The Falling Star

Comet Hale-Bopp (Philipp Salzgeber, Wikicommons).

Legends of a long-ago cataclysm which almost eradicated life worldwide are told in almost every inhabited part of the Earth. Noah’s Ark is one of the most famous examples. They are all based on fact.

At the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 10,500BC, a vast comet collided with Earth. Huge chunks this long-tailed fireball smashed into the North American ice sheet and sent out a blast wave travelling at over 1000mph, carrying fragments of the comet and earth debris and scorching everything in its path.
The ice sheet blew apart and the impact triggered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions worldwide. Tidal waves a hundred metres high tore across the Atlantic and smashed into Europe and West Africa, then ricocheted back to the Americas. The aftermath of the impact spread around the world.

Wildfires spread through the scorched and dead vegetation and the smoke and debris from the impact and volcanic eruptions blocked the sunlight around the world. Rain began to fall as the atmosphere, saturated with vaporised ice and laden with dust, shed its burden. This rain, a toxic blend of chemicals including sulphuric acid, uranium and formaldehyde, lasted for months.

For those humans and animals which survived, around the world there was a desperate fight for survival in a polluted land ravaged by radioactivity, solar radiation and toxic chemicals. Global temperatures fell as vast glacial lakes were breached and flooded into the Atlantic, choking the Gulf Stream. This, coupled with the dust-choked atmosphere which blocked almost all sunlight, plunged the Earth into a cold period known as the Younger Dryas which lasted for 1200 years.

The Younger Dryas ended around 9600BC, the time when civilisation began to appear in the Middle East and the first cult buildings at Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey were built. The Fertile Crescent was sheltered from the worst of the devastation caused by the comet impact and its aftermath, and this is likely a major factor in why the first stone buildings, domesticated cereals and other technologies first appeared in this region as the world finally began to recover.

One of the buildings of Göbekli Tepe

In Broken Skies, this comet is the falling star which caused the Thousand Year Winter. Fragments of the comet and debris including small meteors remained in the Solar System long after this event, dislodged by the vast comet from their original orbits, and many would have eventually collided with Earth. The falling star which almost destroyed Dilmun and triggered the Irin’s abandonment of their homeland, as discussed last week, was one of these. And so was the next falling star, which fell further away from Dilmun and triggered the events of the story.