If an Asteroid struck the Earth today?

[Vodmeister]

Humans would certainly not die out before any animals larger than a mouse go extinct.

We have people all around the world, there are 7.1 billion of us, and we have bomb shelters and steel confinements. It'll take a meteor bigger than 12 km across to wipe humanity out.

[Supercommunist]

The asteroid will kill us off via starvation. Within a year or two, most medium sized and large fauna will go extinct and most land will probably be unsuitable for agriculture.

[Vodmeister]

There are enough seeds kept in Spitsbergen to feed 250,000 people for years, and the supplies is kept inside a mountain.

I doubt every single one of the 7,100,000,000 humans on this planet will die due starvation, people will survive, even if in only few numbers. Never underestimate human intelligence, innovation, creativity, and capabilities.

[Supercommunist]

There are enough seeds kept in Spitsbergen to feed 250,000 people for years, and the supplies is kept inside a mountain.

And when that supply runs out what then?

I believe that the largest warm blooded survivors of the KT extinction weighed no more than fifteen pounds. Edible vegetable matter would be extremely sparse for the next several years, and Earth's climate would be extremely unstable. I really doubt modern day humanity would survive more than a decade if a massive asteroid were hit to hit the Earth.

[LeopJag]

Jul 23, 2013 13:46:36 GMT 5 @brolyeuphyfusion said:

Homo sapiens dies out along with the other ~70-75% of animal life.

I think that dinosaurs(birds are dinosaurs, deal with it), small mammals, non-amniote tetrapods, and lizards would make it through. This would probably be the end of the "Age of Mammals", and the "Second Age of Dinosaurs" begins(but this time they're all feathered).

What makes you think that very small and highly adaptable mammals such as rats and mice, wouldn't pull through?

[Wyvax]

Jul 26, 2013 11:18:17 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

There are enough seeds kept in Spitsbergen to feed 250,000 people for years, and the supplies is kept inside a mountain.

And when that supply runs out what then?

I believe that the largest warm blooded survivors of the KT extinction weighed no more than fifteen pounds. Edible vegetable matter would be extremely sparse for the next several years, and Earth's climate would be extremely unstable. I really doubt modern day humanity would survive more than a decade if a massive asteroid were hit to hit the Earth.

It may be able to feed 250,000 people for a year but I doubt that many people would actually use said bunker, allowing fewer people to survive for much longer. Not relying on the Norway seed vault of course, I still think that humanity as a species would manage to survive even if the population was cut to a 100,000th of it's current state. There will be those hardy and clever individuals that can survive famines, and the sea will still offer its bounty even if it's not as prosperous as it once was.

[Runic]

Jul 26, 2013 11:18:17 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

There are enough seeds kept in Spitsbergen to feed 250,000 people for years, and the supplies is kept inside a mountain.

And when that supply runs out what then?

I believe that the largest warm blooded survivors of the KT extinction weighed no more than fifteen pounds. Edible vegetable matter would be extremely sparse for the next several years, and Earth's climate would be extremely unstable. I really doubt modern day humanity would survive more than a decade if a massive asteroid were hit to hit the Earth.

there's always cannibalism ^-^

[theropod]

First of all, the chicxulub impact is indeed totally overrated in its relevance to the demise of the great mesozoic reptile groups (plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs) and the K/T extinction in general. It is acknowledged there was already considerable decline in biodiversity in most groups, associated with a global cooling (Stanley, 1987: Extinction).

Neither did it extinguish the dinosaurs for that matter. A single meteorite impact of that severity is simply not sufficient to whipe out large, diverse and flourishing groups.

Of course such an event (10-12km asteroid in a similar scenario to the one that impacted 65,5miya) would cause heavy casualties, perhaps the largest part of the human and other populations-and perhaps greatly affect the biodiversity considering that many extant macrofaunal taxa are already in big trouble. But it would not suffice to whipe out humans, or other highly successful animals (among vertebrates, especially rodents, some birds and "fish") for that matter. Greatly reduce their numbers, but not extinguish them beyond repair.

