I drop the rock, you pick the target

[ShotMagnet]

As some of you know, I'm a science-fiction writer.

Last night at work (when I do all the thinking for my stories) I got the notion to do a story centered around the aftermath of an asteroid strike on Earth. Sounded like fun, so I got to selecting targets. That's where I ran into trouble. I couldn't pick one. Not just one; there were too many interesting choices.

That's where you all come in. Pick a target. Any target. Pick more than one if you like. Pick a target not on Earth, which will somehow still affect Earth.

The most popular pick(s) make(s) it into the story. The indvidual(s) who pick the winner(s) become characters in the story. If they wish.

Have at.

Shot

[Zipuli]

Moon is too obvious, so I say the big chunk of asteroid hit Mars real good causing Mars's orbit to slowly close up with that of the Earth... The rocks hitting each other is imminent in 300 years time, people need to do something, for their childrens' sake!

Zipuli is the character who obviously doesn't give a rat's ass as he will not live that long. Instead, he concentrates on stacking up beer for a life's need, as all the resources in the whole world will soon be harnessed in making something that will save the day... Oh and that something must be big, futuristic looking (maybe a sphere of some sort), and totally unreliable...

All these ideas will only cost you 500 dollars, PM me for my bank account number!

[crazyeddie]

I pick the SE of England because it is full of bankers, estate agents and commodity dealers, so after the big bang nobody will be any the worse off and we will be that much further from the Continent than we were before. Win Win for the rest of us Brits.

Off earth I pick Australia - you know I'm talking sense here, none of them that I have ever met are real people, just clones of some dark satanic horror movie with a squeeky voice thrown in for extra dramatic effect. The stuff of science fiction, just what he needs.

As for character in the story - I bags Mickey Mouse. (What do you mean - NO MICKEY MOUSE in my story, what sort of science fiction book is this !!)

[ChuikovChambered]

I pick Venus, because no one else bothered to look at it. The asteroid strike knocks Venus into a larger orbit, so that Venus and Earth are now binary twin planets, who orbit so close to each other that they exchange atmospheric gases to a small extent. The character, a guy named Pavel Chukov, is busy trying to get them even closer and launching a terraforming project to boost the Earth's land mass by fusing the two planets together after Venus has become habitable.

[GaryOwen]

The meteor strikes the Arizona/Utah border around Arizona City (which is the location of the schismatic fundamentalist church led by the prophet Warren Jeffs who is in custody as an accessory to rape for his part in plural marriages of minor girls). A fragment strikes the Temple in Salt Lake City, photographs of the damage to the Temple suggest architechtural complexities. There is a big cover-up, literally, as the temple damage is quickly covered and the integrity of the damaged temple geometry is restored with chalk lines on the ground which are reminiscent of Hopi sand drawings.

This will allow allusions to Bill Paxton, Heinlein's Stranger, and The Illuminatus Trilogy.

[Hackworth]

heh, Dallas/Ft. Worth. DFW sits on the same fault line as Mexico City which also runs roughly through Austin and Waco, TX. it actually runs beneath Lake Waco. earthquakes all the way down through Mexico. as large chunks of the astroid break apart over the atlantic and the gulf of Mexico tsunamis are started swamping southern coastal states as well as eastern mexico and the coasts of central and south American countries. Of course, the main impact strikes the DFW area, killing me but only creating earthquakes that ravage V-man's hometown north of Houston in east Texas... :biggrin:

okay, when do i get my part? LOL

p.s. 5 stars for this thread!

[Alan323]

I think the Persian Gulf would be an interesting spot for and asteroid hit. It would wipe out a huge block of the life's blood of the industrialized west and the developing countries. The economic and social chaos that would ensue would be biblical in scope.

[raskil]

wouldn't the sun make an interesting target?

[Hedgehog]

The east coast of Africa. Oh and hit it with a Super Uber High Powered Cluster Layzer, spread over the African continent, called the Hedgehog Project, Nukes are soo passe.

Which fails to kill it, due to some miniscule mathematical error (I dunno, um, make it a comma left out of the targeting sequence), resulting in an impact in either the Alantic or Indian ocean.

This enough inspiration?

[Warda]

wouldn't the sun make an interesting target?

I agree the sun would be an interesting target espcially if the rock had some sort of chemical make up that would cause either the sun to lose some of its power or gain even more... I see either an ice age story or a appocoliptic story.... ( sorry for the spelling but hay I never admitted to be a writer.)

Warda

[12Alfa]

Mecca, Saudi Arabia:sonic:

And during the Hajjr. And when the impact is viewed from the air it looks like the star of David in it's outline.:biggrin:

Sending 1 billion of the earths peaceful region into spin dry!:cul:

[Ssnake]

Over at TankNet I already suggested the caldera below Yellowstone, but seriously: The question is what kind of a book do you want to write. Do you want to concentrate on the apocalypse or on how the world will deal with the impending catastrophe, do you want to have a one hundred character multi-episode kind of book (essentially a Lucifer's Hammer clone), is it supposed to be a mid-size catastrophe that just wipes out one major country/region so you then get to concentrste on the economical crisis.

The kind of book that you want to write will dictate to some extent size and location of impact. Is the emphasis on before, or after the impact - if before, location and size hardly matter, if afterwards you're free to pick the location in order to suit your needs as far as climate change etc. are concerned. Is it about to cover a wide time span (multiple generations) or just an episode in a number of protagoinists' lives? Do you want a realistic protrayal of a large impact event, or some outlandish events that catapult other planets off their current orbits to influence the earth orbit, so the short term consequences are extremely minor but it would still mean the end of the world as the resonance with, say, regular Mars encounters will change Earth orbit to be more elliptical or something. Just keep in mind that impacts that can throw planets off their orbits are will invariably pulverize the plantes just as well. Earth collided with a Mars sized object billions of years ago, now there's the Moon as the result.

