In the contest between horror movies, Armageddon, and the earth coming to a standstill

All the World's Scariness

Since childhood, I have always hated horror movies. The idea of watching an imagineered anxiety-ridden, shriek-fest, and gruesome gore unfolding when real-life scenarios have happened and continue to do so seemed nonsensical to me. Add to that mentally, emotionally, physically, and genetically, I am NOT meant to be frightened for fun. By reflex, any person trying to scare me will probably get hit with a hammer.

Civilization boasts enough trauma-laden, death-inducing events to keep agoraphobics locked indoors for life. Who needs more generated through expertise in high definition with stereo surround sound?

“Not me,” said the writer that does not need horror scenes playing back in her subconscious mind on repeat.

In a contest between horror movies, Armageddon, and the earth coming to a standstill, forget about a single Armageddon-like ending for existence. There are several apocalyptic-type endings to choose from, predominantly courtesy of human causes. Life as we know it could end from: nuclear war, artificial intelligence, alien invasion, environmental catastrophe, depletion of natural resources, Malthusian crisis, nanotechnology, Cybergeddon, or through biological means, for starters. Coronavirus exit stage left. There's a strain of spirochete bacteria claiming they can do a better job. All these events, many of them movie-worthy, could span days or decades if countermeasures are taken by respective governmental authorities.

But what if the earth came to a standstill, as in literally stopped spinning?

This came to mind through a broader question asked in Randall Munroe’s book, What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. The first question requested the resulting impact if the earth and all other celestial bodies suddenly stopped spinning. This question sent me on the wildest, most intense research safari in all my years to answer and confirm the end aftermath.

Planet Earth Partial Profile

The earth rotates on its axis at a speed of 1,037 mph or 1,670 km/h at the equator (Mathematical rounding, commonplace among scientists, will list values of 1,000 mph and 1,600 km/h.) The rotation is slower at the North and South Poles. Because the rate of the earth's spin is variable, the value given is an average.

Billions of years ago, the earth revolved even faster before being struck by a celestial body that altered its motion, slowing it down, and giving rise to a solitary moon.

According to scientists, the earth has routinely experienced decreasing rotational spin on its axis (axial rotation) due to tidal effects. The gravitational pull of the moon acts as a drag force to slow down the axial rotation. Consequently, days were getting longer by 0.0016 seconds every century. That is until 2020. Last year, there were a record 28 of the shortest days ever documented since 1960 (even though it probably didn’t feel like it through lockdown and socially distanced eyes.) See, 2020 was an equal opportunity tremendous pain in the ass.

Why is this a huge deal? These changes in day length by milliseconds can cause societal pandemonium by rendering GPS satellites inoperable thereby impacting cell phones, computers, and a host of other communication devices and systems. Please see the above apocalypse option #8 as a prelude to Cybergeddon. A precarious rabbit hole to be dodged for the moment.

Even if your life has not been a picnic, you won the super jackpot lottery being born in a circumstellar habitable zone. That means a planet that is not too hot or cold, aka the Goldilocks Zone. Earth has sufficient mass and atmospheric pressure to support water on its surface. Without water, there is no life so, essentially nobody would be here to complain about life picnic quality.

Earth rotation around the sun, or orbital rotation, averages 67,000 mph or 107,000 km/h (You got it, numerical rounding again.) If planetary orbital rotation were to cease, it would ultimately meet its demise by crashing into the sun around 65 days later. But let us continue to control our cataclysmic descent and avoid that rabbit hole as well.

Global Effects From Rotational Loss

Mega Winds

If the earth itself stopped spinning, saying that it would get breezy would be an understatement. The earth’s atmosphere would continue swirling around until it gradually stopped, but all planetary life would be thrown into catastrophic 1,000+ mph winds. These destructive easterly blasts uprooting everything apart from bedrock turn all objects into deadly projectiles en masse within seconds.

All this flinging about would not hurl objects into outer space because the earth's escape velocity is 24,800 mph or 40,000 km/h. So, not enough for a last glorious space ride before you die, (even though you'd die before you got there) just a totally unsafe whirlwind with a conglomerate of everything on the planet at the time. Buildings, motor vehicles, bridges, machinery, not to mention animal and plant life, are now flying through the air exceeding the speed of a category 5 hurricane and F5 tornado combined, making it impossible to duck and cover. Like duck and cover under what?! Would breathing even be possible in those winds? Methinks not without extreme difficulty.

Imagine for a moment, you are a passenger traveling down the highway in a car without a seatbelt at 70 mph. You come to an unexpected sudden stop. Massive trauma nigh unsurvivable.

