WI The Tunguska Event Hits London

I apologize in advance for the use of bad English in the title, I couldn't think of the best way to word it. :eek:

The Tunguska Event, as I'm sure most of you know, was a meteor or comet that burst in the air in Siberia, on June 30, 1908. But what if that meteor/comet had instead blew up over a more populated area, like London? What would the immediate response and future be?

In case you do not know what the Tunguska event is, here is a Wikipedia link.
 
Last edited:
Forgive me commandant, for mentioning this, but there have been many threads about the "Tunguska" event posted in this forum over the past few years. Four of them ask WI the meteor hit London. There are also 4 asking WI it hits Moscow, plus others asking WI it his Tampa/St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, along the US/Canadian border, and "over water rather then land". Perhaps it might make for a more fruitful discussion if one of those are revived, rather then plowing anew over an already planted field.
 
Simply put, if it didn't hit Tunguska, then it would have missed Earth that time around altogether. Orbital mechanics are pretty much fixed in stone. Now it could have hit London during the next orbit, which would be bad. There would be no positive effects or scientific advance. Probably quite the opposite as religious fever grows in the wake of God's Wrath, if you know what I mean. <sigh> Our species is just so darn gullible.
 
Forgive me commandant, for mentioning this, but there have been many threads about the "Tunguska" event posted in this forum over the past few years. Four of them ask WI the meteor hit London. There are also 4 asking WI it hits Moscow, plus others asking WI it his Tampa/St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, along the US/Canadian border, and "over water rather then land". Perhaps it might make for a more fruitful discussion if one of those are revived, rather then plowing anew over an already planted field.
woops, I just didn't assume that it had been talked about that much to search for it. my mistake :eek:
 

Michael Busch

Simply put, if it didn't hit Tunguska, then it would have missed Earth that time around altogether.

Not quite. As I noted in one of the previous threads on this PoD:

A slight change in the impactor's trajectory can put the impact point at any point on the hemisphere that was facing the impactor as it came in, or slightly beyond that due to the Earth's gravity pulling the impactor in (although a more grazing impact would have less effect at the surface).

That changes the location of the impact but not the time. Changing the time of the impact requires a much larger trajectory change, which is harder to accommodate.
 
Top