Posts tagged natural-disasters
I feel like this is the most noobish question ever. Anyway, imagine an asteroid hits Earth and the atmosphere is now full of particles, successfully blocking the Sun from Earth. There are people st...
In my world, I am looking for a crater formed by a meteor impact that deposited a large number of resources there. The final crater should be 200 miles in diameter. I would like to do this with min...
My antagonist is going to cause a widespread blackout to flex on the protagonist, but the unexpected consequence is that some folks are going to die as a result. This will cause the protagonist to ...
I did a little looking and it appears stars outside of 10 parsec/33 ly will have very little effect on the Earth. What it did say was that inside that range the gamma rays would affect our ozone l...
66 million years ago, something brought an end to the long-established dinosaur empire. The pendulum just kept shifting between an asteroid and a comet, astronomical bolides that actually have dif...
I'm working on a comic which is essentially alternate-history fiction, and a big upcoming part of it involves the formation of the Chicxulub crater 63 million years ago. As I am a stickler for acc...
Imagine a tsunami of lava has flash-flooded cities. Oddly enough there weren't eruptions or earthquakes, just a sea of molten rock covering every inch of road, street pavement, what have you. Accor...
All of a sudden, overnight, abruptly, weather forecast guys go on strikes... everywhere is raining nitric acid non stop so that on average the amount reported is 100mm and the pH level is 3 occasio...
Art by Sylvain sarrailh What kind of event would we need to have 1km deep fissures spanning out across the planet. I can work with a hypothetical scenario where the planet might have had some sor...
"At this very moment we face a threat insurmountable to Man. We are faced with two options. Stay on Earth and die, or leave Earth to space." - UN Preservation Council, CE 2047 Earth, year CE 2047 ...
So, it finally happened. The Earth was hit by a comet, and anyone outside of a research station at the bottom of the Atlantic is now dead, or dying. So, here's what we need to know: How big would a...
We have at most 100 years to abandon earth. The 10-km asteroid which killed the dinosaurs has hit the moon head-on instead. As a result, the moon has slowed down and it's orbit will decay by 400,00...
On the Earth, with our atmosphere, even small objects entering the atmosphere such as Tunguska or Chelyabinsk can do devastating damage due to the shock-wave travelling through the air. People coul...
I think it would make sense for hurricanes to be combatted using shade balls to block the evaporation of the ocean into the storm. What would we need to stop a hurricane? Info on shade balls.
For a story I have, modern civilisation must be destroyed by a worldwide disaster. The objective is roughly something that: Could be man-made or aided (if not now, maybe in the future) Decimates...
I was certain somebody would have asked this before, but after scrolling through the Similar questions list I couldn't find any duplicates. For this question, let's say that an asteroid or comet s...
Is it possible for life to evolve"” and survive"” on a planet that is regularly hit by [relatively small"” usually no more than a few feet across when they make an impact] meteorites? If so, what e...
Imagine the other dimension is much much colder. Very little light/heat/etc. Suppose the portal only allows energy transfer, so matter can't pass through. What would the consequences be? Would it...
On May 18, 1980, Mount Saint Helens made American history with an eruption that took 57 human lives and killed thousands of animals. It has released only a quarter of a cubic mile of ash, but it i...
66 million years ago, the dinosaur empire was in its death throes when its final nail in the coffin came hurtling down from the sky. A clump of rock the size of Mount Everest smashed into the Gulf...
So my world needs to be destroyed because of a variety of things. New land masses would be created and destroyed and joined till we had a single continent. In the future, people saw the possibili...
Premise: a massive organic structure sits somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean giving of an intermittent telekinetic pulse. This would presumably create a constant chain of tsunamis. What sort of abnor...
I was reading up on Mars thin atmosphere and was wondering how could Earth becomes like the red planet except it only has only 100 pascal (air pressure) at imaginary sea level? Mars is 600 pascal o...
I am trying to think of a natural event that causes very big impact to human lives - massive movements of people, shift of power, etc. This event happens in a medieval period on an earth-like plane...
