Little or No Warning

The best coarse of action to survive an asteroid or comet impact is to evacuate the zone of destruction prior to the time of impact. The zone of destruction is defined as the area that will receive a blast wave 1-psi or greater overpressure and if the impactor strikes the ocean, the area affected by the tsunami.

But evacuation may not always be an option. Geological and governmental barriers, point-of-impact uncertainty, limits on modes of transportation and limited time may preclude effective evacuation. Very large impactors (> 5 miles in diameter) may rain destruction over the entire planet. An alternative option is to construct an expedient blast shelter to survive the immediate effects of the impact. A 50-psi blast shelter will protect approximately 98% of the area within the zone of destruction.

The shelter proposed in this website is not designed to withstand the effects of a large tsunami, such as a mile high wave. The forces and pressures are just too great. The shelter will be crushed and flood. For this reason, it is recommended the shelter be located inland from the ocean and elevated atop hills or mountains. As a large tsunami wave moves inland, the wave will lose wave height, energy and cohesiveness. The wave will evolve into an incoherent wavefront composed of salt water, foam and debris. The proposed shelter is designed to provide some limited protection to this smaller wavefront.

If the impactor is large (> 0.5 miles in diameter), the evacuation or sheltering must be coupled with proper provisioning of food and water for long-term survival.

The smaller the impactor (meteor, comet fragments), the more likely the object will strike with little or no warning.

The lack of warning on an impending impact may come about because:

* Smaller objects are harder to detect.

* We have failed to invest in an adequate NEO detection program.

* Or because the governments of the world, fearing widespread panic and disorder, and also because they can offer no solution, fail to inform the general public in a timely manner.

Under these circumstances, is there any practical advice that can be given?

Let’s start out with the case of NO WARNING.

Without any advanced warning, the first consideration is: it is more likely that the Earth will be struck by a smaller object than by a larger one.

The impact of a smaller object will limit the area of destruction significantly. Damage will be localized. Help should be on the way. The objective will be to survive until help arrives. One critical goal will be to survive the blast wave.

* If you see a brilliant flash of light and feel intense heat, lay flat on the ground face down immediately. Use your hands to cover your ears. You are about to be hit by a blast wave. This blast wave will kill you unless you are flat on the ground. Taking this course of action may increase your probability of survival significantly.

* If you see a brilliant flash of light but do not feel intense heat, you will have several seconds to seek shelter. An underground or below ground-level shelter is best. Low spots or depressions in the ground such as ditches may be adequate but you must lay face down. Do not stand in front of a window. The blast wave will splinter glass into a thousand sharp chards that can easily snuff your life out.

After impact, if you are close to the impact site, a thick smoky fog will quickly envelop the area. The smoke will contain several dangerous gases. Take a swath of cloth and soak it in water and ring it out. Cover your nose and mouth. Several of these gases will have an affinity towards water. (The few individuals that survived the gassing at Auschwitz, were those that were on the floor near puddles of water.)

In the case of LITTLE WARNING, perhaps a few hours or a couple days or even a few weeks, the following points should be considered:

A rough estimate of the size of the impactor and the potential impact site will be made. This rough information will be critical. An exact impact point prediction will be problematic because some meteors explode into smaller meteors as they travel through the Earth’s atmosphere, and spiral off in different directions. Common-sense advice is to be out of the impact zone of destruction at the time of impact. The zone of destruction is the area within the 1-psi blast wave of the point of impact. Evacuate this area immediately.

* Do not spend hours packing. Take the warnings seriously and leave immediately.

* Don’t panic. Don’t be the individual who drove down the highway at 110 mph only to slam his vehicle into another car, snarling traffic to a dead stop.

* If a stalled vehicle or accidents block the highway, take the initiative and push these vehicles to one side of the roadway. Keep the traffic flowing.

* If the main highways become hopelessly gridlocked, exit onto back roads. Since many of these back roads are not on a map and because these roads turn and meander in very strange ways, a good internal sense of direction or a compass or GPS is important.

* Avoid routes that pass through major cities because these highways will gridlock.

* Local and State Governments should restrict tractor-trailer rigs from the highway. This is the time to move people, not goods.

* State governments should convert two lane highways into single direction roadways to facilitate evacuation. This approach is similar to evacuation plans used along the East Coast of the U.S. during hurricane threats.

* Federal and national governments should relax border and custom checkpoints to neutralize these potential chokepoints.

