic jitters in advance. > > Even 9-11 didn’t turn into a catastrophe until hours later, and it was the response to it days and weeks later that changed people’s lives. > > Economic meltdown won’t happen until after the AM news cycle, when the panickers show up on Wall Street at 9 oclock. > > So what is the worst news you could hear in the morning? Read Larry Niven’s story _Inconstant Moon_ (or see the 1996 _Outer Limits_ episode based on it). Sun apparently novas (although it turns out, at least in the OL episode, to be a massive solar flare instead) that affects the sunward-facing side of the earth, but its only immediate result to people on the night side is a brightening of the moon. On the other hand, you’d certainly have big EM effects, and the news would be relayed to anyone watching TV or on the internet (even if the sunward side gets fried, there would be some point where people and equipment presumably wouldn’t). It’s not clear to me that a solar event of the size of a huge flare, let alone a nova, wouldn’t make more significant ripples on the dark side than the story implies. On a more realistic note, I can easily se a major catastrophe taking place – supervolcano blowing up, big meteor strike a la Tunguska, quake causing massive tsunami – that people sleeping on the other side of the world and not plugged into the news wouldn’t know about until they woke up. Better finding out that way than the way one of my mother’s friends found out about massive flooding from superstorm Sandy – by the water reaching her level on the couch in her living room and waking her up. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/38 "2017-05-05T18:24:01Z")
> [@](#): > > On a more realistic note, I can easily se a major catastrophe taking place – supervolcano blowing up, big meteor strike a la Tunguska, quake causing massive tsunami – that people sleeping on the other side of the world and not plugged into the news wouldn’t know about until they woke up. Yes, but the OP ruled out nuclear war due to advanced jitters by counties involved. In that case, the tsunami and meteorite would count (presuming meteor not detected beforehand), but the volcano probably gives off too much advanced warning. Hasn’t to be something you could not have foreseen when you went to bed the night before. The tsunami - probably no so much. If it’s far enough away that I don’t learn about it until the morning news, it’s unlikely to affect me with immediacy and end up a life-defining memory. As I understand it, US coast isn’t likely to get them for various reason, so it’d likely be an external thing to me. It’s sad that that so many died. May have rippling economic impacts for years or decades to come, depending on where it hit. But given my (and my family’s) lack of travel, it would probably not fit OP’s criteria of “News that would tell you that your life has just changed forever.” Likewise, any biological warfare or naturally occurring highly-fatal very contagious disease would take too much time to ramp up - we’d be expecting something, especially with how much the news media likes to hype things. Alien contact isn’t realistic enough. I think, right now, I’ll go with terrorist-carried-out nuclear attack that’s in the US but not in one of the ten biggest cities in US. Obviously, that would be a huge deal anywhere, but this sort of location would be the one to make me feel most like it could happen to me. Probably a dirty bomb, and it destroy/contaminate _that much_ space (suitcase bombs aren’t that powerful when you’re comparing them the weapons nations have), but it’d have a huge psychological and policy impact. You know, maybe strike the city criteria I listed before and kill someone important. More political and policy impact, even if it doesn’t feel as much like it could happen to me. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/39 "2017-05-05T20:53:25Z")
I woke to the news of a Space Shuttle buring up in re-entry. I woke up to news of President Trump. I woke up to news of hundreds of thousands dead in a tsunami. Twice. I woke to a phone call my best friend and mentor was dead. I woke to a phone call telling me my sister was dead. Yeah, it can be pretty bad. It can always be worse. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734/40 "2017-05-05T23:08:01Z")
Really, even news of a tsunami or supervolcano erupting would not have the same immediate impact that news of death of family has. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morning-news-how-bad-can-it-get/785734.md?page=3)