Russian meteor strike!

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Badfish740

Minister of Fire
Oct 3, 2007
1,539


If this thing had hit in 1963 none of us would be here. The Russians would have unleashed their arsenal, ours would have shortly followed and it would have been the dirt nap for my parents and a lot of forum members here!
 
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Very cool story/videos.

As for 1963, wasn't there but I doubt it. Sounds like less than a kiloton, airburst. I suspect that the Soviets would have had reports from the ground that showed damage << smallest nuke.

Heard that there is a hiroshima sized (~10 kiloton) airburst somewhere in the world about once a decade. By random chance most are over ocean and unihabited areas.

The solar system is not quite finished yet....makes me feel better about my DIY projects.
 
As for 1963, wasn't there but I doubt it. Sounds like less than a kiloton, airburst. I suspect that the Soviets would have had reports from the ground that showed damage << smallest nuke.

I wasn't there either, but as a student of history, I know that there were some very itchy trigger fingers on both sides.
 
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I have also heard that there are no documented cases of humans dying from a meteor strike. So far with this one, no reported fatalities. Hopefully it will stay that way.

I once saw a bolide that was bright enough to light up the ground...saw a flash on the ground at night and looked up to see the meteor. Inside Chicago city limits.
 
That was an amazing and rare event! The sonic boom must have been intense. Sorry that it happened over a populated area. Estimates are 1200 people injured mostly from the 100,000 sq. mtrs. of shattered glass. A factory roof also collapsed. Thank goodness it wasn't worse. It's not every day that you have a 10 ton meteor streaking overhead.
 
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I also learned from this that most Russians equip their cars with dash cameras (hence all of the footage) because the police are so corrupt. If they get pulled over on a traffic stop they want everything documented. Crazy...
 
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Interesting that it happened so close to the time when DA14 meteor is doing it's fly by. I bet we'll see a lot more footage of this meteorite explosion before too long.

As for all those nukes humans have armed and ready to go, it's a miracle nobody has used one yet. As more and more countries build and arm themselves with them, it's only a mater of time.
 
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The biggie that is being missed is "President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas".

A Communist thanking God. Wow!
 
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I also learned from this that most Russians equip their cars with dash cameras (hence all of the footage) because the police are so corrupt. If they get pulled over on a traffic stop they want everything documented. Crazy...

I read they also use dash cams because there are so many scam artists who will back into other cars, or jump on the hood of a car and claim they were hit. One of the news stories had a couple videos of the meteor, and one of random Russian car wrecks. Seems they're not very good drivers over there.
 
The biggie that is being missed is "President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas".

A Communist thanking God. Wow!

I think Putin veers more toward a kind of fascism. He has aligned himself with the Orthodox Church in recent years which is why there was that big dustup with the all girl punk band with the funny name.
 
Dash cams came in at the request of insurance companies. There were a lot of scams and organized crime groups fleecing the insurance co's. with staged accidents. Since being used people have gotten used to them and even like them because they've helped make police operations more transparent and have snagged corrupt policemen in the process. As a result of these traveling cams, the incidents filmed are amazing. They've convinced me that I don't want to drive in Russia. See the ash can post here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/believe-in-luck.105854/
 
I am "unlearned" in the early detection of these meteors...but...since they already knew that an asteriod is passing close to earth, shouldn't they also have know that an object the size of a bus would enter the atmosphere over Russia?? Isn't a meteor an asteriod that has entered the atmosphere??

(Where's Kat when you need her?)
 
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I am "unlearned" in the early detection of these meteors...but...since they already knew that an asteriod is passing close to earth, shouldn't they also have know that an object the size of a bus would enter the atmosphere over Russia?? Isn't a meteor an asteriod that has entered the atmosphere??

(Where's Kat when you need her?)

It was actually the size of a kitchen table. If it was the size of a bus I'm betting we'd be seeing 1000s dead instead of injured. There is a department at NASA that looks for these things but apparently they're underfunded.
 
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The size of it is not the issue, the detection of it is. (I just repeated what I had heard on the radio reports as far as the size goes-they can't be wrong, right?!!!!!!!!)
Something as small as a missle can be detected and tracked, right?

I saw one as a child-at night. No explosion, just a very large fireball! I think that means that it made it all the way to the surface. This was in the 60's just a few years after the big missle crisis.
 
