Astral Codex Ten

Chicxulub

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Chicxulub

Article

Chicxulub is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 07, 2022 and September 18, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “There haven’t been any planet-killers since Chicxulub in 65,000,000 BC”; “Imagine living on Earth in 65,000,000 BC, and being anywhere except Chicxulub”; “Chicxulub or bust”. It most often appears alongside America, Earth, Elon Musk.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: January 07, 2022
  • Last seen: September 18, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On "Don't Look Up"
January 07, 2022 · Original source
I should point out that in real life, I’m not that worried about asteroid/comet impacts. There haven’t been any planet-killers since Chicxulub in 65,000,000 BC, and there haven’t even been any planet-annoyers since 10600 BC at the latest. That suggests a per-century rate of 1-in-a-million for the former and 1% for the latter. And a century from now, we’ll either enough new tech to trivially solve the problem, or something else will have killed us already.
Half An Hour Before Dawn In San Francisco
March 20, 2023 · Original source
I could have stayed in Michigan. There were forests and lakes and homes with little gardens. Instead I’m here. We pay rents that would bankrupt a medieval principality to get front-row seats for the hinge of history. It will be the best investment we ever make. Imagine living when the first lungfish crawled out of the primordial ooze, and missing it because the tidepool down the way had cheaper housing. Imagine living on Earth in 65,000,000 BC, and being anywhere except Chicxulub.
A Muslim woman walks by in traditional dress, followed by a dark black man in African garb. All clothing sends a message; theirs is “everything that ever happened anywhere in the world however far away has converged here for this moment; it was all for this.” A crazy person walks by, mumbling to himself. We nod at him and let him pass; he seems to know the score. Here we have all gathered, abandoning our green and pleasant homes in Pakistan or Nigeria or Michigan to see the doomed summoning-city at the end of time. Chicxulub or bust. It’s a miracle we only get one or two madmen per city block.
Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk
September 18, 2023 · Original source
The major problem from an asteroidal impact on the order of Chicxulub is the dust and soot in the upper atmosphere cutting off enough sunlight to make growing plants impossible for as long as a decade. No protective dome or underground bunker will make the upper atmosphere transparent enough to grow plants. And even if you've got enough preserved food, vitamin C has lousy shelf life. Hope you've got enough light bulbs and a solid enough supply of electricity to grow enough cabbage to make enough sauerkraut to ward off scurvy.