Asteroid?

If you are a massive geek, you will be aware that in recent days, Jupiter took a direct hit from a giant asteroid which was heading roughly in the direction of the Earth.






While it is great news that Jupiter got hit and not Earth, Jupiter isn’t going to be here every time to save us, it has other places to be it’s got moons to look after and an orbit to fulfil.



With several asteroids sharing an orbit with the Earth, inevitably, we will eventually get one, hopefully it will land on America like it always does in the films, they will be able to sort that shit out won’t they? They have the self belief and the gumption and the never say die attitude that would get us through.

Well, no. Not really. The size and speed of the asteroids on the orbit path of Earth would probably destroy 70-85% of all life on the continent it hits in the first few days. The Tunguska Event involved a small comet disintegrating some 5000 ft above ground level in Siberia. Even so, its effect on ground level was 1000 times more powerful than the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I would like to see Bruce Willis have a crack at sorting that.




Too old for this shit etc...


If you are lucky enough not to be in the epicentre of the blast, it would be a good idea to get up a hill, a mountain, the highest ground you can find really (although bear in mind that oxygen starts to get thinner the higher you go.) The chances are that any asteroid would hit the sea, as it covers 75% of the Earth, this will cause the sea levels to rise by between 3 metres and 300 metres, so all you smug people who live in Brighton or San Francisco because you’re cool. HAHA.





If you are hill people or particularly good at surfing, then you have survived phase one of the tidal wave, well done. Next up, the firestorms! Most of these Asteroids contain a core of dense radioactive material, and as well as that, if they are to dent the Earth deeply enough they will release magma beneath the surface of the earth by between 12 and 120 miles depending on the angle that it hits at. Expect global firestorms. The water that you were running away from now becomes your only real means of survival. The trick is to get on high ground, but not too high. Fortunately the firestorms will only last for a week or so, so umbrellas at the ready.



So, providing we survive the impact, tsunamis and firestorms, we’re safe right? Well not really. For the following 12-15 months as a result of the nitrogen and sulphur dioxide in the air, there will be a constant flow of acid rain. Killing most plantlife, destroying and disfiguring statues and buildings made from limestone and leaving our drinking water supply decimated. Good job there are hundreds of millions of litres of bottled drinking water stored in supermarkets across the globe.

Any plants that survive the acid rain will not be able to photosynthesise because of the giant dustclouds obscuring sunlight from the Earth. But never fear, with millions of supermarkets worldwide, there will be a large amount of food to hunt down in the following months. So surviving the famine and droughtas well as the acid rain firestorm tsunami and actual impact of the Asteroid hitting, will probably leave us able to get back to normal? Well, there is the small matter of nuclear radiation.



You think that's bad? just wait until the asteroid hits.

Asteroids tend to be made from bits of stars and tend to be incredibly radioactive, due to the fact that the atoms which make up these are heavier due to having extra neutrons, as well as that, the centre of the earth is also incredibly radioactive, due to the fact that the earth is essentially made up of several asteroids that have crashed into each other, all of which were incredibly radioactive. This means most of the surviving population will be subject to radiation sickness, birth defects or sterility and cancer. I don't mean to paint a bleak picture but it really doesn't look good. This doesn't necassarily have to drastically effect your way of life, providing either you are a survivalist, or we colonise other planets in the not too distant future.

So don't despair, I have given you a head start, and if you clicked on this link expecting a gushy geeky reminisce about the 1970s computer game 'asteroid', then appy poly gys, as Anthony Burgess might say, just so you are not completely dissapointed, here is a screenshot.



because life used to be so simple when asteroids could be destroyed by a triangle with three dots coming out of it.