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After watching a couple of YouTube videos (yes it's 0309 in the morning here)...it made me curious.

The Premise

A world-ending asteroid has been detected. Somehow word gets out and we're not left in the dark as it speeds towards Earth. We've determined it's a 99.2% likelihood of an impact, so we're not really questioning it. The event will occur in four and a half weeks, approximately 33 days from the start of this converstion.

The Question

What do you see happening? Avoid politics obviously, but do you come down on the optimistic side - hoping we'd somewhat calmly accept it...or do you see the world burning and everyone killing eachother before the big rock in the sky falls? How long do you think modern culture would continue? General ideas/thoughts/schemes?

Also, how would you personally respond?

Probably the first time humanity would work together and try to destroy it before it destroys us.

So an international "Challenge Accepted"?

I assume we would deny the comet is real, deny the proof it will hit us, and otherwise be unable to do anything meaningful in the face of disaster until it is too late.

The most selfish elements in our society would do whatever it took to get everything they ever wanted before the boom. Religious fanatics would either batten down to make peace with their impending death or see no reason to hold back and "hilarity" would ensue. Not specifying any religion as I think it'll be damn near universal. Meanwhile all the more sensible people who have any sort of drive to do so will attempt to stop it. IF they succeed, they will be left dealing with the irreversible effects of the previous two groups.


That's providing, of course, that someone doesn't say "screw it" and start lobbing nukes for the lulz.

We'd hopefully see a concerted effort to avoid the disaster (most likely while ignoring various groups who would end up embracing the impending doom as a sign they were right all along). I suspect those efforts might get more desperate as time wore on and I wouldn't discount an escalating series of last-ditch attempts made by individual countries or groups as we got closer to the impact time.

One thing's for sure, if we did manage to avoid disaster through a concerted joint effort on the part of all of humanity, very little would change afterwards. I think we'd very quickly devolve back into bickering over who should take credit for saving the planet.

I imagin that just about every ICBM the world could muster would be thrown at the thing to either destroy or knock it off course. Russia and China have satellites and are able to access telescopes, after all. Assuming the US spotted it first, you'd have 24 hours whilst everyone cross verified and double checked the calculations; but a call going out saying 'Ain't none of us gonna be here in five weeks' from the U.S. President would garner more or less whatever commitment was needed I should think.

The stock market would implode, the prices of bunkers would spike, a submarine would be rapidly refitted as Sea Force 1 to keep the vital elements of the US Government alive.

Areas with a strong sense of community would go the calm, docile acceptance. Some would undoubtedly go for longshot. None of the rocket launch sites would be remotely safe while there were rockets on the ground, as many try to get into space. vacation areas would swarm as people went after their bucket lists.There would be mass desertions of military personnel, mass quitting of employees, and then a wave of essential companies paying absurd salaries to try to keep utilities operational.After all, their budget only has to last 33 days.

All of this would be documented in impossible granularity as youtube streamers and instagrams. Memes would enjoy their final month, until the day finally came. Then if you had a bunker, or knew where a tunnel under a mountain was, you'd go for it. If you didn't, you'd treat it much like the eclipse last year. Go outside, and watch your doom come falling down.

It really depends on how big the event will be. World ending in the sense that everything will die after the atmosphere ignites or world ending that it destroys a large part of Earth completely changing the way we do things?

Stand in the predicted impact zone of the asteroid (assuming it isn't the sea) with a baseball bat and repeatedly insist that "I got this" on account of the fact I'm going to hit it back

Big question though, would everyone quit their jobs immediately? It would seem pretty logical.

People would loot for food...but would the stores even care if everyone just said "feth it" and left? Would any news channels actually stay in business. What about doctors - do you bail on your patients? Utilities companies - do you keep the power on if no one is there running the plants? Can hospitals last long enough on emergency power?

I wonder what the outcome of everyone just quitting would be...and how many people would keep trying to work just to keep busy or distracted. How many people are selfless enough to continue to try to provide a service in the face of absolute destruction?

I mean, how many of us would keep doing what we're doing?