Billions could die due to the consequences of the impact (especially tsunamis and the growing concentration of aerosoles and consequent global cooling), many even starve today or get killed by catastrophies, without any global-scale catastrophy like the scenario in question (which would simply greatly worsen the situation), but at least a few thousands could survive. They could form groups, organise, and use at least the remnants of their technology and knowledge to their advantage. Resources like the seedbank or bunkers have already been mentioned.
Sadly humans have proven very hard to kill off.

[Grey]

Guys, the more we grow and we improve our science and knowledge, the more we are potentially fragile.

We cannot exclude the possible consequences and subsequent phenomenons following such an impact, the potential impacts on human minds, the possible wars, due to starvation and diseases.

Humans have been proven very hard to kill off but humans never took a 12-miles rock on their heads, nor the biblical chaos that would follow it. We are not invincible, like any living species that ever lived, we will disappear one day, and a giant asteroid is among the phenomenons definitely able to kill us, or at least collapsing our civilisation, with a potential extincting at the end.

Also, we are talking about a 12 miles object. If talking about a much bigger one, at around 100 miles, no question, this is absolutely over.

[Runic]

Jul 28, 2013 4:29:12 GMT 5 Grey said:

Guys, the more we grow and we improve our science and knowledge, the more we are potentially fragile.

We cannot exclude the possible consequences and subsequent phenomenons following such an impact, the potential impacts on human minds, the possible wars, due to starvation and diseases.

Humans have been proven very hard to kill off but humans never took a 12-miles rock on their heads, nor the biblical chaos that would follow it. We are not invincible, like any living species that ever lived, we will disappear one day, and a giant asteroid is among the phenomenons definitely able to kill us, or at least collapsing our civilisation, with a potential extincting at the end.

Also, we are talking about a 12 miles object. If talking about a much bigger one, at around 100 miles, no question, this is absolutely over.

There's also the immense beams of energy shot off from exploding stars everyday. If one were to hit earth it would cook the ozone layer clean and we would all die from immense radiation.

[Vodmeister]

Obviously, we humans are not invincible, nothing is, but that does not change the fact that we are immensely prepared for natural disasters, and we're very intelligent. I have no doubt that a 12 km asteroid striking Earth would wipe out the majority of Earth; but still some humans will survive, we have bomb shelters and underground steel bunkers.

It'll take more than the event of 65 million years ago repeating itself in order to wipe out all 7,1 billion of us.

[theropod]

Being invincible has nothing to do with this. I just noted the observation made by scientists that even huge meteorite impacts like the chicxulub one alone are not enough to completely whipe out a flourishing taxon, only taxa that are already having trouble, and this gets even less likely when talking about humans.

A 10km meteorite would cause a huge abount of human deaths, but it alone would not cause the extinction of the whole species, at best lead to consequent demise due to secondary consequences coupled with other factors.

A 100km one would probably kill every multicellular organism on the planet, that isn't even comparable.

[Runic]

Jul 28, 2013 17:37:58 GMT 5 theropod said:

Being invincible has nothing to do with this. I just noted the observation made by scientists that even huge meteorite impacts like the chicxulub one alone are not enough to completely whipe out a flourishing taxon, only taxa that are already having trouble, and this gets even less likely when talking about humans.

A 10km meteorite would cause a huge abount of human deaths, but it alone would not cause the extinction of the whole species, at best lead to consequent demise due to secondary consequences coupled with other factors.

A 100km one would probably kill every multicellular organism on the planet, that isn't even comparable.

You think bacteria etc would then re-evolve all over again in the same way.

[theropod]

In the same way? Hardly. No two things above molecular level are exactly the same. But similar, yes.

[Runic]

No I mean like start off as fish then move to land and become amphibians and reptiles etc etc