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jlf1961 -> RE: What have floods taught us? (6/19/2008 8:26:59 PM)
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Actually, you are only referring to weather related floods, if I may interject some of the worst case flood scenarios (yes, I really love bursting bubbles)
Volcanic Collapse related landslides into the ocean:
Depending on the size of the land slide, the wave could travel as far as 100 miles inland.
Asteroid impact:
100 meters gives at orbital velocity striking the planet in the atlantic, gives you a wave that is going to wash over Ireland and the UK, the low countries, and make a real mess of Europe, not to mention that depending on the point of impact will depend on how long it takes to hit the US.
Figure every city on a river that flows into the atlantic wiped out, about 100,000,000 people killed, give or take 50,000,000
If said asteroid hits the pacific, triple the total dead, we wont have to worry about japanese imports, the australians or new zealanders winning the america's cup, and hawaii wont be a big tourist draw.
Also, the wave would devastate central america.
With each 100 meters in diameter, the wave gets 10 times higher. Eventually making the safest place to live somewhere in the rockies.
Global warming Ice cap and deglaciation:
210 foot rise in sea level.
Super volcanic eruption of one of the island super volcanos... flood from tsunami will probably swamp the west coast, BUT, the good news is that within 2 years, sea level will have dropped due to the ice age.
And lets not forget the possibility of a comet impact, we could get hit with a dirt and ice ball, we could get hit with an ice ball.
The comet would really not hit the planet, it would explode about five miles up, and hopefully over water, huge mega tsunami but no fireball or super heated ejecta falling back to earth and cuasing the atmosphere to get super heated.
Now if it happens to be primarily ice, well that is a different matter. It still explodes about 5 miles up, still makes a really big wave, but no crater and no ejecta, just a few billion tons of water blasted into the atmosphere, plus whatever the comet brings with it, which could be hundreds of billions of tons of water.
Now, anything larger than a kilometer wide, either meteor or comet is really nothing to worry about, since it would be a Near Extinction Level Event, and if larger than 3 kilomeres in diameter, it would be a Global Extinction Event.
For the record, the NASA NEO project has plotted less than one percent of the possible Near Earth Objects.... And if it sneaks in from the sun, well, we will get maybe a month before impact.
Now, for those of us with dominent personalities that means that the male to female survival ratio would be about 1 to 50. If we are really smart, we find us a nice place to build an impact shelter, and we got it made.
Unless the thing is big enough to wipe out everything, which in that case, spend the last week having as much sex as possible.
Now the odds of a NEO impact is less than one percent, or about the same as getting attacked by a shark.... but then if you are the one bitten by the shark, the odds dont matter, do they.
As far as volcanic collapse, there are two in the atlantic and one REALLY big one in the pacific that could go.
All of the known super volconoes are over do for eruption looking that the geologic time scale.
Nobody knows what causes the poles to shift.
Total climate change due to ice pack collapse has a 10 % chance....
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