NB: This is not a duplicate of this question, because A) it only asks to wipe out humans, not any other life-form, and B) it insists that one person must survive. The survival of anything is not po...
The last time I asked a worldbuilding extinction question, I asked on what sorts of factors would create an extinction event in which 96% of all terrestrial species and only 70% of marine species d...
A colony of space travelers makes their way to their new home planet. After landing and establishing their base camp, a wood worker begins to cut down trees and notices that none of the trees have ...
252 million years ago, the worst event in the history of life on Earth occurred. 70% of all terrestrial species and 96% of all marine species became extinct through, according to geological record...
An alien species has been conquering planet after planet around the Milky Way for some time. They detected intelligent life on Earth a while back and now they decided it's time to add us to their c...
As far as I know stars are going supernova as a natural process. Can aliens trigger it artificially? If this is possible then: How can I do this (what minimum technology and civilization develop...
Could humans sustain life after a k-t like extinction event? I know that a long lasting winter was a side effect then, but humans have technology to protect against cold. What other effects of an a...
In 1815 Mount Tambora erupted throwing so much dust into the atmosphere that the year became known as "the year without a summer". *There were a few other mitigating factors but Tambora is thought ...
66 million years ago, a space bomb ten kilometers, or six miles, wide raced through the atmosphere at 20 kilometers per second and landed on the Gulf of Mexico at an angle of 90 degrees. The resul...
I'm looking for a science based answer based on current technology. Given that we do commit some small amount of resources and time to searching for stellar objects, with our current technology, ho...
I'm looking into the destructive power of a 5km asteroid strike, a bit smaller than the k-Pg event. How does the angle of the strike affect the destructive capability of a land-based impact. For e...
The year is 2089. The political shenanigans of the day have gotten more out of hand than usual and violent zealots have detonated the Earth's largest deposit of plotium devicide, an extremely versa...
I'm at the mall and Yellowstone erupts - My, and everyone else's car is covered with ash, fire, and maybe even lava. Lets say it was a big shopping day too, like Black Friday or Christmas Eve, just...
A fault that ruptures causing an earthquake can cause a chain reaction of dynamically triggered earthquakes in nearby faults, thus causing a much larger seismic event. What are some high unlikely b...
Scenario: The Moon disappears slowly -- within 3 days. It is a result of natural causes and we don't have any control over this disaster. What will be the Major Effects On Earth and life on Earth?
I am writing a story where a freak magical accident causes a fully-formed landmass to pop into existence like it was there all along. For the purposes of this question, let's assume: the contine...
Ideally this would be some sort of sun or star-related natural disaster that would affect the entire planet and make life outside of protected/shielded areas extremely dangerous. This is a human-in...
I'm interested in asteroid mining, but don't have the infrastructure in place to process ores and the like in space. However, I've got a nice planet-based refinery setup where I could easily proces...
The scenario is the following: a civilization with technology level similar to humanity's current, on a planet similar to Earth, shall be hit by a massive celestial body in approximately one year. ...
In my 10 book series, the historical time line turns on the fact that the greatest nation in the major continent's history, disappeared overnight during a national celebration. This nation was enj...
Considering our topic challenge, and the fantastic eclipse last Sunday a question came to me. Could there be a stable (relatively speaking) planetary system where a(n) eclipse/alignment would actu...
I need some help with a couple of the planet building theories I'm playing around with. I've looked up most of this stuff and can follow the physics if given the time (and instructional tutuorial h...
I've drawn up a set of landmasses for my story, and now there's a tsunami headed for them. I know where the tsunami is coming from, and I could decide how big it is, or any other characteristics o...
I have a parallel universe very similar to Earth but with a society with the technological level of Europe during the Middle Ages. I want this parallel Earth to be one big continent, one giant land...
I need an event man-made or not on Earth that can generate consistent earthquake that never grow weak, sky is the limit meaning any astronomical events will be ruled out. My story can take place du...
The story begins in classic disaster film style. A small rogue black hole is approaching our Solar System. It isn't going to get close enough to destroy everything, but it will agitate our Sun, ca...
