It could kill most of humanity. But 50 million people can survive. First there may be a war between USA, Russia, and China over resources for survival.
Whatever the Magic Killer, I believe society would more or less hold together though sheer inertia until sometime in the 2040s. I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead by then, so good luck, suckers.
Turns out they can. With SCIENCE!!
No, a nuclear explosion would do very little to alter the course of a 60 mile wide asteroid traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. In fact, a nuclear explosion in space would be surprisingly ineffectual. There is no atmosphere in space to create the blast wave that makes nuclear explosions so destructive on Earth and the detonation is too brief to make a significant difference.
A valid point. I think it would need to be something very visible and very spectacular to make people seriously consider the end of the world. Something like a rogue planet, neutron star, black hole or other object that can be seen looming in the sky slowly approaching year after year.
I mean for all we know global climate change will effectively destroy the world by 2051 and people still deny it.
Sure, we’d see unusual activity. We’re seeing unusual activity in stars all the time. But what does this particular unusual activity portend? Until we see it happen, we won’t know.
Thanks – thus they will definitely be able to predict a Gamma Ray Burst if a near star is about to explode.
I will have to calculate the results – an asteroid 60 km in diameter has to be deflected from an Earth bound trajectory by a nuclear explosion. How powerful does the explosion have to be?
Given the emergency, it would be possible to send a team of astronauts to the asteroid to bury the bomb inside the asteroid – then the explosion would have much greater effect.
I believe there were several documentaries on this in the 90s
Definitely it would be possible to deflect a 60km diameter asteroid bound for Earth. It would take a team of astronauts to deliver an atomic bomb to the asteroid and drill a 1 km well in it.
It would be more dramatic if the astronauts themselves can not be saved.
As long as Bruce Willis is available, we will have no problem:D
Surprisingly, even under the threat of total destruction, society continues fairly normally.
There is a thread somewhere on here about life in Berlin towards the end of WW2 when they knew the Russians were coming and there was little chance of stopping them and life in the city did go fairly regularly (as best it could in a city being bombed and eventually invaded).
The big kicker is it is the entire solar system, not just Earth that is being destroyed. If it was just the Earth, there would be an attempt to set up bases on both the Moon and Mars.
However, I doubt if enough people could be evacuated to either location and be able to thrive without support from Earth. (again assuming that only the Earth is being destroyed)
If it is the entire Solar system, I doubt if a ship (or multiple ships could be constructed to act as a modern days Noah’s ark) to journey out of the solar system.
Numerous Sci-Fi stories have been written on that possibility
Most Berliners survived the war.
If you look at the post war footage of Berlin, it does show a surprising amount of damage.
Just looking at the damage, I would have surmised (incorrectly) that a significant portion of the population would have been killed.
However, the point I was making is that even though there was a sense of doom coming, day to day life still kept moving on.
Of course, I suppose that most Berliners must have thought the war would be over at some point and then things would get better as opposed to every\ thing ending as proposed in the OP.
About 22,000 civilians died in the Battle of Berlin.
Your scenario gives ~35 years to build giant spaceships capable of racing to the edge of the Sol System, and beyond.
Based on thinking about it for a few seconds, I think it’s doable, so I imagine that would become a lot of people’s focus.
As I have said – many humans would survive. Thus there will be a fight over who will be saved.
35 years seems like a long time to build spaceships but a project to build spaceships to journey out of the solar system is a lot bigger project than anything ever attempted before (even with the entire world’s resources behind it)
It took roughly 10 years to build the Apollo missions to take all of 3 people (at the time) to the moon.
Another example is Space X. Despite Elon’s billions and additional support from NASA as well, it will take them 10+ years from the original concept just to get an unmanned probe to Mars
Building multiple ships (as you would want redundancy) to leave the Solar system (and to be sustainable long term) is something much bigger in scale and even throwing trillions of dollars at it will not speed it significantly.
This is ignoring the problem (as mentioned) selecting who to go.
Read this post on Interstellar Travel
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=477444&highlight=interstellar
Thanks
Reading about the battle shows just how outnumbered the Germans were during this battle and they fought it to the very end (and there was significantly more military casualties than civilian)
Interesting in that once the Soviets won, the Soviet generals tried to restore the city back to as much as normal as possible although they had a number of soviet troops who went on a rampage (in a way, I can see why but it still does not justify their actions)
Anyways, this is off-topic
If you’d asked me fifteen years ago, I would’ve had more optimism that society would hold steady for a decade or more before truly falling apart. But lately it’s become clear that rather too many people have a tenuous grasp on reality as it is, some of whom are very influential, and unfortunately the irrational stupidity of the human race knows no bounds.
I’d say if we make it to a year before we’re murdering each other openly I’d be surprised.
Although the irrational stupidity works both ways. Many powerful people would cling to their power until the very end, rather than take action that might change things. Most regular people could live in denial for a very long time.
Think about it like this. If you found out the world might end in 35 years, you still need to pay for rent and food and whatnot. Statistically, I’m probably going to die in 35-150 years anyway, but I can’t stop working.
Maybe fighting in order to receive space in the fallout shelter.