If you can answer all these questions it will sufficiently narrow down your choices to a more manageable number.

[DarkAngel]

Although unlikely, Antarctica makes an interesting impact point. The heat causes millions of gallons of fresh water to enter the southern ocean. This would probably cause some environmental disasters of its own. Then you have the risk of the impact starting up one of the Sub-Ice fault lines. Plus you have the risk of large ice sheets (like the Ross ice shelf) dropping into the ocean and raising sea levels world wide. With the associated tidal waves and tsunami's.

On a less serious note where i would Like to see one hit would be on the heads of the Queen and prince Philip whilst they are visiting India with their family and their good friend Maggie thatcher. Talk about getting 2 birds with one stone...

If you felt the need to add me to this book I could happily see my self in a Nero-esque roll, playing a jig on my fiddle while the world burns.

[TankHunter]

A "small" one air bursting over Karachi with surviving fragments entering the ocean, leading the Pakistanis to think it is part of a first strike by India, leading to a nuclear war.

Or the same deal but have it impact Israel in a few years time. They may think it is an Iranian strike and then you have a nasty little war that harms the world's oil supplies.

[ShotMagnet]

The kind of book that you want to write will dictate to some extent size and location of impact. Is the emphasis on before, or after the impact - if before, location and size hardly matter, if afterwards you're free to pick the location in order to suit your needs as far as climate change etc. are concerned. Is it about to cover a wide time span (multiple generations) or just an episode in a number of protagoinists' lives? Do you want a realistic protrayal of a large impact event, or some outlandish events that catapult other planets off their current orbits to influence the earth orbit, so the short term consequences are extremely minor but it would still mean the end of the world as the resonance with, say, regular Mars encounters will change Earth orbit to be more elliptical or something. Just keep in mind that impacts that can throw planets off their orbits are will invariably pulverize the plantes just as well. Earth collided with a Mars sized object billions of years ago, now there's the Moon as the result.

If you can answer all these questions it will sufficiently narrow down your choices to a more manageable number.

I'd actually started with a target list, liked them all, and thought I'd turn it loose to you lot in an effort to gauge both my estimations of what might be interesting, and to see if you lot might come up with a target that I hadn't considered.

The impact will govern the story, natch; but rest assured that it will rather-narrowly focus itself in terms of story. No colliding planets, no outlandishness (at least none that my incomplete engineering-education can detect and deter). Less LH, more personalized history. At the moment, anyway. I got the idea looking at the Moon the other night, it's half-baked at best, at the moment.

Although unlikely, Antarctica makes an interesting impact point.

You are the fourth to suggest a polar impact. I'm personally 'shooting for the Moon' and getting the thing to hit there, thereby (hopefully) setting up the possibility for multiple smaller-scale impacts on good ol' Earth.

If you felt the need to add me to this book I could happily see my self in a Nero-esque roll, playing a jig on my fiddle while the world burns.

I'll find a way. Friendship demands no less.

Shot

[congo]

Panama and Canal or the Uranium and Electronics mining areas of Africa. The loss of either leading to global crisis. No more ipods,computers,flat screen tv,s. If its the canal Call it the Aichi Seiran solution.

[DemolitionMan]

Not New York!

And not Paris either. Beijing would be interesting(only the city) because that could give a great start for a China-centric novel...world economics...woah.

On a sci-fi note...I like the idea of describing a civilization that resembles Earth almost completely (except they have world government etc, are united)but finds out that they are doomed in the future by a comet/meteor/asteroid impact and just then discover Earth(by a space probe perhaps). They try to make contact/negotiate with "us" but fail...they could make the way thanks to their advanced technology. Pick it up from there how it will continue.

[CalAB]

I was watching a program on some cable network a while back and the topic was about large scale asteroid/meteor impacts that had taken place in the past.

The current theory suggests that some time around 3.8 to 4 billion years ago (IIRC) something disrupted the orbit of Jupiter and the planet lurched inward to it's present day position around the Sun. The resulting gravitational surge of this titanic displacement dislodged an ancient asteroid belt.

The scars of this event are still visible when you look at the inner solar system. Our own Moon shows us it's battle wounds every month.

How about using this as the backdrop to your story? Maybe a wandering gas giant, black hole or the stump of a dead star passes close enough to the solar system to once again mess with the orbits of the outer planets; which in turn messes with the complex system of the asteroid belt ending up putting good old Earth on a cataclysmic date with destiny.

There would be multiple impact sites scattered over the entire planet. I would write down as many locals as I could think of, put them all in a hat and draw out maybe a dozen and scale them in intensity from 1 to 10.

[GH_Lieste]

Or you could just bump the moon... have all the really big bits miss the Earth, but then have earthquakes, tidal changes etc as the Moon's orbit becomes more eccentric.

Plus you get small fragments that will periodically be collected by Earth's gravity well and cause localised damage as often as you need, if the other 'bad-stuff' isn't enough.

[CalAB]

Looks like you have it all mapped out. This is a link to what I was talking about. I screwed up a few of the "facts".

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/40390/title/The_Solar_Systems_Big_Bang

[ShotMagnet]

Interesting article. They even seem to have some supporting evidence.

Shot

[Vacquero]

Washington D.C. then they all lived happily ever after.