Christmas Day, 1914: Two Catastrophes

This is in the shady region between probability and ASB, as it involves geological and cosmological events that obviously didn't happen, but could, theoretically, such as in Stirling's Peshawarverse.

On Christmas Day, 1914, as British and German soldiers play football between their trenches, they look up and stop to see an incredible fireball shoot through the sky. Seconds/minutes later, a single asteroid with a 0.4 kilometer radius impacts directly in London with an explosive yield of 1.4 gigatons.

As some extremely serious butterflies do their thing, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts 30 minutes later. Although this is a "small" eruption for a supervolcano, it throws *gazillions of tons of debris into the atmosphere and renders a 600 mile radius around the volcano uninhabitable.

What happens next? Note: if the asteroid impact and/or eruption are going to end civilization due to their magnitude, reduce them respectively until civilization in the Northern Hemisphere survives, if tenuously: the point is to cripple the United Kingdom and the United States.
 
Bumped. Even if it is a bit ASB, I'd really be interested to hear people contribute what they think would happen.

First, the asteroid. A 1.7 (got the number wrong) gigaton explosion with an epicenter on London would be very interesting in the Chinese sense of the word. According to Moral Principles and Nuclear Weapons, 1000 megatons is not enough to cause nuclear winter, i.e., extreme decrease in world temperatures, complete blockage of sunlight, etcetera, but this is a bit over 1000, so expect some extreme (but not extinction-threatening) winters, and some very pretty sunsets.

As I've based the asteroid in question off of a real cosmic object, 2004MN4, I have found that a rough estimate of the crater size would be 3 miles in diameter and a quarter of a mile deep: quite large. Technically, it would be "craters", as the object would begin breaking up at 230,000 feet, and impact over a 1 by 0.75 mile ellipse. It would be a complex crater, with an interesting peak in the center of the crater.

London and much of Southern England would be gone, obviously.

In Paris, an earthquake knocking down dishes, and feeling like a vehicle hitting a building would be experienced. Three minutes after this a fine dust of ejecta would begin falling, with very occasional larger fragments. Fifteen minutes later, the airblast would arrive as a modest 12 mph gust of wind accompanied by a sound wave of 67 decibels (loud traffic).

In Berlin, a fine dust would start falling six minutes after impact. Fifty minutes after the impact in London, a sound as loud as heavy traffic (56 decibels) would be heard, with a slight breeze to boot.

In Washington, D.C. an easily heard 40 decibel sound would be heard five hours after the strike. Of course, thanks to the second part of my proposal, Washington would have far more to worry about than an easily heard sound...
 
Interesting scenario even if maybe it should be in the ASB thread!

As it happened on Christmas Day, the UK would probably not be left leaderless as the King is celebrating Christmas at Sandringham and the PM may well be out of town too.

Much of the industry producing weapons would be untouched as it is in the north of England and Scotland. However, most of the mechanism of government - the civil service - does live in the area and so a functioning government is gone.

Obviously it would cause the focus of what remains of the government to be removed from the conduct of the war. A lot of the responsibility for the war would likely be passed to the French and despite the "God is a Frenchman" TL, it would seem likely that the long term consequence would be France suing for peace and an early end to the war.

I also see Ireland taking advantage of the confusion and either declaring or negotiating independence. Anarchy is likely to spread in UK with the Royal Family possibly moving to Canada or South Africa.

And - lets develop this one.
 
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