Meteor strike 1876--looking for some thoughts

I’m working on a timeline/story that starts on June 6, 1876, with a massive meteor strike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It blasts out a crater a mile plus in diameter, breaks windows in Concord, NH, (50 miles away) shakes things up in Manchester, 75 miles away, and is heard in Boston and Montreal. I started it, and put it on hold when I realized that I need to contemplate further the way the general public will react

I have a good handle on how I plan on dealing with the government reaction, but have a poor grasp of the way the general public will react, especially among the deeply religious portion of the population. I can certainly see some people taking advantage of the situation to make trouble, or simply gain power, also—perhaps using religion to lead people.

This is before the “corrupt bargain” ended reconstruction—it’s even before the Republican convention by 8 days. Might it be taken by some in the south as a sign to rise again?

The convention and election are going to be radically changed, of course. Custer, however, is likely to expire on schedule.

In short, the public reaction in the first few months is my bottleneck. Any advice?
I’ll fill in any details that people would like.

For those interested, the impact is right on the northern point of Profile Lake.
 
I need the social effects

I have already got the physical effects done out from several sites. Crater over a mile across, and massive devastation from a multi-megaton ground impact. (The program showed it detonating slightly above sea level, but Franconia Notch is high enough up that it will actually impact--BOOM! crater.

It's the reactions of the general public across the country that I need to sort out. Both sincere religious folk and con men using religion will be running unchecked--I need to sort out how extreme. Franconia Notch was much less populated then--but there were some grand hotels with rich, famous people there. (Some of whom can best serve the world by being blasted OFF of it...)

Edit: Perhaps Newport, Rhode Island would be a better impact site--at a time when the so-called "cottages" are FULL
 
it also depends if the meteor is visible above a big city, so when it leave a visible trail, that is seen by many, the chances are it will leave a larger impression. There isn't a real for it to hit a big city or kill a lot of people. just a hit close enough to a big city will scare the living daylights out of them.

A scare that size might turn quite a few people that were close in fanatic religious zealots.


the impression about what could have happened is always bigger. so if impacts like 50 miles from a major city, but without a lot of damage, it still will leave them with the thought of ..what if it had been on the city...
 
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Details...

It came down in the morning, striking at just after 7:15. It definately left a long, visible trail as it came in from the east. Concord, NH, is 50 miles from the crater, Manchester, about 70-75, Boston around 125 miles. There's a direct rail line from Boston to the devastated area.

The mushroom cloud will be high enough that it's very visible from central New Hampshire, and even from Boston. This is a BIG explosion. They HEAR it near Boston, at least if they're in a quiet town outside the city.

Note: This is NOT a big enough event to cause things like climate change and the like; it's one single groundburst of about 4-5 megatons. The blast effects will be odd due to channeling by the mountains; it landed in a notch--but there will be MASSIVE devastation, totally unprecedented to the folks of 1876.

The dead and missing will amount to a large number, in the thousands, perhaps the ten thousands. Many will be missing, including visitors at some of the grand hotels, at least one of which was inside the rim of the new crater. (Author fiat--the governor of New Hampshire is among the vaporized.)
 
Here's a good site which might be helpful as you plan your POD:
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

Given the discussion up thread, here are the estimated potential consequences of such an impact on Earth.:
An asteroid this size:
Projectile diameter: 125.00 meters (410.00 feet )
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3

Striking the earth:
Impact Velocity: 17.00 km per second (10.60 miles per second )
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock

Holds this much energy at the time it encounters the Earth's atmosphere:
4.43 x 1017 Joules = 1.06 x 102 MegaTons TNT

The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 1.1 x 104 years

The projectile will begin to breakup at an altitude of 54000 meters (177,000 ft) and will reach the ground in a broken condition.

The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 10.4 km/s (6.43 miles/s)

The impact energy is 1.64 x 1017 Joules = 3.93 x 101MegaTons.

The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 0.817 km by 0.578 km

Crater Dimensions:
Crater shape is normal in spite of atmospheric crushing; fragments are not significantly dispersed.

Transient Crater Diameter: 1.68 km (1.04 miles )
Transient Crater Depth: 594 meters (1,950 feet )

Final Crater Diameter: 2.1 km (1.3 miles )
Final Crater Depth: 447 meters (1,470 feet )
The crater formed is a simple crater

The floor of the crater is underlain by a lens of broken rock debris with a maximum thickness of 207 meters (680 feet ).
At this impact velocity ( < 12 km/s), little shock melting of the target occurs.

