Speaking of 'burrows', where exactly does the notion come from, apart from movies like 'Deep Impact', that one would be any safer underground?
This isn't just a 'bigger nuclear strike'. Personally, I'd just as soon take my chances on a bald hilltop on very high ground, rather than deal with the massive ground shock wave that's ring the Earth like a bell and possibly collapse even reinforced subterranean structures.
What we'd be looking at is an event that is part massive earthquake, part Tsunami, part falling debris and part atmospheric occlusion.
Ideally, I'd be in the mountains somewhere above the possibility of any seismic wave threat, and near the mouth of a cave in case debris starts falling out of the sky. I would in no case go farther into the cave than I could dig myself out of, should a collapse occur.
Having overhead cover is probably a really good idea. Being way underground, might not be.
I don't think that there's anything to this, at this time. It will happen eventually. It has many times in the past.
It makes for an interesting intellectual exercise though.
Suppose you're the President. You have been briefed that such an event is going to take place. When do you notify the public, or do you, at all? You can't possibly shelter them all. Is there a benefit to the public from notifying them? What are most people going to do with that warning, besides jump in their cars with the family pictures a day or two before 'impact day' and try to drive somewhere, making the roads useless to all?
On the other hand, the object is going to become public knowledge before it strikes. It isn't going to sneak up on us. Withholding such knowledge would be disatrous for not just a particular government, but for the concept of government.
I would not warn the public if President probably.
It would be the hardest decision I would ever make no doubt....could not bear the thought of letting them die.....but there would be NOTHING I could do.
An asteroid moving at incredible speeds would not be deflected with a couple nuclear blasts even.
This isn't just a 'bigger nuclear strike'. Personally, I'd just as soon take my chances on a bald hilltop on very high ground, rather than deal with the massive ground shock wave that's ring the Earth like a bell and possibly collapse even reinforced subterranean structures.
Probably because of the firestorms. Read below:
Dino-killing asteroid sparked global fires, scientists believe
By Richard Stenger
CNN
(CNN) --A giant space rock that hit the Earth eons ago scattered high-velocity rubble over the planet, setting off wildfires that quickly spread over much of the equatorial region, North America and the Indian subcontinent, scientists announced this week.
The instant inferno, thought to have hastened the end of the dinosaurs, could have spared Europe, northern Asia, Antarctica and much of Australia, according to David Kring of the University of Arizona and Daniel Durda of the Southwest Research Institute.
The duo, who speculated that the mega-blazes needed only several days to spread around the world, said the horrific scenario followed the impact of a big space boulder in Chicxulub, Mexico.
"The fires were generated after debris ejected from the crater was lofted far above the Earth's atmosphere and rained back down over a period of about four days," Kring said.
"Like countless trillions of meteors, the debris heated the atmosphere and surface temperatures so intensely that ground vegetation spontaneously ignited."
An immense impact crater lies beneath the site in the Yucatan Peninsula. The blast, which took place 65 million years ago, heralded the end of the Cretaceous Period.
More than three-quarters of the plant and animal species on the planet did not survive the transition to the Tertiary Period, when mammals replaced dinosaurs as the dominant species.
The collision unleashed an estimated 10 billion times more energy than did the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, the scientists said.
Some debris concentrated around the impact site and more drifted westward over the spinning Earth and concentrated on the opposite side around India, the researchers said.
"The material was launched around Earth," Kring said. "Then, because the Earth rotates, it turned beneath [the] plume of debris and the fires migrated westward. That's what caused the wildfire pattern."
The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, elaborates on rudimentary climate wildfire models developed by University of Arizona planetary scientist Jay Melosh and others.
"We've added more detail in re-evaluating the extent of the wildfires. Our new calculations show that the fires were not ignited in a single pulse, but in multiple pulses at different times around the world," Kring said.
Planetary scientist Frank Kyte of the University of California, Los Angeles, said the wildfire models make sense.
"It all sounds reasonable. I certainly believe that there were wildfires. I'm revising a paper now that reports significant amounts of soot in KT sediments [which mark the geologic boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods] from the central north Pacific, so fires must have been very widespread."