With only a month to go we're basically stuffed

(with longer we might just be able to come up with something that could deliver nuclear weapons to an asteroid to knock it off course but we've not got anything at the moment, and we'd also want to apply the force as far from earth as possible as if it gets close even a big bang will just end up with us getting hit with a big radioactive mess)

so somebody spots the rock and says it will hit, ( if the info gets out lots more scientists check the data and at least some will report that yup we're going to be hit

At that point government pushback begins with the official story becoming a near miss is going to happen to minimise panic, instuments that can be manipulated will be to so show the near miss story. Conspiracy sites and some independants will disagree (other independants will support the government, after all if they know we're doomed why worry folk)

If we're lucky the 'offical' near miss story largely sticks and the few true believers get to say I told you so as we're all vaporised

If we're unlucky enough folk belive the truth to generate riot, collapse of a good chunk of the social order so a month of misery, scrambling for safety, martial law and then bang

(that's assuming it's a real planet killer, if it's something that some people might survive it's much more likely the government would tell us, go for martial law right away and try and set things up for a functional state to survive)

As others have stated. governments will lie through their teethes to try and minimize the panic (100% justified) while simultaneously attempting to muster whatever they can to stop the thing. (Areosmith intensifies)

not sure if different countries will try and work together. but im pretty sure most of the big super powers already have contingency plans to deal with this sort of thing.

the general public will probably still panic, looting riots, and whatever since there is only a very slim chance at survival so party hardy. many will probably be at whatever religious institutions to find closure.

(personally id probably go party hard my self but not the crime kind just drinking and hanging with friends)

IF by some Miracle that the government plan works and we are saved then i cant even imagine the discord that needs to be cleaned up.

No seriously. I think we'd dick around, not really deal with the problem while dicking around, and human civilization as we know it would end.

 Elbows wrote:
Big question though, would everyone quit their jobs immediately? It would seem pretty logical.

Just a reminder that well after the aliens landed in Independence Day, Vivica Fox was still out there shaking her ass. Gotta grind for that bread.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
The stock market would implode, the prices of bunkers would spike, a submarine would be rapidly refitted as Sea Force 1 to keep the vital elements of the US Government alive.

Areas with a strong sense of community would go the calm, docile acceptance. .

That isn't at all consistent with areas with a strong sense of communities in disasters. They tend to go ape****, going after outsiders first, and then each other as scapegoats as things continue to fall apart.
The Black Death and other End Times scenarios (as people perceived them) came with a lot of misdirected butchery by 'communities.'


As to the first bit-- the vital parts of the US government (the parts focused on health, aid, infrastructure and trade) wouldn't fit on a sub. They'd be forced to make do while the elected Temps wandered off with vital emergency kit.

Elon Musk reveals plans for a railgun.

China, Russia and America all try to get the other guys look like they were the first ones to invent a planet-buster superweapon.

Said Planetbuster is used.

Best Meteor shower ever.

Elon Musk calls Vladimir Putin a pedophile.

I'm a little curious by all of the "the government would cover it up!" kind of thoughts here. That's something I would absolutely understand if the timeline was substantialy different - say, we have a year or 18 months or something and certain governments want to genuinely try to find a way to survive or stop the asteroid, etc.

But if we're talking a true 30 day time-scale...the government wouldn't exist. No person who didn't have a ticket to a fancy shelter would give two feths about the continuity of government or the heads of state going into some special nuclear shelter. Perhaps my previous experience as a federal agent has biased me...but at the end of the day the government is just people, not any different from you or I. I know for a fact my whole department or agency would have said "piss it" and left duty to be with our families, etc.

If anything the White House would simply go black-out and you'd never hear from the people finding way to shelter, lol.

I agree with that.

 Gael Knight wrote:
It really depends on how big the event will be. World ending in the sense that everything will die after the atmosphere ignites or world ending that it destroys a large part of Earth completely changing the way we do things?

Stand in the predicted impact zone of the asteroid (assuming it isn't the sea) with a baseball bat and repeatedly insist that "I got this" on account of the fact I'm going to hit it back

Hey if its good enough for OPM its good enough for me.

