Fallout by Steve Sheinkin

Author:Steve Sheinkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

PART 3

EYEBALL TO EYEBALL

GRAVE ISSUES

SIXTY-SIX MILLION YEARS AGO, GIVE or take a few centuries, an asteroid about the size of Manhattan Island slammed into Earth near what we now call the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. This, scientists are pretty sure, is what wiped out the dinosaurs. The asteroid’s impact blasted debris high into the atmosphere, creating a blanket of soot that blocked sunlight and caused the planet to cool by a global average of fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. The fossil record shows that about three-quarters of Earth’s species, including all of the non-bird dinosaurs, went extinct.

In the second half of the twentieth century, scientists began to realize that human beings could do something similar to themselves.

Think of volcanic eruptions, they pointed out. Think of the blast of Mount Tambora, on an Indonesian island in 1815, the most powerful eruption in recorded human history. Tambora shot so much sunlight-blocking ash and gas into the atmosphere that snow fell in New York State in June the next year. Summer frosts damaged crops from North America to Asia, causing widespread famine, killing millions of people around the world.

A nuclear war could have the same effects—but worse.

The bombs would ignite massive fires, sending millions of tons of soot into the atmosphere. The planet would cool, likely for several years. Crops would fail. Humans, like the dinosaurs, would run out of food. The entire species could be wiped out. Scientists came up with a term for this terrifying scenario: nuclear winter.

In 1962, most non-scientists knew nothing of the possibility of nuclear winter. But that didn’t really matter. The dinosaurs had never heard of asteroids, either.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.