WI A Gamma Ray Burst hit Earth?

bard32

Banned
I first heard about this on The Universe. Back in the 1960s, scientists discovered pulsars. However, pulsars aren't that dangerous. WI a gamma ray
burst hit Earth? Sound ASB? Not really. Gamma ray bursts are quite rare. However, if they occurred within 100 light-years of Earth, we'd be in trouble.
The ozone layer would be screwed up, most life on the planet would be killed,
and those "lucky" enough to survive, would starve to death because there wouldn't be any food, and if there were survivors, they'd have to band together in order to survive because we'd be back in the 19th century because
our satellites wouldn't be working. Btw, 100 light-years is just down the road
astronomically.
 

Hannibal.Caesar

bard32 said:
I first heard about this on The Universe. Back in the 1960s, scientists discovered pulsars. However, pulsars aren't that dangerous. WI a gamma ray
burst hit Earth? Sound ASB? Not really. Gamma ray bursts are quite rare. However, if they occurred within 100 light-years of Earth, we'd be in trouble.
The ozone layer would be screwed up, most life on the planet would be killed,
and those "lucky" enough to survive, would starve to death because there wouldn't be any food, and if there were survivors, they'd have to band together in order to survive because we'd be back in the 19th century because
our satellites wouldn't be working. Btw, 100 light-years is just down the road
astronomically.
Click to expand...

...So we'd all be dead.
 

bard32

Banned
Hannibal.Caesar said:
...So we'd all be dead.
Click to expand...

Basically, yes. Unless the survivors found a way to work together. According to what they said, the GRB would create tsunamis that would slam into the West Coast. It would also create fires that would burn for years and block out
the sun.
 

Hannibal.Caesar

bard32 said:
Basically, yes. Unless the survivors found a way to work together. According to what they said, the GRB would create tsunamis that would slam into the West Coast. It would also create fires that would burn for years and block out
the sun.
Click to expand...

So we'd be dead. This has already been established by the recent gamut of end-of-the-world WIs.

How is this decent AH?
 

bard32

Banned
Hannibal.Caesar said:
So we'd be dead. This has already been established by the recent gamut of end-of-the-world WIs.

How is this decent AH?
Click to expand...

There'd be a handful of survivors. If they could band together, everything
would be back to sort of normal, in about ten years, maybe more. That
would mean it would be safe to plant crops.
 

Finn

bard32 said:
There'd be a handful of survivors. If they could band together, everything
would be back to sort of normal, in about ten years, maybe more. That
would mean it would be safe to plant crops.
Click to expand...

So we'd be cavemen struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. That is all.
 

Markus

Banned
WI bard32 stops asking the same WI-question several times or WI some mod puts bard32´s spam where it belongs?
 

Blue Max

bard32 said:
I first heard about this on The Universe. Back in the 1960s, scientists discovered pulsars. However, pulsars aren't that dangerous. WI a gamma ray
burst hit Earth? Sound ASB? Not really. Gamma ray bursts are quite rare. However, if they occurred within 100 light-years of Earth, we'd be in trouble.
The ozone layer would be screwed up, most life on the planet would be killed,
and those "lucky" enough to survive, would starve to death because there wouldn't be any food, and if there were survivors, they'd have to band together in order to survive because we'd be back in the 19th century because
our satellites wouldn't be working. Btw, 100 light-years is just down the road
astronomically.
Click to expand...

Fortunately for Earth, Humanity, and myself, I believe this situation is impossible. Gamma Ray Bursts require massive stars either going supernova (and that's one serious supernova) or collisions of Neutron Stars.

Although the outcome would be close to a total planet kill, this is also not possible. There are no hypergiant stars within 100 LY of Earth.
 

WilyBadger

An interesting take on this might be to consider what if something like this had happened in, say, 1908? How long would it take civilization to recover? What would our society look like now, a hundred years down the line?
 

Doctor What

Blue Max said:
Fortunately for Earth, Humanity, and myself, I believe this situation is impossible. Gamma Ray Bursts require massive stars either going supernova (and that's one serious supernova) or collisions of Neutron Stars.

Although the outcome would be close to a total planet kill, this is also not possible. There are no hypergiant stars within 100 LY of Earth.
Click to expand...

The closest candidate seems to be Wolf-Rayet star WR 104. Fortunately it's about 8000 light years away, so if we were to get zapped with a Gamma Ray burst from it (a very BIG if, I might add), it will be "relatively" surviveable (in that a good 10-20% of the Earth's population can be reasonably expected to survive the massive ozone layer damage and the resulting disruption to the food chain).
 

Caesar

Doctor What said:
The closest candidate seems to be Wolf-Rayet star WR 104. Fortunately it's about 8000 light years away, so if we were to get zapped with a Gamma Ray burst from it (a very BIG if, I might add), it will be "relatively" surviveable (in that a good 10-20% of the Earth's population can be reasonably expected to survive the massive ozone layer damage and the resulting disruption to the food chain).
Click to expand...

I hope you're not planning on doing one of your crazy experiments again...
 

Qazaq2007

Actually GRBs can be caused by neutron star mergers as well as by hyperstars. If a GRB went off anywhere in our galaxy, w/ the GR jet aimed directly at Earth, we'd be toast. A GRB going off within a hundred LY of Earth w/ one of the jets aimed directly at us would be intense enough to melt the Earth's crust, so no matter how you slice it, we would be screwed. Astronomers have recently discovered a neutron star binary within a few thousand LY of Earth that is oriented in such a way that when the neutron stars do merge, one of the jets will be aimed directly at Earth, but fortunately the merger has been computed not to happen for thousands of years yet, hopefully.
 

Blue Max

I'd want to point out that extinction level events are obviously very rare events, and that stellar collisions are on the scale of hundreds of millions of years or longer. I concede heavy damage is possible, but it would neither be likely to happen nor unavoidable. In addition, the neutron stars should send a pretty good warning before the blast actually hits--they'd emit a large amount of energy as they got closer. The actual collision might give decades or centuries of warning--enough time, perhaps, to build a lead shield to protect Earth?

I think humanity of the future would probably be able to mitigate much of the consequences with enough warning. If Ozone destruction is the problem, Humanity can quickly make more. And they'd probably have began the process well beforehand.

This is one of those "great project" scenarios where humanity can avoid a crisis if it commits itself to doing so. The real likely case is that the Gamma Ray Burst is extragalatic and produces only a tiny trickle of noise.
 
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