[meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says...

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jul 1 16:00:04 2005
Message-ID: <42C5A09B.5A3046A7_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Jerry,


    Whoops! I truly forgot New Orleans! Sawrrie, y'all!

    Actually, I left out a lot of them, as there are so many! Like I said, it's a
long, long list.

    I regretted afterward leaving out WETHERSFIELD (Connecticut), a small town of
26,271 people (2000 census).

    On April 8, 1971, a small energetic stone penetrated a home, zinged around
inside, and came to rest without hitting anybody.

    Ok, ok, this sort of thing happens, even in Wethersfield. Almost worth the
brief attention you get. I can imagine calling your insurance agent, "You want to
report -- what? ASTEROID damage?!"

    Then, on November 8, 1982, a small energetic stone penetrated ANOTHER home in
Wethersfield in the SAME neighborhood, zinged around inside, and came to rest
without hitting anybody, about than half a mile away from the first home!

    Both stones were both L6's, of similar compositions (different exposure ages).
Maybe they're moving into the neighborhood. Wonder what that will do to property
values?

    Historically, there are a great number of accounts, many of hits directly on
human beings, besides the poor Alabama lady, who only got a really colorful and
painful bruise.

    A Swedish man was struck by a meteorite in the arm. The arm was so damaged that
it had to be amputated! The (preserved) arm, by the way, is buried with him, but
nobody knows what became of the stone. I imagine even the most unemotional Swede
would have been pretty mad at that stone. Smash! Smash! Smash! With your good arm,
of course...

    While most incidents are of a meteorite strike to a single person, there are
accounts of multiple human hits. In 1949, a shower in a remote Mexican village
"wounded" 28 people, one of whom later died. (And we on the List make a big fuss
over one lousy dog...)

    The most intriguing case is a very old and somewhat fragmentary Chinese Annual
entry of a "rain of stones" in a Chinese city (we got population density here) that
left "10,000 dead"! Probably an exaggeration; I bet it was only 800 or 1200
people... A thousand people snuffed?!

    Somebody mentioned War of the Worlds? Already started, been going on a long
while. All of these incidents are only the LITTLE bullets. There's larger calibre
stuff readily available.

    Chance is luck, and luck is blind, blind in both directions, good and bad. It
is only we who define good and bad. What if Sikhote-Alin had hit not in the hills a
few miles from town, but IN the town of Sikhote-Alin?

    What if Tunguska had been a tiny bit tardy and arrived at the same latitude on
Earth six hours or so later, namely, over Victorian LONDON, then the largest city
on Earth?

    A Tunguska size airburst about an hour earlier than a hypothetical London one
would be over Belgium (also the same latitude). It would obliterate a entire
NATION, with 90%+ dead.

    The casualties in either case would be pretty much the same, about 10 or 12
million people dead. that's almost as bad as what we have already done to each
other...


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------
"Jerry A. Wallace" wrote:

> Hi Sterling and List,
>
> Sterling cited:
>
> >Park Forest, M'Bale, Holbrook, Benld, Gao and Noblesville.
>
> Lets not forget New Orleans...or the one that almost landed in my backyard-
> Monahans.
>
> Newspaper reports (thanks to Mark Bostick) noted that...well- here are the
> actual excerpts:
>
> "A four-inch piece of rock, believed to be a meteorite, landed about
> 30 yards
> from a group of youngsters playing basketball on the north side of
> Monahans, while
> a second, slightly larger rock, was found by a Ward County Sheriff's
> Deputy at a
> nearby site this morning."
>
> Dang it. Missed that magic 65' circle by 25'.
>
> Another quote from the same newspaper report:
>
> "One of the youths, ranging in age from 8 to 16, said the rock "glowed
> red hot,"
> when it first landed, according to the Monahans News."
>
> Well, putting that particular kid's wide age range aside (could have
> been a wild juvenile
> hormone fluctuation, or even the result of being in close proximity and
> getting a massive
> dose of gamma rays from the newly fallen meteorite)- one wonders whether
> one of our
> brilliant 'hick' reporters might not have excitedly asked the question,
> "Was the rock glowing
> red hot when you first saw it?" OBJECTION! LEADING THE WITNESS!
> It happens.
>
> Lest they be not forgotten.
>
> Jerry
>
> PS...Great math, Sterling. Don't understand it all, but it's good mental
> exercise trying to.
>
> Sterling K. Webb wrote:
>
> >Ron Baalke wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4672177/detail.html
> >>Fairbury Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
> >>The chances of this close of an encounter are one in 100 billion, expert
> >>said... The object landed about 65 feet from where Kinzie was.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> > This (unnamed) expert needs a basic course in statistics. Assuming one
> >defines this approach (65 feet) as a criteria for "close", then the number of
> cases of a fall being within 65 feet of a human being are substantial.
> >
> > How many people were within 65 feet of the fall of any fragment of PARK
> >FOREST? There were reports of much closer approaches in M'BALE. A meteorite
> which hits an occupied car is, of course, closer than 65 feet (and most
> >unoccupied cars, too).
> >
> Any frag that strikes an occupied house or building less than 65 feet square
> is a case (dozens and dozens of those). "Maw, it's raining rocks!" (HOLBROOK) The
> BENLD car smasher hit only 25 feet from the human occupants of
> the house. Several GAO frags hit people. Don't forget the Alabama lady in the
> >town I can't spell and am too lazy to look up..
> >
> The NOBLESVILLE (Indiana) stone fell literally at the feet of a young boy,
> within inches! It's a long, long list.
> >
> Forget the Nebraska glowing rock whacko.
> >
> > Integrating for the varying size of the human population over this time
> >period, I get odds of about 4,000,000,000 to one per year. Lifetime odds are
> less than 100,000,000 to one! This assumes the individual perceives the fall,
> >hence these odds are for observed falls only.
> >
> 65 feet is far enough away that the fall of a small fragment, which is what
> most of them are (remember the power law), is easily missed, just like the small
> fragment itself, so the actual rate is much higher.
> >
> A 130 foot circle has over 53,000 square feet, a big target. Assuming that
> those humans don't bunch up too much (they do, but they all count as one person
> only in this survey), from low to high fall rate estimates, I gauge 6 >to 15
> cases per year, observed or not.
> >
> Spread out, people! Wait for the meteorites to fall in your lap (or 130 >foot
> circle)!
> >
> >
> Sterling K. Webb
> >-------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
>
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Received on Fri 01 Jul 2005 03:59:24 PM PDT