Thermal Radiation:
At this impact velocity ( < 15 km/s), little vaporization occurs; no fireball is created, therefore, there is no thermal radiation damage.

Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the tilt of Earth's axis (< 5 hundredths of a degree).
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.

Seismic effects:
At a distance of 80.50 km (50.00 miles) from the impact site, the major seismic shaking will arrive approximately 16.1 seconds after impact, causing a 5.7 Richter Scale magnitude quake.

The quake will be felt indoors by most and outdoors by many if the strike occurs early in the day. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed, perhaps broken; walls make cracking sound, some walls may collapse; unstable objects overturned. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing carriages will rock noticeably.

Ejecta:
At a distance of 80.50 km (50.00 miles) from the impact site, a fine dusting of ejecta with occasional larger fragments will arrive approximately 2.15 minutes after the impact.
Thickness-136 microns (5.37 thousandths of an inch)
Mean Fragment Diameter- 2.25 cm (0.885 inches)

Air Blast:
At a distance of 80.50 km (50.00 miles) from the impact site, the air blast will arrive approximately 4.07 minutes after impact.
Peak Overpressure: 2750 Pa = 0.0275 bars = 0.39 psi
Max wind velocity: 6.4 m/s = 14.3 mph
Sound Intensity: 69 dB (Loud as heavy modern day traffic)
 
Massive aid effort to the affected citizens, led by governors of neighboring states and President Grant; the effectiveness of the effort determines can either save or write off Grant's legacy as a president, and will play a large part in domestic politics for a time to come. How it changes the RNC will be interesting, to say the least. Will there be enough of a sympathy vote from the meteor's effects on Maine for Blaine to get the nomination? Probably.

The sympathy vote runs out when the general election comes, and the Mulligan Letters/Union Pacific Scandal damage Blaine. Tilden wins the popular vote as he did OTL, but there's so much fraud involved in the election that it goes to the commission, which chooses the Republican candidate as it did OTL. Blaine is elected with a mandate to end reconstruction
 
Blaine

I am tentatively planning on Blaine geting the nomination; he'll be insuring that Maine starts sending aid to New Hampshire. Beyond that, I'm not sure how the election will go.
The election was so close that it could easily, IMVHO, be butterflied either way. Just flip New York, and the election goes to Blaine without the "Corrupt Bargain." Reconstruction might not end. For that mater, the Blaine-related scandals might not get uncovered at the same time.

Grant wasn't a great president--but he WAS a competent general. I can see him doing quite well reacting to this disaster. People will feel threatened, to say the least--and this being an atack of some sort can't be ruled out. He'd be mustering aid and resources to deal with this atack.

My biggest problem is the common people--how nervous will they be, in differnt areas of the nation? Will they see it as god striking the nation? Or, will some in the south see this as a god striking the Yankees? I suspect some redshirts will look to take advantage.

This is an era of evangelists geting crowds together with their messages of heaven and hell--I'm sure they'll be speaking of this!

Thasnks for the various thoughts!
 
The Blaine scandals started before your proposed POD, you realized. I believe the infamous "burn this letter" came out at the end of May.

And with Tilden as the Democratic nominee, winning New York is a bit less likely.
 
Scandals

The scandals came out in May (oops on my part) but would their importance be diminished? In a time of disaster, there's a tendency to stay with the incumbent party if they're doing well.
 

bugwar

Banned
Check the Actual Reactions

In short, the public reaction in the first few months is my bottleneck. Any advice?

You might consider the public reaction to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as a starting point. Or the Great Chicago fire of 1871 for that matter.
 
OOPS on the boom, and reactions...

My bad on the boom size; I used that site originally, and must have messed up along the way somewhere.

As for people's reactions, the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire are both known disaster types, and this one isn't. That's why I'm expecting a different reaction to them.
 
My bad on the boom size; I used that site originally, and must have messed up along the way somewhere.

As for people's reactions, the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire are both known disaster types, and this one isn't. That's why I'm expecting a different reaction to them.

A lot is going to come down to how advanced science is at the time: whether or not people can figure out that its a meteor strike. People had known about asteroids for a while, but had they figured out they could strike the Earth yet? I want to say they knew that, but I don't know for sure. If the knowledge is widespread enough, which it should be, then everyone recognizes it as a natural disaster. If its not, then there will be a mass religious experience - a Third Great Awakening. Regardless, there will be a lot of people advancing their own, isolated, religious theories; cults will see their membership increase. Science may or may not advance significantly, depending on how much they already knew.
 