 Ouze wrote:
I assume we would deny the comet is real, deny the proof it will hit us, and otherwise be unable to do anything meaningful in the face of disaster until it is too late.

This. One only has to observe our reaction to an already non-fictional threat of catastrophe to see that this is how we would react.

I assume there would be division among those who believe a specific way on how to handle it.

Read the book The Last Policeman.
In a world going to be hit by a massive asteroid, what do you do? For one policeman it's solving this apparent suicide he believes is a murder.


The book explores how people act during such an end times scenario.

 Ginjitzu wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I assume we would deny the comet is real, deny the proof it will hit us, and otherwise be unable to do anything meaningful in the face of disaster until it is too late.

This. One only has to observe our reaction to an already non-fictional threat of catastrophe to see that this is how we would react.

If you're talking about climate change, clearly you can see some fundamental differences between that and a 30-day asteroid strike scenario.

 gorgon wrote:

 Ginjitzu wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I assume we would deny the comet is real, deny the proof it will hit us, and otherwise be unable to do anything meaningful in the face of disaster until it is too late.

This. One only has to observe our reaction to an already non-fictional threat of catastrophe to see that this is how we would react.

If you're talking about climate change, clearly you can see some fundamental differences between that and a 30-day asteroid strike scenario.

In a way, having to clarify your statement with "If you're talking about climate change..." somewhat proves the point that there are many things that some portions of society refuse to accept, for one reason or another, regardless of the substantiation provided by those that are probably far more qualified than the general masses to provide. These days everyone is a skeptic.

Personally I hope this scenario doesn't come to pass in my lifetime, or that by the time it does, we have some way to counter it. Ideally, if it were to happen we would see nations come together to solve the problem, and that new-found cooperation in saving humanity brings us closer together as a species (ala Independence Day). Wishful thinking, but one can always hope.

We train up deep core miners to be astronauts. Then we send them to the asteroid with a nuke to blow it up.

Simple.

ProtoClone wrote:Read the book The Last Policeman.
In a world going to be hit by a massive asteroid, what do you do? For one policeman it's solving this apparent suicide he believes is a murder.

That sounds like a great hook. Is the book any good?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
We train up deep core miners to be astronauts. Then we send them to the asteroid with a nuke to blow it up.

Simple.

Cool! Where are we going to get the deep-core miners from? We barely scratch the surface of the crust, never mind getting into the core...

No, he's talking about Deep Core Miners, the Norwegian thrashmetal band. About fifteen seconds of their bass line should crack any asteroid.

 Ginjitzu wrote:

ProtoClone wrote:Read the book The Last Policeman.
In a world going to be hit by a massive asteroid, what do you do? For one policeman it's solving this apparent suicide he believes is a murder.

That sounds like a great hook. Is the book any good?

Yeah, it is quite good.
The book starts off long after people have found out the bad news. So there has been a major change in the way the population is thinking and acting. Things haven't gone full on anarchy, or the purge, but people have become a lot more uninhibited.

In the event of an asteroid, it might be easier to deal with it than we think. We already have a lot of missiles more than capable of entering orbit, and they've already got bombs onboard. they're called ICBMs and they already enter orbit before coming back down, and once its in orbit you just have to have it enter a collision course with the asteroid. The only really tricky part might be getting the timing right because explosions are significantly less impactful in space than in atmosphere. That and detecting the Asteroid early enough to do something about it.

Remember that the Space Race was really just a rather flimsy cover for ICBM development. The same rockets that carried the Astronauts and Cosmonauts into space are the same ones that had nukes place on top.

I actually would not be surprised if there is already a nuclear launch protocol in the event of a world ending Asteroid to attempt to destroy/blow it off course.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
We train up deep core miners to be astronauts. Then we send them to the asteroid with a nuke to blow it up.

Simple.

Cool! Where are we going to get the deep-core miners from? We barely scratch the surface of the crust, never mind getting into the core...

They'll be on a rig somewhere, and we'll happen across the right group just as the bald headed father is trying to kill one of his workers for having romantic intentions towards his daughter.