Or CAN you?

According to Radius International (Texas), maybe. Probably.

Great site. Check out the pre-fab and on-site constructed shelters:

Underground Shelters | Manufacturing the Best Shelters in the world.

All sizes. Short term and long term. With the on-site installations, I was surprised at how LARGE and comprehensive some of them could be (with the price tag to match.....one of them was meant to house 200 people for years.......completely off the grid........and about $5-million........).

Think of some disaster movies you might have seen......and the outcomes. 'Armagaddon'. There's a 3-week lead time between discovering the asteroid, and impact. All or nothing......the shuttle mission is successful.....or everyone and everything dies. 'Deep Impact'. There's a 2-year window between discovery and impact...and the Gov't has apparently been busy as bees constructing underground cities which could house 1-million people for 2 years. 'Seeking a Friend For the End of the World' (actually a pretty good movie). The movie starts with the radio announcer 'announcing' that the shuttle mission has failed...and in 3 weeks, the 70-mile wide asteroid 'Matilda' would strike the Earth. Basically everyone is hosed....(has anyone contemplated the effects of such an impact???).

Thoughts? Some I've no doubt there are a LOT of underground shelters and complexes folks have been building for years. Is it enough? If you had your druthers, which would YOU pick (off the website). How long underground do you think would be long enough with specific scenarios? (i.e. supervolcano.....large comet or asteroid strike.....worldwide nuclear exchange......etc.). Is 2 years enough for the surface to become habitable again? 3 years? 5 years?

And what would YOU bring to the party? How many people? A community which could....conceivably.......be viable and 'repopulate'? Equipment? Livestock and seeds? And for how long?

Are some scenarios just plain un-survivable no matter what? I'm not talking about being sucked into the sun or a black hole......But even asteroids or comets?

Thoughts?

This is kind of serious...but kind of irreverant too. Meant to be fun and serious at the same time. I mean, preparedness is always a good idea.....But long-term survival is probably currently out of the question for 98% of the population if the 'event' is bad enough.

Also, I need a break from politics and the 'Gub'mint' for a bit. Welcome to GNAC.

 

There would be three main requirements- Food, hospitable temperature, and air. The food needs light to grow, and climate control and air handling need power as well, something uninterruptable. Assuming darkened skies in a scenario like this, solar would be out. Ash would clog rivers, so hydro is out. Being outside would mean isolation suits and portable air supplies, so that would be impracticable for fossil fuel systems, if the atmosphere would even support combustion. That leaves nuclear, but on a small scale that did not require a vulnerable complex transmission network. Plan for at least ten years of this style of living, up to a generation.
All of this assumes you are not in the immediate effected zone of the giant space rock-

 

Who would want to survive that level of catastrophe?
Extinction means that you don't survive regardless of what shelter you might have.
If by chance I would be still alive, after the event, I'd work on my enemy list.

 

This is a GREAT point.

In a situation where even long-term survival would be out of the question......even with an awesome underground complex......The best case scenario might have you right under the hurtling object......

Quick (snap)

But yes......One where survival is possible. Best be far enough away from ground zero, or it doesn't matter HOW nice your shelter is. Boom. You're gone. With a asteroid or comet on the size of, say.......10 miles diameter? Best be at least 1000 miles away. Probably even further. 2000 miles would probably be OK.

 

what does last 4EVER

 

Depends, I suppose, if you think humanity should, or could, be a continuing work in progress.....(shrug).

Personally, I'd die happy if I knew SOME would survive.....and humanity would go on.

That requires a little more long-range thinking for some folks though......

Not necessarily. It describes an event which wipes out MOST life......and maybe even entire species......

Consider the dinosaur Waterloo. The so-called K-T event (what most paleontologists consider the downfall of the species....a likely comet or asteroid strike). All dinosaurs bit the bullet. Species like crocs and sea creatures like sharks survived. Enough land mammals survived to spring THAT evolutionary branch into a thriving concern. Life goes on. And here we are.

Also, we have technology on our side. Enough to allow enough of us to survive to keep humanity going long term? That's the poser.

In 'Seeking a Friend for the End of the World', some of that was going on. It was more about people, of course, rather than the 70-mile wide asteroid. You saw some of the best....and some of the worst. One guy hired a hit man to kill him by 'surprise'. Of course there were riots and murders and stuff. Knowing the end is near causes all kinds of crazy s--t.

In that case though.....There was really no mention of when we first learned of the approaching asteroid. Just the news report that the shuttle mission failed when it reached the magnetic field of the asteroid....and "we'll be playing your favorite tunes for the next 3 weeks".......

But in that scenario......You don't really know what other preps have occurred (if any). Or if it's 'SMASH'!.......We're all dead!

70-mile wide asteroid travelling at 10miles/second?

 

The good thing about an event like this, according to Hollywood anyway is that Canada is rarely affected so I'm OK with staying on the surface!

 

In 'Deep Impact', the larger fragment (about 5 1/2 miles long) was fixing to strike "Somewhere in Western Canada".........

Sorry, Rollerstud.

 

A species is extinct when the last existing member dies. Extinction therefore becomes a certainty when there are no surviving individuals that are able to reproduce and create a new generation. A species may become http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_extinction when only a handful of individuals survive, which cannot reproduce due to poor health, age, sparse distribution over a large range, a lack of individuals of both sexes (in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_reproduction species), or other reasons.
Pinpointing the extinction (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoextinction) of a species requires a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_species. If it is to be declared extinct, the species in question must be uniquely identifiable from any ancestor or daughter species, or from other closely related species. Extinction of a species (or replacement by a daughter species) plays a key role in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium hypothesis of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Eldredge.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction#cite_note-8 In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology, extinction is often used informally to refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_extinction, in which a species ceases to exist in the chosen area of study, but still exists elsewhere. This phenomenon is also known as extirpation. Local extinctions may be followed by a replacement of the species taken from other locations; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_reintroduction is an example of this. Species which are not extinct are termed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extant_taxon. Those that are extant but threatened by extinction are referred to as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatened or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_species.
An important aspect of extinction at the present time are human attempts to preserve critically endangered species, which is reflected by the creation of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_in_the_wild. Species listed under this status by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_Conservation_of_Nature (IUCN) are not known to have any living specimens in the wild, and are maintained only in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo or other artificial environments. Some of these species are functionally extinct, as they are no longer part of their natural habitat and it is unlikely the species will ever be restored to the wild.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction#cite_note-Maas-9 When possible, modern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoology institutions attempt to maintain a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_population for species preservation and possible future http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reintroduction to the wild through use of carefully planned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_program.
The extinction of one species' wild population can have knock-on effects, causing further extinctions. These are also called "chains of extinction".[10] This is especially common with extinction of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species.

 

Slimbo....If I'm reading the quote right....what you're trying to say is......Well I think what you mean.......I mean if what you're trying to get across.........Um.....Well......Uh......

Hell. Dang it, I don't know WHAT you're trying to say!

 

I see two choices as being the best. One would be taking the hit directly or being on the opposite point on the globe.

 

Bruce Willis and his motley crew of deep core drillers, will never fail............I saw the movie.

GET OFF THE NUCLEAR WEAPON!!

 

sounds like we have a good movie plot here....me and my dog would just die in my Ford Truck

 

Well, maybe it can hit Vancouver and the rocky mountains will protect me here! haha. If not well then I'm done.

 

If I take your question fairly seriously... I have been contemplating in recent years... For most of my life I've been confident in caring for myself; however, more recently I've come to the conclusion that I could not kill another such that I could survive myself. Also, I couldn't shelter in place while keeping others outside to die. Perhaps it's just my age.