Survival Tips For Five End-Of-The-World Scenarios
In your final moments—are you not entertained?
The worst could always get worse — until it doesn’t
As Elon Musk continues to burn Twitter to the ground, there’s always a chance a planet-killing asteroid could hurl our way and take everything else.
By everything else, I don’t just mean Facebook. Though yeah, the Metaverse would go too. A publicly available asteroid risk list from the European Space Agency — an intergovernmental organization established by Convention in Paris, 1975 — shows over 1,400 near-earth objects with the potential to hit Earth in the next 1,000 years.
If one ever hits us, here’s what to expect
Writing for Forbes, contributor David Bresson described a computer simulation mapping the first moments of impact from a planet-killing asteroid:
…the energy released by the collision will cause a 300 degrees hot blast wave, igniting large areas of the Earth’s surface. The soot of the mega-fires burning on entire continents, together with dust and water vapor, will form a thick blanket of clouds in Earth’s upper atmosphere, significantly reducing the sunlight reaching the surface. Temperatures would drop for decades, reducing the growing season of plants. A winter with widespread famine in an already struggling world would be the consequences.
Uh…
Just in case that happens
The 4i-Magazine podcast interviewed Paolo Martino, Principal Engineer for HERA, the first European Planetary Defense mission at ESA, about possible defense strategies.
Because if a planet-killing asteroid hits us, we can say goodbye to more than Twitter.
What to expect: 5 scenarios
The extinction of the big blue bird could just be the beginning.
According to a study published by physicists at the University of California in Santa Barbara, we might be able to survive such an event, but only if we take the proper steps now.
So in addition to Martino’s interview, let’s review what we can learn about survival from these movies.
Scenario 1: Armageddon/Deep Impact
- Armageddon: After discovering that an asteroid the size of Texas will impact Earth in less than a month, NASA recruits a misfit team of deep-core drillers to save the planet.
- Deep Impact: A comet is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. As doomsday nears, the human race prepares for the worst.
Nuclear bombs could pulverize parts of the asteroid, forming smaller chunks that will miss Earth entirely or burn up in the terrestrial atmosphere. For asteroids about the size of one kilometer, rockets and nuclear weapons are already advanced enough to successfully intercept and destroy the celestial body completely. — Forbes
If you stepped outside and saw a big one headed for us, what do you think would happen? Would Morgan Freeman rally us together? Or would most of us quietly — or loudly — go see the movie by Michael Bay instead?
If we go see Armageddon…can we just say it was in honor of my man Bruce Willis?
Scenario 2: Starship Troopers
- Starship Troopers: Humans in a fascist, militaristic future wage war with giant alien bugs.
With larger Chicxulub-sized asteroids, this strategy will not work, as the necessary yield to vaporize or break up the entire mass exceeds the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. However, a series of blasts from conventional atom bombs could push the asteroid from its collision course if it is intercepted in time. — Forbes
Here’s the problem: not all asteroids are creating equal.
Some are just rocks full of potentially valuable cell phone components. Break’em apart and grab what you can.
Other asteroids are secretly eggs full of bugs ready to…well, no one is quite sure what the bugs wanted to do before the military decided to exterminate them.
The propaganda is clear, though. Sign up for military service and get to meet Doogie Howser.
Scenario 3: Greenland/2012
- Greenland: A family struggles for survival in the face of a cataclysmic natural disaster.
- 2012: A frustrated writer struggles to keep his family alive when a series of global catastrophes threatens to annihilate mankind.
The [next] strategy involves large underground bunkers to survive the impact and its aftermath. Citing the case that many burrowing species or species living in the deep sea survived the mass extinction 66 million years ago, the authors conclude that bunkers could also save humankind. Underground facilities would protect humans from the direct effects of the impact, like the blast and fires, and the aftermath, like an impact winter. — Forbes
Technically, 2012 isn’t about a planet-killing asteroid. Minor spoiler, it is instead about the Earth’s magnetic poles shifting with disastrous consequences.
