Earth in Flames

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid as large as Mt. Everest hit what is now the Yucatán Peninsula at a speed ten times faster than the fastest rifle bullet. Debris from the impact blew into space, re-entered the atmosphere as a swarm of shooting stars that burned the global forests and grasslands, leaving behind a thin global layer containing rock from the asteroid and from Mexico, and smoke from the fires. This layer marks one of the greatest extinctions in Earth history, including not just dinosaurs, but also fish, plankton, ammonites, and plants, making up about 75% of the known species. The major culprits in these extinctions are loss of sunlight due to absorption by the smoke and decade-long ice age temperatures.

A nuclear war with just a few hundred of the world's 12,000 nuclear weapons targeted on densely populated cities could plunge Earth into the same types of conditions that the dinosaurs experienced. Even a war between India and Pakistan could kill 1 to 3 billion people from starvation due to agricultural failure, while 6 billion people might starve following a war involving Russia, NATO, and the U.S.

The book describes how the dinosaurs died, and how their deaths parallel what might happen to people after a nuclear war. The book reflects on the odds of future asteroid impacts, how to stop them, and ends with what the readers personally and together can do to prevent a nuclear war, so that humans don't end up like the dinosaurs.

Preface: How We Met and a Brief History
1. Prologue

Part I Impacts, Asteroid Winters, and Dinosaurs
2. The Power of Asteroids and Comets:  When Will the Next Big One Hit?
3. Clues from Craters, Assured Destruction, and Ejecta Layers
4. Worldwide Fires Killed the Dinosaurs
5. Can We Stop an Asteroid or Comet Collision in the Future?

Part II Humans and Nuclear Winter
6. You Too Could Build a Bomb: It Can't Be Hard; There Are a Lot of Them
7. How Many Bombs Are Out There, and How Could They Be Delivered?
8. Scenarios for War and Near Misses
9. Are You Being Targeted with a Nuclear Weapon?
10. Assured Destruction by Nuclear Explosions
11. Firestorms in Cities
12. Climate Disaster, Climate Models, and Natural Analogs
13. Impacts on Humans of Nuclear War

Part III Epilogue. Could It Happen?
14. Will Humans Become Extinct from an Asteroid Collision or a Nuclear War?
15. Can We Avoid Nuclear War?

Glossary
Acknowledgments
References
Index