Re: Comet impact in the Eastern United States - Feasibility of Evacuation

In article
<606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7404@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Matt Browne SFW <matt.h.browne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
living there? Can FEMA prepare for this and actually organize an
evacuation if it becomes necessary? (on a much smaller scale this
didn't go so well before Katrina hit New Orleans). What would be the
general prerequisites?

The assumptions are the following: Four weeks before the impact, it's
clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States. Every day the
comet's trajectory can be calculated more precisely. Two weeks before
it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area. The
comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
description:

There is only one natural disaster that has the potential to destroy
all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet. This spectacular docu-
drama envisages the consequences of such an impact. Based on
contributions from NASA, the US military and leading scientists,
Impact Earth pieces together fact and fiction to show how humans would
cope with a catastrophic interplanetary event. The film tells the
story of two scientists who discover that a comet is on a collision
course with Earth. They propose two radically different plans to
counter the threat: a nuclear strike to deflect the comet; and an
evacuation of the threatened zone.

The drama begins when an unidentified Near Earth Object (NEO) hurtles
through Earth's atmosphere and plunges into the sea off the west coast
of Ireland. Air hostess Marcie photographs the object on her mobile
phone as her plane prepares to land at Shannon airport. Her flight
narrowly misses disaster as a huge tsunami engulfs the airport and
vast areas of the West Coast. The gigantic wave leaves hundreds of
thousands dead, injured and homeless.

Upon hearing news of the Irish tsunami, two leading scientists rush to
the scene. Englishman Josh Hayden and American Neil Gant work for the
NEO department of NASA. Arriving in Galway, they link up with resident
scientists Brendan Kelly and Ly Tam to try and establish what
happened.

As the team witnesses the devastation wrought, Neil is tormented by
guilt that such a deadly object could have slipped through their
radar. "Our job is to watch objects in space," he says. "If it's not
our responsibility, whose is it?" Using evidence from the scene and
images from Marcie's phone, the team realises that the NEO was a
comet. It seems that the comet's approach was such that the sun's
glare hid it from view.

Heading back to America, Josh concludes that they have witnessed an
event that occurs once every few thousand years - but Neil is not so
sanguine. He becomes obsessed with the idea of another comet heading
to Earth, and spends his time scanning data from astronomers around
the globe. Before long, he accumulates evidence that another comet is
on a collision course with Earth - due to strike almost a year after
the Galway disaster. "One year on, Earth could be right back in the
firing line again," Neil tells a sceptical Josh. It would seem that
the Irish comet was part of a larger string of objects. "What hit
Ireland was a fragment," Neil says. "What we're looking at now is the
rest of the mass."

Josh refuses to believe Neil's conjectures, forcing Neil to go behind
his friend's back to leak the story to the press. Panic spreads like
wildfire and, with the Dow Jones plunging, General Harris (Don
Warrington, 'New Street Law', 'Rising Damp') of the US military seeks
advice on how to confront the threat. Josh recommends a plan to
deflect the comet using controlled nuclear explosions, but Neil
believes this plan could end in disaster. If the comet is too fragile,
Neil posits, the explosions could shatter it into a thousand deadly
pieces that would rain down across the planet. "It would be comparable
to a nuclear war," he says.

Neil's advice, however, is radical: "America has to take to take the
hit," he says. His plan is to evacuate the population of the impact
zone, moving 100 million people from the East to the West Coast of
America and away from the predicted impact site around Pennsylvania.
But the exact location of the comet's strike and the extent of the
devastation cannot be calculated until the last moment, creating a
tense race against time to complete the biggest exodus in history.

Any thoughts about this?

--
Matt Browne
My webpage is at http://www.meet-matt-browne.com
"As a race, we survive on planet Earth purely by geological consent."
Bill McGuire

Yeah, real simple: The area to be evacuated can't possibly be. Too much
area, too many bodies, not enough transport to take them away, and not
enough places to stack them even if there was enough transport.

There are going to be a shitload of dead bodies. (On second thought,
there may be very few *BODIES*, but there are still gonna be a shitload
of deaths)

The fireball will likely be visible in Colorado, DC, and even Maine.
Might even se it in Atlanta.

The shockwave will likely level Chicago, and will almost certainly
destroy Detroit, just to name the two biggies, and would likely erase
Ohio from the map. Never mind everything else closer. The Virginias
would take a HUGE hit. I'd expect New York would feel it, even if the
damage there wasn't huge. The shockwave MAY even cause the New Madrid
fault to let go, which has a more-than-reasonable chance of unleashing a
flood down the entire Missisippi river valley like has never been seen
as the Great Lakes head south for the Gulf of Mexico en masse. The
"fallout" will blanket pretty much everything east, and it wouldn't
surprise me if most of it came down as molten/flaming chunks out to 500+
miles downrange, creating a firestorm that would make the Dresden
firebombing or the Hiroshima/Nagasaki nuke hits look like a kid playing
with a book of matches in a sandbox the size of a football field by
comparison.

In short, regardless of evacuation attempts, I'd expect casualties in
the millions, and that most of the northeast corner of the US would
essentially cease to exist as a habitable piece of land.

--
Don Bruder - dakidd@xxxxxxxxx - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd> for more info
.