Ash Monday

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

An interesting co-incidence: at 11 AM EST on February 26th, 2001, everyone but Colin Powell in the Presidential line of succession was in Washington, D.C. ; so were most members of Congress, for the next day's planned State of the Union Address ; and all but 4 state governors, for the Winter 2001 National Governors Association meeting.

At that same moment, an 800 meter wide asteroid (2001 EC) moving at 25 km/s missed Earth by 4 lunar distances. Had it struck Chesapeake Bay instead, it would have yielded a 40 gigaton (!) impact. The thermal pulse, falling ejecta and blast wave would've killed everyone within 100 miles, including Washington, Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk, and the entire states of Maryland and Delaware.

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How would the nation respond to such an apocalypse? NORAD would immediately know it wasn't a first-strike (no launch warnings, no double-flash from the impact), but the Pentagon is destroyed and the Joint Chiefs are all dead.

Acting President Powell is safe in at NATO headquarters in Belgium, but he has no cabinet, Congress, or Supreme Court. Martial law will have to be declared for the entire Delmarva region; it will take weeks to finish rescuing survivors, and years to rebuild key infrastructure and the nation's capitol.

Nearly a million corporations headquartered in Delaware (including Bank of America, Ford, G.E., Walmart, etc.) would have to quickly reincorporate elsewhere (Nevada?) or operate in legal limbo, until the state government was restored.

 

[Riain]

Firstly, how the hell did you come across that conincidence? Was it the asteroid or the political gatherings or what?

Secondly such a massive death toll and political decapitation would in my opinion drastically change the US political landscape, it could provide the opportunity for drastic change without the resistance of entrenched interests.

 

[Archibald]

Yesterday I watched a documentary over the last days of the dinosaurs (from impact to a month later) and that was really, really ugly. Even if your 800 m rock is a lot smaller than the Dinosaur-killer (10 km wide !)
I suppose you want to wreck american politics, but such impact would wreck the whole planet, not only the nuclear winter but also megatsunamis and seismic shockwaves that would awake a lot of volcanoes all around earth - all this wrecking the climate.
When the dust settle, be sure that the ozone layer is wrecked, too, with solar UV burning skin of the survivors.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Firstly, how the hell did you come across that conincidence? Was it the asteroid or the political gatherings or what?

[The former. Looked at NEO Earth Close-Approaches, past only, H <= 20, nominal dist. <= 5 LD.

Hmm: the 2001-02-26 one looks pretty bad, what else is happening in the world that day?

Google "news 2001-06-26."

First result is White House news archives: President Bush greets state governors in East Room. Congress prepares for State of Union Address. Yikes...

 

[Mikestone8]

An interesting co-incidence: at 11 AM EST on February 26th, 2001, everyone but Colin Powell in the Presidential line of succession was in Washington, D.C. ; so were most members of Congress, for the next day's planned State of the Union Address ; and all but 4 state governors, for the Winter 2001 National Governors Association meeting.

At that same moment, an 800 meter wide asteroid (2001 EC) moving at 25 km/s missed Earth by 4 lunar distances. Had it struck Chesapeake Bay instead, it would have yielded a 40 gigaton (!) impact. The thermal pulse, falling ejecta and blast wave would've killed everyone within 100 miles, including Washington, Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk, and the entire states of Maryland and Delaware.

Though losing the Governors will not necessarily decapitate the States.

Except for MD and DE (and possibly PA and VA) their Lieutenant-Governors, or whoever, would succeed them. Iirc most States have a line of succession similar to the Presidential one, typically of around half a dozen members, so few States would be completely bereft of a Chief Executive.

The new Governors could make appointments to fill the vacant Senate seats, so Powell would at least have a President of the Senate to succeed him. Getting the HoR up and running would take longer, but a functioning Senate would enable him to appoint Cabinet Officers who would form a Line of Succession.

 

[Cook]

An Asteroid wipes out the Eastern Seaboard and a black man becomes president... that sounds more than vaguely familiar.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Interesting footnote: Dennis Hastert was most likely not in Washington D.C. that morning, but rather at his home in Illinois recuperating from kidney surgery he'd had on the 13th. The Congressional Record for that morning mentions his illness, and names Rep. Wolf (R-VA) as Speaker Pro Tempore.

However, since he had already declared himself disabled, that would presumably remove the Speaker from the line of succession [1], and it'd still be Acting President Powell.

Unless Hastert wants to be a jackass and start a Constitutional crisis on top of everything else... Note that if Hastert and Powell both claim to be acting President, there are no current Supreme Court justices to decide who's right. Ugh.

[1] House rules specifically say that Speaker Pro Tempore is not eligible as a presidential successor, plus Speaker Pro Tempore Wolf was at the Capitol that morning and would perish at the same time as the President.