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The friendly folks at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory have made available online a calculator that will tell you roughly the amount of physical and structural damage you’ll suffer if Ben and Bruce can’t blow up the asteroid in time to save us.
The Earth Impact Effects Program takes as input the size, density, speed and angle of the object, your distance from impact, and the nature of the impact spot and describes the effects of the impact in terms of energy released, seismic effects, crater size and type, air blast and thermal radiation. The fun comes when you can tweak the numbers so that the results are somewhere between “Deciduous trees ignite” and “Clothing ignites.”
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