This extract from the book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson explains the title:
"An asteroid or comet travelling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth's atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn't get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface of the Sun." [WOW!]
"In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor's path - people, houses, factories, cars - would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame.
One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth's surface where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business." [?]
"The meteorite itself would vapourise instantly, but the blast would blow out 1000 cubic kilometres of rock, earth and superheated gases. Every living thing within 250 kilometers that hadn't been killed by the heat of the entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outwards at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it.
For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light - the brightest ever seen by human eyes - followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling one entire field of view and travelling at thousands of kilometres an hour. Its approach would be eerly silent since it would be movie far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion.
Within minutes, over the whole of the Midwest [America] in short - nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to 1,500 kilometers away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles." [Ew]
"Beyond 1,500 kilometers the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish.
But that's just the initial shockwave. No-one can do more than guess what the associating damage would be, other than it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe will begin to rumble and spew."[So Taupo would erupt again and destroy the whole of New Zealand]
"Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the Earth and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day."[Thats nearly a quarter of the World's population!]
"The Massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivers would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or in turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean 'selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible re-location effort, since earth's ability to support live would be universally diminished.'
The amount of soot and floating ash from the impact and following fires would blot out the sun certainly or months, possibly for years, disrupting growing cycles..."Sammy's note:
Had a bad day have you? Ok, so I was too tired to write more. But that's basically about it. This is what happened to the dinosaurs, so obviously, you wouldn't survive it. The human race would become extinct. Scary huh?
