The Eros Impact Event
On January 28, 2027, the Observatory of the Cote d’Azur in France reported that an unnamed meteor struck asteroid 433 Eros in orbit around Mars. The impact tore free a significant portion of 433 Eros, and scientists projected its debris path to come perilously close to the Moon. When predictions indicate a potential impact with Earth in the Middle East, Iran launches a missile countermeasure to break up the debris. After a successful launch, the Verethragna failed to intercept after its engines ceased operation in orbit.
The broken portion of Eros 433 entered the Moon’s gravitational pull and, before breaking free, altered the Moon’s orbit. Gravitational exertion increased, affecting the centrifugal force balancing the Earth’s oceans. Waves of volcanic activity began throughout the planet, followed by an adverse change in global tides that devastated populated coastlines.
These weather changes deepened established political unrest in China and the United States and killed millions throughout the planet’s island nations.
The acting President of the United States instituted the Population Relocation Initiative, allowing military seizure of privately owned bunkers and survival compounds. At the same time, China closed its borders after the Asian coasts became inundated and refugees swarmed north.
Meanwhile, the Eurozone discovered a privately funded project building a massive wall around the highest peaks in the Ural Mountains. They publicly denounced the project, but exposing it led Nordic refugees to migrate to the Urals.
January 2, 2028, the broken portion of Eros 433 struck the Arabian Sea around Oman, Iran, and Pakistan. The impact diameter measured 2.2 miles and delivered an estimated energy equivalent of 55 teratons of TNT.
Mega tsunamis crawled over the Indian Ocean, followed by clouds of superheated dust, ash, and steam. Glaciers within Pakistan melted, inundating southwestern Asia and drowning millions. The impactor burrowed underground, ejecting excavated material into the atmosphere that heated to incandescence upon re-entry, broiling the Earth’s surface hundreds of miles around the impact site. Massive wildfires resulted from this catastrophe, destroying forests and jungles throughout coastal India and Africa.
Unstable conditions brought on by planet-wide vulcanism deeply affected worldwide air quality. Germany, Austria, Benelux, and France faced flooding from melting Alps glaciers, while tidal flooding in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea forced mass relocations north. As the deluge overtook the Mediterranean’s northeastern coasts, refugees from the Balkans and Italy collided with Northern Europeans fleeing to the south. Deadly riots ensued when scientists declared Switzerland to become an island.
Meanwhile, officials controlling the Ural Wall project airlifted select citizens from Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Ukraine behind their walled territory. Those guarding the Wall massacred thousands of Nordic refugees seeking safety.
Iceland evacuated its population to cruise ships after waters and volcanism engulfed its habitable land. Lowland Ireland and portions of the United Kingdom, already below sea level, saw immediate and catastrophic flooding.
World media broadcasters estimated 500 million dead or missing by late summer. Volcanism intensified in the Arctic Ocean, blast-warming the northern polar region. Permafrost in northern Canada thawed, creating landslides and swelling inland channels.
Immense tides drowned cities throughout the United States, but by September, over 8.3 million people had relocated safely inland, the most prominent survivor population participating in the US Relocation Initiative.
By winter 2028, the shock production of carbon dioxide caused by the destruction of carbonate rocks during the impact led to an immediate greenhouse effect that melted the remaining ice caps in the polar north and began thawing the West Antarctica ice sheet.
In the following decades, bolide dust and molten particles polluted the Earth’s atmosphere. The Moon’s unstable orbit agitated the Earth’s subducting slabs, culminating in the eruption of a long-dormant super volcano in North America in 2031.
TIMELINES
- HELOVIDOL (The Human Era | Antarctica)
- Helovx Time of Transition
- The Valentine’s Day Eruption
- The Dark Years
- The Age of Diplomacy
- Recompense for the Dead (Brasilia)
- The Greenland Base Incident (Eurislam)
- Jungwa Amazons (Jungwa)
- Rise and Decline of the NAU (North American Union)
- Australian Genocide (Australia/Aotearoa)
FEMITOKON 