Now if the State Department could just convince the Russians that North Korea did it...
 
that was intense, crazy how small that thing was and the damage it caused. I was particularly amazed at how bright it was upon entry into the atmosphere.......I can't imagine that sonic boom.......
 
If this thing had hit in 1963 none of us would be here. The Russians would have unleashed their arsenal, ours would have shortly followed and it would have been the dirt nap for my parents and a lot of forum members here!

Nah, the people who needed to understand the event would have understood it. An ICBM is routinely detected at launch and tracked through its entire flight, it doesn't just suddenly fall out of the sky without everyone (who needs to know) knowing it's coming and from where. Neither the USSR nor the USA was as naive and irresponsible as you're imagining. (I was 15 in 1963...we actually did have things like electricity & radar & stuff way back then). Rick
 
Nah, the people who needed to understand the event would have understood it. An ICBM is routinely detected at launch and tracked through its entire flight, it doesn't just suddenly fall out of the sky without everyone (who needs to know) knowing it's coming and from where. Neither the USSR nor the USA was as naive and irresponsible as you're imagining. (I was 15 in 1963...we actually did have things like electricity & radar & stuff way back then). Rick
REALLY??


Just kiddin', bud. My pap told me many stories about both politics and such from back in the day, he was in his 30's during those years.....He was as sharp as a tack, too. We talked about the Kennedy assassination and he remembered what my gram was cooking, what the weather was like and even the smells in the house when the news of JFK came across the waves.....
 
Those wouldn't happen to be the same people who understood there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would they?

I was addressing badfish's fear that the Russians might mistake this meteorite for a nuclear attack and immediately launch a military response. Wouldn't happen today, and it wouldn't have happened in 1963. (What that has to do with WMD's in Iraq is beyond me.)
 
(What that has to do with WMD's in Iraq is beyond me.)
They both could be use as justification for starting a war.
History has shown it doesn't take much to start a war, inevitable some country will find some reason to use a nuclear device against another country, likely the reason they'll use it won't make much sense to most of us. Betting on our leader to always make the right decisions is a bet you'll lose.
 
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They both could be use as justification for starting a war.
History has shown it doesn't take much to start a war, inevitable some country will find some reason to use a nuclear device against another country, likely the reason they'll use it won't make much sense to most of us. Betting on our leader to always make the right decisions is a bet you'll lose.
I couldn't agree more......and Russia most definately had an itchy trigger finger at that time (Cuban missle crisis, anyone?) Granted alot of that was political BS, I could see them thinking that the meteor was some kind of new US technology and I could most certainly see them jumping the gun and 'pushin the button'..........

On that note, I see this thing heading toward the ash can, and I ain't going there anymore.......I'm out.
 
Nah, the people who needed to understand the event would have understood it. An ICBM is routinely detected at launch and tracked through its entire flight, it doesn't just suddenly fall out of the sky without everyone (who needs to know) knowing it's coming and from where. Neither the USSR nor the USA was as naive and irresponsible as you're imagining. (I was 15 in 1963...we actually did have things like electricity & radar & stuff way back then). Rick

http://wavs.unclebubby.com/wav/MOVIES/WarGames/holdatdefcon4.wav
 
If this thing had hit in 1963 none of us would be here. The Russians would have unleashed their arsenal, ours would have shortly followed and it would have been the dirt nap for my parents and a lot of forum members here!

We came VERY close in '63 to WWIII when we drove a diesel nuke Russian sub under off of Cuba. They had last orders to strike before submerging. If it were not for one XO that flat refused to fire, they would have unleashed a nuclear torpedo or three on the US battle fleet in the Atlantic and started WWIII. They were forced to surface and went home in disgrace, but they were really heroes. A case of mis-communication all around nearly did many of us in. I was living in Florida at that time. I would have been vaporized. We also came very close to invading Cuba at that time, which would have likely also started WWIII. The paratroopers were ready in the planes and waiting orders. Kennedy called it off at the very last minute. If anything weird like this had happened in those tense moments, a second nuclear war could have started in a moment's notice. Khrushchev was itching to go to war.

Russia also had some other earlier huge meteorite strikes that leveled many square miles of landscape in Siberia.
 
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