Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Re: Asteroid on the way? Figure out the damage...

The reality is very complicated.

Much more complicated than that simple simulator. A deep-ocean strike of a large body would create tsunamis, and the worst damage zones (many of them too far away to even see the strike itself) would be dictated solely by the exact point of the fall and a lot of complex factors of landforms and ocean bottom shapes.

There is also sometimes an "antipodal shock" thing going, where even if a body fell on the exact opposite side of the planet from, say, Oregon, the shock convergence could do a lot more damage than one would think. Even then geology figures into it. I watched a simulation of an "antipodal shock" once and the worst effects weren't precisely on the other side of the Earth. A lot of different things steered and refocused the shocks.

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