WI the Tunguska meteor was bigger?

Simply put, what if the meteor had more mass? Pick one or more potential greater masses for it, as long as they're not something like one milligram extra, and extrapolate possibilties from there. You may go up to dino-killer if you want.
 

mojojojo

Gone Fishin'
Simply put, what if the meteor had more mass? Pick one or more potential greater masses for it, as long as they're not something like one milligram extra, and extrapolate possibilties from there. You may go up to dino-killer if you want.
Would the human race even survive?
 
Peshawar Lancers redux

If it was significantly bigger, we could have a Peshawar Lancers scenario, but in 1908. "Nuclear winter" leads to collapse of advanced civilization around the world...I doubt the ability of governments at the time to relocate to tropical climates, given the panic and breakdown at home...However, look for the species to begin rebuilding after the clouds part and normal climate returns after...years? decades? Would be a cool TL for role playing. Lots of buried history and tech around and no one knows what it is...plus throw in mutants from radioactive asteroid fragments...!!
 
The miracle of Tunguska is that it landed in the middle of nowhere. Its going to have to be significantly bigger to destroy any civilisation.
 
If it was significantly bigger, we could have a Peshawar Lancers scenario, but in 1908. "Nuclear winter" leads to collapse of advanced civilization around the world...I doubt the ability of governments at the time to relocate to tropical climates, given the panic and breakdown at home...However, look for the species to begin rebuilding after the clouds part and normal climate returns after...years? decades? Would be a cool TL for role playing. Lots of buried history and tech around and no one knows what it is...plus throw in mutants from radioactive asteroid fragments...!!

Yes, it would be a quasi-Peshawar scenario, with the main difference that the center of damage isn't Central Europe.

Also, the term is "Impact Winter". I should add however that it wouldn't last very long, up to maybe a decade at most, and most of the dust would actually already settle within about a year.
 
It would be a larger rock of ice hitting in the middle of near nowhere. The aerial burst would devastate a wider amount of land.
 
You need a factor 10 or so in the mass for the blast to destroy a settlement (hunters´ tents in the woods don´t count).
With the factor 100, the effect world-wide would be similar to Krakatoa explosion, and Irkutsk as well as Krasnoyarsk may suffer damage by resulting earthquake and ash falls
(Is a geologist here? Is the Siberian underlying rock conductive for earthquake waves like the Canadian Shield, or fractured and inconductive like California?)
Factor 1000: impact winter, crop failure in wide parts of the world, economic collapse, massive die-off of population.
 
The problem really is that it's the middle of nowhere. Now, if the Asteroid could be made large enough, the Shock waves could damage/destroy the Trans-Siberian Railway, maybe Kamchatka independence?
 
Simply put, what if the meteor had more mass? Pick one or more potential greater masses for it, as long as they're not something like one milligram extra, and extrapolate possibilties from there. You may go up to dino-killer if you want.

I have a better one, what if the Tunguska meteor landed in the middle of St. Petersbug and wiping out the entire Imperial family...

Well what happens now?
 
I have a better one, what if the Tunguska meteor landed in the middle of St. Petersbug and wiping out the entire Imperial family...

Well what happens now?

Geopolitics get all screwy, but you can bet that anti-meteor systems are going to have decent budgets once we get into space...
 
You need a factor 10 or so in the mass for the blast to destroy a settlement (hunters´ tents in the woods don´t count).
With the factor 100, the effect world-wide would be similar to Krakatoa explosion, and Irkutsk as well as Krasnoyarsk may suffer damage by resulting earthquake and ash falls
(Is a geologist here? Is the Siberian underlying rock conductive for earthquake waves like the Canadian Shield, or fractured and inconductive like California?)
Factor 1000: impact winter, crop failure in wide parts of the world, economic collapse, massive die-off of population.

Factor of 10 gets you a bigger explosion.

Factor of 100 or more will get you a ground impact (i.e. Stony bolides of diameter 1km or more).

You get bigger changes if you change the density of the bolide or the angle with which it impacts upon the earth (altering time travelling through the atmosphere).

Source: The 1908 Tunguska explosion: atmospheric disruption of a stony asteroid, Christopher F. chyba et al.
 
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