Meteorite Collision?

I woke up last night from a (minor) nightmare (where Spiderman was killed by a weird rock/landslide… go figure), and started thinking (because what else would you do at 2 in the morning, right…?) about the impact of a meteorite crashing on Earth. Yes, totally unrelated, but welcome to my brain!

So actually, I realized that there are SOOOOO many things that could go wrong if a meteorite even came close to Earth:

• Most obvious case: a meteorite crashes right into the face of Earth (not even trying to avoid us…)
  1. There’s a huge crater in Earth, everyone in a large range dies under the meteorite
  2. The impact causes a huge wall of ___ (fill space with what you prefer: dirt, soil, buildings, people, …) to be projected in the atmosphere, and based on gravity, everything that goes up comes back down, so an area even larger receives tons of “debris” (sorry, humans) on their heads
  3. Obviously the pressure causes huge winds to start going away from the location of the meteorite impact, which blows pretty much everything between the meteorite and the other side of Earth.
  4. If the meteorite fell in the ocean, replace everything above by “water”… not much better result, anyway.
  5. Earth might move away/closer from its current orbit around the sun, so whoever didn’t die above will now freeze or burn to death…
• Another obvious case: the meteorite strikes us to an angle
  1. Most of the above still applies, although the wave may go only one way around the Earth.
  2. On top of that, Earth rotation may slow down, or accelerate. That won’t be good for our little delicate biologies, I’m afraid. Have ever tried to live 25h or 23h a day for weeks…? Not me, but not eager to. Anyway, to be honest, chances are we would already have died anyway…
• A less obvious case: the meteorite does NOT strike us, but still goes at warp speed through our atmosphere
  1. We’ll likely get the wind/water blow up anyway… Have you ever experienced 500-1000 km/h winds? Yeah, me neither… Count me out.
  2. Well, things going through our atmosphere kind of heat up the ambient I think. Who’s up for some full body burns?
• A not so obvious case: what if the meteorite doesn’t even go through our atmosphere?
  1. We’re safe!!!… Well, not so fast, party boy: it’s highly likely that the proximity of an object passing at high speed close to us will end causing some “induction” of some sort… here w go again: wind, water, Earth rotation speed changing… And we’re dead again.
  2. Actually that would have happened in previous case too. Even more deader.
• A not obvious case: hey! The meteorite missed us!!! Lame!!!
  • Too bad, the moon was just there waiting for it. Have you ever played pool, anyone? Now we don’t have a meteorite crashing on us… just the moon itself… Intense.
• A not at all obvious case: the meteorite that missed us but hit the moon didn’t cause a pool effect.
  • Oh, look the moon is going away…! So much for tides and whatever may be useful to us. Well, at least no more werewolves either… Not all is lost. Get used to darker nights, still.

Well, obviously, none of the above will ever happen. Humans are so smart: we will build some nuclear rocket to deter any object from striking us. But in the meantime, we’ll probably kill ourselves with the rockets first…

Have a great end of week, and let’s stay optimistic.