I Survived 2010 WC9

[orangecrush]

An asteroid the size of the Statue of Liberty will zoom past Earth on Tuesday.


The asteroid, dubbed 2010 WC9, is about the size of a football field and will fly past Earth at about 28,655 miles per hour, according to EarthSky. It will come within 126,419 miles of Earth — the closest it has come to our planet in 300 years — though it is still considered a safe passing distance.

The asteroid is expected to whiz past Earth at 6:05 p.m. E.T. on Tuesday, May 15.



https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/5276082/2010-wc9-asteroid-time





How much damage from a 200 meter asteroid?



"With this formula, we get around 1.5 x 10^19 Joules. For comparison, an average ton of TNT releases 4.184 x 10^9 Joules, so this leads to 3.6 gigatons of explosive energy. That’s 3,600 megatons of energy.

For comparison, the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, was originally designed to release the energy equivalent of 100 megatons (100 million tons) of TNT. So our impactor would be 36 times more powerful than even that device.

According to the Earth Impact Effects Program, at at energy level, if it impacted land, it would create a crater that was four miles wide and nearly two thousand feet deep. Any city within 30 miles of the blast would not only be hit by a massive blast of heat that would set most flammable objects on fire and cause third-degree burns on the human body, but the city would be exposed to an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 and suffer from a blast wave packing a force of 8 PSI or greater and winds of 250 mph, or greater. Cities that were sixty miles from the impact would suffer damage from the major earthquake, and they would also be hit by a blast packing winds of 80 mph, which would shatter glass windows but also damage roofs. The earthquakes and blast wave would damage cities and kill people up to 100 miles from the impact zone.

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In other words, if we dropped the asteroid on top of Washington, D.C., for example, impact would practically turn the entire city, and the rest of the metropolitan area, into a smoldering crater. At the very least, this means that the President of the U.S., and many other government agents, will likely be dead. In fact, not only will the city be dead, but every major city within only 10 miles from the impact crater will be dead, so Arlington (where the Pentagon is), Alexandria, and many other towns and cities near Washington, D.C. are gone. It is estimated that approximately 6 million people live within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, which means that in the first few seconds of the disaster, the death toll is likely at 6 million people."


https://www.quora.com/How-much-meteor-of-200-meters-diameter-would-cause-damages-to-earth

[SCantiGOP]

1. Well, that was a cheerful take

[orangecrush]

2. I was...