Manson Crater
My friend, while reciting from A Short History of Nearly Everything
However, I was very quickly corrected. He was referring to the Manson Crater. According to more than one web page, the impact crater is about 23 to 24 miles wide. However, the impact it had was a little bit more than that. Something like this:
Now, although a crude rendering. It illustrates the impact of a large meteor. Everything in Iowa was incinerated. Everything in the red blot was killed pretty much instantly. Everything else in the picture probaby was shortly after that as the climate was changed instantly forever.
What really gets me is I’d never heard of this thing until my friend mentioned it. This disturbed me because he could care less about astronomy and I love it. I’m supposed to be the one telling him fantastic tales. He got me on this one and I didn’t like it. So I did a little reading too. For some inexplicable reason, MOST sources, when discussing end-of-life meteor strikes, never mention the Manson Crater. They mention a few big ones from the past. But, for some reason, the life-ending impact of Manson doesn’t cut the grade.
Which makes me wonder……
How many other huge meteor strikes have there been that are either unreported or undiscovered? The rarely-documented ones are the ones that bother me most. You always hear of a couple of impacts that wiped out life on Earth. A couple in one hundred million years is incredibly rare. Four or five still fall in the incredibly rare category. But, the way I look at it, the impact of the impact is felt for hundreds or thousands of years. So, if there are, say five, that covers five thousand years, then the chances are getting somewhat normal. That puts it around 1 in 100,000 of living in a period of lifelessness. Or, to put it another way, being dead during said period. To put that in perspective, you more likely to die from this scenario than:
- Chance of contracting the human version of mad cow disease: 1 in 40,000,000
- Chance of dying from a mountain lion attack in California: 1 in 32,000,000
- Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000
- Chance of dying from being bitten by a dog: 1 in 700,000
- Chance of dying from being bitten or struck by mammals (other than dogs or humans): 1 in 4,235,477
- Chance of dying from choking on food: 1 in 370,035
- Chance of dying from contact with a venomous animal or plant: 1 in 3,441,325
- Chance of dying from contact with hot tap water: 1 in 5,005,564
- Chance of dying from exposure to forces of nature (heat, cold, lightning, earthquake, flood): 1 in 225,107
- Chance of dying from food poisoning: 1 in 3,000,000
- Chance of dying from ignition or melting of nightwear: 1 in 30,589,555
- Chance of dying from legal execution: 1 in 3,441,325
- Chance of dying from overexertion, travel or privation: 1 in 1,428,377
- Chance of dying from parts falling off an airplane: 1 in 10,000,000
- Chance of dying from SARS in the United States: 1 in 100,000,000
- Chance of dying in a fireworks accident: 1 in 1,000,000
- Chance of dying in a terrorist attack while visiting a foreign country: 1 in 650,000
- Chance of dying in an airplane accident: 1 in 354,319
- Chance of dying in an explosion: 1 in 107,787
- Odds of a person in the military winning the Medal of Honor: 11,000 to 1
- Odds of an American speaking Cherokee: 15000 to 1
- Odds of becoming a saint: 20,000,000 to 1
- Odds of becoming president: 10,000,000 to 1
- Odds of being an astronaut: 13,200,000 to 1
- Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1
- Odds of being killed on a 5-mile bus trip: 500,000,000 to 1
- Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
- Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1
- Odds of getting a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 649,740 to 1
- Odds of getting canonized: 20,000,000 to 1
- Odds of spotting a UFO today: 3,000,000 to 1
- Odds of winning an Olympic medal: 662,000 to 1
- Odds of winning the California lottery: 13,000,000 to 1
So, I think we should demand to know why the government is covering up all the cataclysmic impacts they are aware of.
