Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-18 (Monday)

On Nov 21, 2024 at 12:45:19 AM PST, "anim8rfsk" <anim8rfsk@cox.net> wrote:

As far as I understand, blowing the comet to hell so close that it dumps
all the fragments in the atmosphere is exactly the wrong thing to do.

I've never understood this, especially when it comes to a comet, which is just
a big ball of ice. First, I'd think a nuke would boil away most of the ice to
begin with. Second, even if what remains breaks up into pieces, the pieces are
smaller and so are much more likely to burn up in the atmosphere and never
reach the ground. And for those few that do, they're much smaller and while
there would be damage and death, it would be nowhere near on the
extinction-level destruction that the whole thing hitting at once would
cause.

Bottom line: a lot less mass will be hitting the earth with a nuke-blasted
comet than one that hits intact.