Earth a few hundred years after asteroid impact?

No. Yes. Yes.

You can expect a large asteroid impact on the earth would cause a worldwide earthquake, of magnitude far greater than anything we've ever experienced. The localized area of impact would be obliterated out to several hundred miles. The tectonic plate it impacted would be driven down into the magma and shattered into shards.

Plant life and animal life would survive because that's what it does best. But life would be dramatically different. At least for a good time to come.

For one thing, the ocean would rush into the ensuing dip in the earth's surface, causing a maelstrom that would destroy a large portion of the fish in the sea. They'd be sucked down into a lava pit.

The ocean, as it hit the magma, would immediately boil out into a huge cloud of steam, that would cover most of the world in a cover of cloud.

The rapid rise of the water would create a vortex of water vapor, like an inverted tornado, that would send airshock waves out in expanding rings, knocking planes down on that side of the globe.

This cloud cover would rapidly cool the earth, much like in the aforementioned ice ages.

The water would cool the magma, and the surface would settle at a new land level. Magma (because of internal heat and pressure) would bubble up for some time, but would eventually cool when striking the water and rapidly cooling air.

Shock waves would travel the surface of the globe, knocking down all buildings and most trees. Roads, bridges, etc. would be broken up. Many folks would die from the collaps of buildings, tidal waves striking the coasts, etc.

People inland would survive, but would need to cowboy up for a good long hard winter. Most people north of say Florida would have a hard time of it.

That movie The Day after Tomorrow didn't get much right, but that part is pretty plausable...

Hope this helps.

ADHD Programmer Dad
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There are some good videos on youtube that visualise what could happen - quite scary really.

The impact would cause unimaginable destruction, but the damage would be localised to the hemisphere the impact occurred in. On the other side of the world you may experience a fallout winter, global firestorms and protracted aftershocks depending on the location of impact, but it would not be fatal the majority of humans.

The ecosystem collapse that followed would be, and so would other humans as we fight for resources.

There’s a whole new universe waiting for you: http://www.vastdistances.wordpress.com

Yes of course. You are only going to crush what is in the immediate area. What is crushed when earthquakes follow, and then the tidal waves that follow that. And then of course what follows as far as destruction from nature as time wears away.

Plants are going to hold up well. They are going to die off but come back quickly (well you know.....relatively).

Does not read and follow label directions.

Oh, glad someone pulled this back to the top. Not wanting to start an argument, but the doomsday scenario someone up there mentioned is a little overblown. I'd suggest doing some real research on that (not just asking blokes at a scifi forum) if you are actually going to delve into what happened in your story.

What happens to earth is going to depend not only on the size of the bolide but on where it hits. For a standard to play by, this page:

http://www.psi.edu/projects/ktimpact/ktimpact.html

provides a description of some of the effects of the K-T impact event (the dinosaur one). Some effects were global, some more local. It did not punch through to the mantle, did not boil off the oceans. If your bolide is smaller, the effects will likely be as well. By the way, scientists don't think that the event absolutely killed all of the dinos. The final extinction took a while longer.

Don't know how you plan to write your story, but if you put in the general effects that you want, then were vague on the size of the impactor, I (as a reader) would be satisfied. You would want the effects to be somewhat consistent, for this, read over the effects of some famous impact events. The K-T event, the Siberian impact of 1908 are places to start.

There are some good scifi novels that deal with this sort of scenario. If you're like me, you won't want to read them while you are writing (I tend to copy without wanting to), but at some point you might give them a read. Try Clark's "Hammer of God" or Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". (heh. Second time I've brought up the latter today, haven't thought of it in years). There is government research done on the expected effects of impacts of different sizes (I've seen it, so I know it exists), some of that should be accessible, though I'd have to hunt to figure out where.

Enjoy. It's a fun one to play with, and not at all unbelievable.

Oh, one last note, it wouldn't take two hundred years for the physical effects to blow over. A few years at most. Much would be over within hours. The biota of the planet would take longer, of course.

To your questions: Some. No. Yes.

Ok, there's one thing that the other posters haven't posted about yet. I recently learned about a new theory of the KT impact.

An asteroid that size impacting the Earth would indeed cause devastation on a global scale for all the reasons listed above. But at the time of impact, billions of tons of matter from the impact would be ejected into the atmosphere, perhaps reaching outside depending on the mass of the object and the speed it traveled at. With the KT event, many now believe that this matter, appropriately called 'ejecta' , rained down all over the planet in the minutes and hours following the impact. The thick, fiery hailstorm of debris would have superheated the air and caused forest fires globally. Any living thing that was not below ground or in some sort of shelter, over the entire planet, would be destroyed. Mammals and other creatures survived because they were small and many of them were burrowers. Large dinosaurs, of course, could not escape. The new theory suggests that the dinosaurs didn't die of starvation in the months after the impact due to nuclear winter, but died off in a matter of hours due to the firestorm.

Plants survived by their seeds. The animals that survived would have had seeds in their digestive tracts, as well as seeds and bulbs below the soil. We know now that forest fires actually promote plant growth, that it doesn't simply clear the land. Plants would return relatively quickly.

Now, as for structures. NOTHING would survive for maybe 1,000 km around the impact site, and massive tremors would bring down nearly anything else within that hemisphere. But in the rest of the world, stone structures would survive. Metal would too, but of course it would rust over the following decades.

Life would most certainly survive. And within a few centuries, it would flurish again.

Hope that helps. :)

Thank you all so much. Silly NaNo site forgot to tell me that I had subscribed to this page, and I forgot to check it.

Your information is so comprehensive and has given me much more clarity concerning the subject. I appreciate it!

watch "life after people" on the history/discovery channel. take the effects they speak of and add the gneral overall destruction of the event itself.

basically, the appearance of earth a hundred or so years after a global event would depend on wether humans lived or not. and in what sort of numbers.

Most of science agrees that the earth would mostly likely become livable againafter a one - three decades. Rough, but livable.

some of the scientist out there beleive that the human race has already lived to a similiar type of event, as our genetc code isn't as diversified as it should be, for being around as long as the anthropoogical evidence suggests. they think, that at some point, the human race was reduced to about 10,000 people or so, and that we are all progeny of those very few people.

humans are exceptionally adept at adapting to our enviroment. unless we all died, we would probably reemerge stronger than we are now.

~Jesse James Akins

Generally the people who said that about 1000 km around the impact zone would be a dead zone where no one would survive unless they were in a nuclear bunker (even then those close enough would be a red stain on the dirt)
I'd imagine that a meteor would also probably strike the ocean over the land, which would flood all costal cities around the planet, to name a few new york, london, boston, san fran sisco, they're not the only ones but you get the idea but if there was a sea impact humanity would recover faster except the costal areas would be fairly sparsely inhabited, most islands (greenland Australia, Iceland, japan) would be pretty harsly devastated among those examples really only australia would probably have a population density near to what it has now, japan would be especially devastate due to the fact that most of it's current population lives on a single plain near the water and more than a few of it's mountains are volcanic so those that inhabit said mountians for too long would quite possibly die off

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