1 When The Meteor Strikes, Will You Be Ready?

Christmas was around the corner. Having experienced multiple calamities year-round, people were eager for the year to come to an end, and with it, a respite.

Ultimately, it was a painful year for all of mankind.

Plague, Famine, War, and Death. The Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had ravaged the world, and human beings had found themselves powerless against the wrath of mother nature.

Even in the face of disaster, humanity had never given up hope. We were always fighting hard, putting the most precious golden spirit of mankind on display - full of hope and unrelenting perseverance against adversity.

However, it was as if God played a huge joke on mankind. On that day, a huge meteorite more than ten kilometers in diameter was discovered by astronomers. Current projections confirmed that the orbit of this huge meteorite would intersect with the Earth, and it would crash into it within a few months.

The governments of various countries tried to keep the news under wraps as soon as they learned of it. To avoid widespread panic, almost every astronomer was issued a gag order.

Nevertheless, that kind of news could not be contained for long.

After all, the meteorite was looming in the sky. As it got closer to the Earth, amateur astronomers around the world could see the comet in the night sky growing brighter and bigger through their telescopes.

Moreover, due to space operations and numerous countermeasures that were immediately deployed by governments of various countries, it was difficult not to take notice of it, especially in the era of the Internet.

These clues naturally spread around the Internet, arousing eager discussion. Simultaneously, some foresighted people began to hoard materials after discovering the imminent crisis.

There had been too many disasters this year, as many people had experienced.

Food, medicine, protective equipment, communications equipment… Those emergency supplies were sold out immediately.

Fortunately, due to the huge number of disasters this year, companies that produced disaster-response essentials had drastically increased their output, There was an especially high demand for emergency food items that could be stored for 20 or even 40 years. 

Even though throughout that year, the demand for emergency food was second only to protective gear when compared with other essentials.

Nevertheless, in Chen Xin's view, digging a bunker for oneself was more important than snapping up those supplies.

Chen Xin was an internet writer. He made a living by writing for several websites. As a writer, his most valuable assets were his imagination and cognitive ability. After all, any successful form of writing had to have a clear organization of entertaining ideas and a coherent flow.

That undoubtedly led Chen Xin's thinking to be more complicated than others when facing such a possible disaster.

'That meteorite would hit Earth sooner or later, how would humans avoid such tragedy?'

For the first time, that question arose in Chen Xin's mind.

Fortunately, as an Internet writer, Chen Xin was never one to let his imagination run dry. He also had the habit of recording his ideas and then conceptualizing them. The outcome in which the meteorite struck the Earth was well within his predictions.

Even while stocking up on supplies and searching the Internet for any information that could be found, Chen Xin had always remembered to revisit his collection of ideas and unfinished thoughts. 

When the giant meteorite strikes the Earth, it would first bring about a violent impact.

Judging by the size of the meteorite, even if various countries had a space interception plan in place, the probability of success was low. The meteorite would likely break into many smaller fragments that could still cause widespread destruction. 

However, that did not mean that the damage would be reduced. A smaller meteorite did not imply that it was any less dangerous. After all, it was still a part of a rock that was ten kilometers across in diameter.

Even if it were broken into smaller pieces, those meteorite fragments would still average several kilometers in size. If any of them stuck, it would be devastating.

When a meteorite the size of more than five kilometers in diameter strikes the Earth, everything within a radius of at least one thousand kilometers would cease to exist.

The impact would throw everything around the impact site directly into space. The thermal energy generated by the meteorite's friction with the atmosphere and the energy released by the impact would send out a wall of fire at least ten kilometers high, with temperatures exceeding thousands of degrees Celsius. The fiery wall would incinerate everything within a radius of at least 1,500 kilometers.

Within the blast range, even if you could hide in an underground bunker, there was a high probability that the high temperature would roast you like the famous Meizhou stuffed barbecued chicken from Guangdong. Granted that you could dig deeper underground, you would be buried alive by the magnitude 11 earthquake that followed.

If you were lucky, perhaps your fossilized remains would be dug up by humans tens of millions of years later. 

Should you be interested in leaving behind a message for mankind, you could raise your middle finger, and future humans would be moved by your optimistic, albeit satirical spirit.

The shockwave caused by a meteorite impact would travel around the world at several times the speed of sound. No matter where you were on Earth, you could hear the violent sound of the impact.

If you were on the opposite hemisphere where the meteorite hit, there would be no immediate danger. The shockwave would just be enough to remind you to hide in the bunker.

However, that was only the beginning.

Throughout the next few days, a firestorm made up of haze and rubble would cover the Earth's atmosphere. This would cause the global temperature from the two poles to the equator to rise to 70-200 degrees, turning Earth's surface into a gigantic oven.

The entire surface would become unsuitable for human survival. All flora would be roasted by the spike in temperature. The harmful toxic gases produced by global fires would spread throughout the atmosphere and kill most of the surface organisms.

Moreover, this was still just a prelude to the disaster. It would be like being served an appetizer before the main course.

Due to the increase in atmospheric temperature, the sea level would also rise rapidly. The kinetic energy released by the meteorite impact would produce a tsunami that was thousands of meters high, and it would effectively decimate almost all coastal cities.

The dust cloud set off by the impact and the haze formed by the toxic gases from the global fire would block out all sunlight, plunging the Earth into a long period of darkness for dozens or even hundreds of years.

The material thrown into space by the meteorite impact and the smaller fragments entrapped within the meteorite itself would continue to rain down on Earth.

It would be as if the hemisphere where the impact site was located was carpet-bombed. The continuous meteorite impact would greatly reduce the chances of survival.

Even if one could hide in an underground bunker, it was impossible to survive the daily meteorite bombardment, especially when the fragments ranged from a size of a few meters to a few hundred meters.

As for the opposite hemisphere of the impact site, it would fare better, but there would still be meteorites falling randomly. It could almost be said that there was a chance that the meteorites would smash several tall buildings when you went out.

Even then, it would not be over yet, because the atmosphere would be covered by thick dust clouds and a haze formed by toxic gases. Within the next few months, the temperature would cool rapidly.

If the high-latitude cities were not destroyed in the impact, their temperatures would drop to minus 70 degrees, while the equatorial regions would be slightly better off with temperatures around minus twenty or thirty degrees.

As the darkness and extreme cold would last for up to a century, the new Ice Age would finally become a reality.