Yeah…
The good part is that if you ignore that explanation, a few CGI asteroids would convince you this was an alternate ending to Armageddon. Besides, who can turn down a movie with John Cusack AND Woody Harrselson AND Chiwetel Ejiofor AND Amanda Peet AND Thandiwe Newton (Vogue says to spell it right, folks)…
As for Greenland? It is a masterclass in how to do infinitely more with an infinitely smaller budget.
Scenario 4: Don’t Look Up
- Don’t Look Up: Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn humankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.
Lampooned in the successful Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, [this strategy] is to ignore the problem until it is too late. The authors analyzed only technological aspects behind a successful defense strategy, not political issues involved in developing such a mission in time. To design, construct and send a series of nuclear devices into space would require governments and institutions from many countries to work together. The authors conclude that “in any realistic scenario of an existential threat, presumably logic would prevail, at least one would hope.” — Forbes
In her article Good Foundations Aren’t Always Cheerful, Eve Moran builds on a Vulture article by asking what happens once humanity finds out a big stupid rock is about to knock them a good one.
I desperately hope Adam McKay got it wrong. I don’t want to die so the people who survive can have a cheaper cell phone, but sometimes it feels like that’s what we’re all asked to do so the system can keep doing what it’s doing.
Scenario 5: The Most Likely Scenario
A planet-killing asteroid last hit Earth approximately 66 million years ago. Earth gets hit with one every 100 to 200 million years. I can do the math. With every passing year, we’re a little closer to a statistically due debt. In the cosmic scale, that may as well be tomorrow.
Okay, sure, according to the ESA’s actual list of actual asteroids that could actually hit earth, most of them are smaller than one kilometer. But a planet-killing asteroid doesn’t need to be as big as a city to kill a planet. It just needs to disrupt something we didn’t understand was essential until it was gone.
It’s easy to criticize what’s happening at Twitter. And at Medium. But for better or worse, platforms like those are an extension of the planet.
Medium’s homepage gets confused with a tiny nudge of the algorithm. Elon Musk devastated Twitter’s ecosystem with the single activation (then deactivation) of an $8 identity verification system. Earth’s ecosystem is just as fragile.
Scientists concluded that even if we knew an asteroid as powerful as Elon Musk was headed for Earth, current technology would be incapable of stopping it.
We may as well prepare for a bitter end.
Seeking a friend for the end of the melancholy movie
If you knew there was no way to stop it…how would you choose to meet the end? I would at least watch these three movies.
- The Road: In a dangerous post-apocalyptic world, an ailing father defends his son as they slowly travel to the sea.
- Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.
- Melancholia: Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.
Is there still hope?
Is it a spoiler to tell you that the only confirmed person to survive the apocalypse in Don’t Look Up was Jonah Hill?
More than that, we have so much good reason for hope these days. The 2022 US mid-term elections delivered a record number of trans people to state legislatures.
It turns out elections have trans consequences.
Things aren’t perfect. I guess they never will be. But if I’m present with the here and now — like Leo DiCaprio’s character sitting down for one last dinner with friends and family—I find that I already have so much to be grateful for.
Besides, I’m not sure I’d want to live forever.
What I need is what I’ve got right now.
And what I’ve got right now is at least a few more movies to watch.
At least until my wife comes home…then all bets are off on Taco Bell.
Note: all movie descriptions from IMDB
Additional reading
- Humanity Could Survive A ’Planet-Killer’ Asteroid, A New Study Says (Forbes)
- Will An Asteroid Ever Hit Earth? (NASA)
- The first episode of the 4i-magazine podcast talks about risky asteroids: How to deflect an asteroid avoiding its collision with our planet (4i-Mag)
- Trevor Noah Sums Up Elon Musk’s Twitter Problems With Perfect Sports Analogy
- “I’m Taking Back What’s Mine”: The Many Lives Of Thandiwe Newton
The End (damn girl, that’s dark)