If you live along the coast and the point of impact is projected to be the adjacent ocean (or large lake), relocate far inland. Seek high ground away from large inland waterways where tidal bores could penetrate.

If you are outside the zone of destruction and the impactor is of medium to large size:

*Shut off gas lines on your homes. This will minimize some of the fires and explosions after the impact.

* Earthquakes will knock items from shelves, cabinets and refrigerators onto the floor. Glassware will break. If you have food stored away in canning jars, these will be destroyed unless they are well protected.

Seek below-ground shelter at the time of impact. Unless the impactor is small, or is very far away, or unless you feel very, very lucky; this is not the time to stand outside and watch the meteor hit.

After the impact, you may experience a variety of rare phenomena including magnetic storms and black rain. For smaller impactors, the dust in the sky may create an artificial daylight. In the darkness of the night’s sky, the reflected light may be sufficient to read a newspaper at midnight.

For a large impactor (greater than a half mile in diameter), a dust shroud may block sunlight from the entire Earth for several months or years. At least one growing season may be lost. Survival will depend on food and this food will be grains, corn and beans. For this reason, all herds of farm animals should be thinned out immediately.

A population weakened by malnutrition and starvation will be susceptible to disease and plagues. Most of the deaths from a 0.5-mile impactor will come from starvation and disease.

An impact from a large meteor or a comet fragment may kick up a lot of dust in the atmosphere. The dust may make it difficult to drive due to limited visibility. It will be like driving in a thick dust storm. This will cause many traffic accidents. The dust will also clog the car or truck’s air filter. Aircraft traffic will also be curtailed for the same reasons. One of the more reliable forms of transportation for people and goods for several months after a large impact will be trains and boats. This is provided their infrastructure is not destroyed by the impact.

Since transportation will come to an abrupt halt after a large impact. It may be wise for individuals in cities to relocate to rural settings before the meteor strikes. This is especially true if you have relatives in the countryside. This will keep you closer to stored food supplies.

Choke points: Tunnels represent a potential choke point to evacuation plans. There have been a number of accidents within tunnels that have produced deadly fires that have shut down tunnels for days and weeks. The panic associated with a potential impact is very likely to produce a similar accident. Yet a tunnel represents a major evacuation route. Therefore lets explore several alternatives in evacuations through tunnels. As an example, let us consider the channel tunnel that connects England and France. This approach could equally apply to any large tunnel complex.

* Assemble a massive fleet of buses from all over England. The buses will ferry individuals through the potential choke point, the channel tunnel. The buses must route from one major transportation node, for example a major train station, to another node on the other side of the tunnel. After dropping off a load of passengers, the bus would return to the initial node to pick up another load of passengers.

* Another alternative is to restrict truck traffic from the tunnel and then convert the two way tunnel traffic to one way traffic. This would double the traffic flow and reduce the potential for large accidents that could be difficult to clear.

* Another alternative is to restrict all motorized traffic from the tunnels and use the tunnels for foot traffic only. Most individuals are able to make the 32-mile journey on foot in two days. The elderly, the infirm, and infants and very small children with their mothers could make the journey by tunnel train. Buses and trains on the French side could be organized to pick up the people as they exited the tunnel and transport them to safe locations.

Again, citing England as an example, another transportation route is the waterways. This could be like the Dunkirk evacuation in reverse. The Battle of Dunkirk is not remembered for the number of people killed or captured. It was remembered for how many lives were saved, 340,000 men, an army. The evacuation came about because it became a "national imperative". Every Englishman that was able chipped in and made it happen. Thousands of boats and ships, large and small, were drafted into service. The evacuation was executed under very severe conditions of war and constant bombardment. But the result was that the lives of a third of a million men were saved in a matter of days.

An estimate of the damage area from a meteor impact based on the size of the impactor is provided in the following table.

Devastation Caused by a Meteor Impact of a Given Size

Diameter (English Units)	Diameter (Metric Units)	Effect	Area of Destruction
150-350 ft.	50-100 m.	Local Destruction	A small city
500 ft.	160 m.	Local Destruction	A large city
1100 ft.	350 m.	Regional Devastation	A small state
0.3-0.5 mile	500-900 m.	Regional Devastation	A country
> 0.6 miles	> 1 km.	Global Catastrophe	A continent + global climatic disruption
6 miles	10 km.	Major Extinction Event	The entire Earth

BACK