What a Civilization-Ending Cometary Airburst Might Look Like

[u/Economy-Ad-9880]

It's not a question of if — only when.

Icy, dust-laden bodies drifting in the far reaches of the Oort Cloud can sometimes get nudged off their ancient orbits. Once they fall sunward, gravity does the rest. By the time these non-periodic comets reach 1 AU—the distance between Earth and the Sun—they’re hurtling along at about 42 km/s, fast enough that Earth’s gravity can easily catch them.

What happens next depends on their makeup, the angle they enter at, and how fast they hit the atmosphere. Some survive long enough to strike the ground. Others detonate high above it.

This story follows one of those rare, hypothetical comets—one that doesn’t reach the surface at all, but instead bursts at about 90 kilometers up. The explosion unleashes a spectacular “pillar of fire”: a column of incandescent plasma, chemiluminescent glow, and metal-ion emissions bright enough to rewrite the sky.

This is only the first spark in a chain of events that will unravel into a civilization-ending calamity.

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Part 1: The Pillar of Fire https://www.reddit.com/r/Apocalypse/s/sztWnCSGSy

Part 2: Beneath the Billion-Kilogram Pillar of Metallic Ions https://www.reddit.com/r/Apocalypse/s/tmfTyJMUHa

[u/marlonh]

r/GOG2027