A lot is going to come down to how advanced science is at the time: whether or not people can figure out that its a meteor strike. People had known about asteroids for a while, but had they figured out they could strike the Earth yet? I want to say they knew that, but I don't know for sure. If the knowledge is widespread enough, which it should be, then everyone recognizes it as a natural disaster. If its not, then there will be a mass religious experience - a Third Great Awakening. Regardless, there will be a lot of people advancing their own, isolated, religious theories; cults will see their membership increase. Science may or may not advance significantly, depending on how much they already knew.

I have a couple of very old science school books from that period. There's a lot of very incorrect information about outer space in them but based on the information that was commonly available it's going to be quickly clear to scientists and the general population that it was a meteorite or a comet especially since there are probably going to be thousands of people who see it fall. Even if it kills many people it's going to clear up a lot of scientific theories that were debated for decades in OTL.

That said I agree that it's going to stir a religious revival especially in the more evangelical groups who are already looking for something like this. I also think you're going to get a lot of panic as people initially think it's some kind of super weapon, blaming everyone from the former Confederates to the Ottomans. Short term there's going to be a lot of panic that eventually dies down as people realize it was a one off event and the sky isn't going to be falling. I can see a lot more emphasis on astronomy in this timeline but in 1870 technology severely limits any actions they can take.
 
The scandals came out in May (oops on my part) but would their importance be diminished? In a time of disaster, there's a tendency to stay with the incumbent party if they're doing well.

Giuliani got a huge boost in popularity despite his myriad personal problems due to how his handling of September 11th was seen. I could imagine Blaine having the same, especially if he heads straight to the disaster area

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
My bad on the boom size; I used that site originally, and must have messed up along the way somewhere.

As for people's reactions, the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire are both known disaster types, and this one isn't. That's why I'm expecting a different reaction to them.

The thing to keep in mind is the speed of communications technology. Video recording simply does not exist so no one (save a few survivors) will witness the event (as opposed to, say, the events and aftermath of 9/11). It will take time for news to get to the surrounding, unaffected, area; time for close by aid to begin to realize the extent of the disaster; and time for the first fragmentary appeals for aid to get to the rest of the country. Once reporters begin to arrive, stories will be sent by telegraph and composed into newspapers, which will be mostly in Boston and New York, and whatever press associations they are connected with. Later, those papers will be used by smaller papers as the source of their stories in the Midwest, west and south.

There will be a great reaction, to be sure, even though it is delayed and diffused by today's standards. Still, there are not the national organizations that exist today to provide relief and the federal government doesn't mobilize for disaster relief. Federal response will probably be limited to providing troops to control looting-only if the state governor asks. Given the relatively remote location, that is doubtful.

After the first week when the initial shock wears off the entire thing will fade from public concern. That might last longer in the northeast/New England area because that is the area directly affected and because, I expect, various organizations (and newspapers) will continue to report the aftermath in order to maintain appeals for aid. In a month, pretty much everyone (who was not directly affected though friends or relatives) between Massachusetts and Maine will have moved on.
 
The lack of recording technology means all you have is a widely heard boom, then you find out most of the people in New Hampshire, and a lot of Maine and Vermont, are dead - some gone without a trace.

I think that this gives a big kick start in the rise of premillennialism in US religious thought; in OTL they didn't really start to surge until around the First World War. This kind of impact is the kind of even that would also provided a counter point to the postmilllennial optimism of many of the more established Protestant denominations; the premillennial dispensationalism that the fundamentalists of the time were selling might seem quite appealing.

So you have that style of Fundamentalist political strength probably cresting earlier - perhaps you get the teens cluster of amendments earlier? In OTL, a lot of the political voting strength that gave us the income tax, women's suffrage, and Prohibition came from energized evangelicals, and the strength and organization they had put together by the 1910s. If they are stronger earlier, you might see those earlier.

Secondly, many of the reform movements of the era had a hard edge I'd only expect to be harder if a giant rock just wrecked three states. There was a real nativism to that reformism, to the point of flirting with eugenics. Those movements had far reaching consequences when they were birthed in a period of optimism in OTL - imagine them in a grimmer, death-from-above era.
 
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