[meteorite-list] RE: Survival after a large impact event (Delete if you don`t wish to know)

From: stan . <laser_maniac_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:28 2004
Message-ID: <Law10-F20LDot38Y1jO00021b5a_at_hotmail.com>

I'd have to disagree from 2 standpoints:

>It's hard to imagine even the third world countries surviving and growing
>food when it's -30 degrees C, even if their survival skills where better on
>average than those in developed countries.

eskimos, north canadians, and people in siberia, (as well as many other
places) have been doing this for ages. surely SOME people will survice such
an impact event

>Basically any society that can generate electricity can grow grops make
>heat for plants and people and provide protection, that's if civil war
>didn't break out before then!

how much food generation capacity do we have in place that can be heated by
artifical means almost immediatly (say by the next growing cycle)? if such
an impact event were to happen tomorrow, we wouldnt have time to build 100
million acres of electrically heated greenhouses. sure technology would
allow us to produce SOME food in just about any climate, but it certainly
wouldnt be enough to support a large population. I'd venture to guess that
it wouldnt even be enough to feed the farmers, electric grid workers, power
plant engineers, fuel delivery service people, coal mine workers, and on
down the line. I just dont think artificial environments would work in the
macro sense. by the time we could ramp up production in such an environment
large portions of the population would have died from starvation. now IF you
happen to live in a community where there is a large farm, and there happens
to be some natural gas wells, and conviniently there are local power
generation capibilities, THEN maybe the citizens could work together to make
such a possibility feasible, but it would be the exception, as opposed to
the norm I'd think...

>It would be the quickest ones to adapt to a new climate that would survive,
>that is where technology comes into it's own!

that I agree with 100% but I feal you are overestimating technologies
ability to keep us alive... I'm sure it would allow a small number of people
to survive such an event, but certainly not alot of the population..

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Received on Thu 26 Feb 2004 01:31:23 PM PST