Perspective: Cars have seatbelts, but we are passengers on a planet traveling at high speed with nary a seatbelt or airbags.

The speed at which the planet is traveling feels undetectable as human inhabitants travel at a measured pace in conjunction with the earth. Similar to the car example, the actual rate only becomes noticeable when brakes are abruptly applied.

The entire planet just came to a dead halt. Real fright is in knowing this as the shortest guaranteed death preview ever.

If flying projectiles were miraculously avoided (and you somehow have a portable air supply or can hold your breath a really long time), that would only be the beginning as the oceans experience a significant jolt from halting forward motion. Tsunamis of a magnitude so great that their crest could not be sighted would reach 17 miles inland in less than a minute.

Tsunamis, Heat, Erosion, Superstorms, and Supervolcanoes Plus More Bad News

Assuming that a person survives and is conscious after the pressure and force of multiple tsunamis, they would have to contend with: life-threatening superstorms, intense heat, fires, and epic erosion as a result of massive wind turbulence from the planet’s atmosphere on what is left of life as it was known on earth.

Earth’s axial spin makes it protrude along the equator. Without a continuous revolution, this protrusion would gradually flatten, giving the planet a more spherical instead of its present geoid shape (kind of smushed in at the poles and bulging at the middle.) As a result of this bulge loss at the equator, the oceans now migrate over continents (Sure hope you have extra air supply left or are still holding your breath), eventually drifting to where gravity is stronger at the polar regions.

Conflict erupts between the earth’s layers as the inner core spins at a faster rotation than the planet’s mantle and crust. The core, suffering inertia loss, now cannot be contained. If you have ever done the spinning bucket on a string with water experiment, you would know that you are safe as long as the container is spun at a constant speed as centripetal force will keep the water at rest. That is inertia.

Still, see people clinging to life? Fast forward to the next painful death scenario preview.

Earth’s inner core made of iron and nickel is around 5,400˚C or 9,800˚F. Atop this is an outer core made of liquid metal, which through rapid, unprecedented geological change (unless something can jumpstart the earth's rotation), is bursting through tectonic plates to develop supervolcanoes. Hmmm. When was the last time you dodged giant lava bombs again?

*Squishy sounds of billions of pants being peed*

Earth's Shields and Radiation

Furthermore, the outer core rotation provided a planetary dynamo (when it was spinning), giving the earth’s inhabitants a protective shield against cosmic radiation. OH FFS, YOU MEAN WE’VE LOST SHIELDS???!!!

Hello…anybody there?

Space radiation is measured in Milli-Sievert (mSv), where 1 mSV is equivalent to about 3 chest x-rays. Astronauts can receive anywhere from 50–2,000 mSv or the equivalent of 150–6,000 chest x-rays on space missions. Exposure carries an increased lifetime risk of cancer, nervous system damage, and other degenerative illnesses (Still want any of your children to become astronauts now? Me neither. So over it.) Without global spin, what‘s left of earth’s inhabitants would be continuously bombarded with immeasurable mSv's from cosmic radiation.

Screwed?

Absolutely.

In an eerie twist of geoscience, the sun now rises in the west and sets in the east, but you’d have to wait a whole year to watch a sunset.

“Honey—SUNSET!—Grab the popcorn! Oh, wait. Forgot. No bees. No cornfields. *Sigh* No savory snacking. Crumpets!”

“Ooh, sweet thang__language!”

No Need for Daylight Saving Anymore

With a non-spinning earth still tidally locked to the sun (celestial body connections secured by an axial rotation period equal to orbital rotation period), the planet would be divided in two. The sun-facing side experiences six months of scorching temperatures from continuously warming atmospheric gases. The result would be virulent rain dissolving rocks and minerals with erosion on a grand scale referred to as ‘weathering.’

The other side of the planet conversely has six months of darkness and cold, not faring much better as the atmospheric gases continue to condense to liquid and then ice creating a vacuum. As was so often drilled into high school brains, nature abhors a vacuum. The cold side of the earth would draw air from the hot side. But on a positive note, this might make the planet more habitable. The big drawback would be superstorms like never before seen. Of course, more weathering would also be on the cards.

Potential Survivor Scenarios

In theory, there are conditions under which humans might survive (maybe for a little while.) The Poles, where the planet spins slowest, are the best locations for survival. Any region above 42˚N and 42˚S could potentially sustain life (Munroe, 2014.)

Underground dwellers, like people in subway tunnels or bunkers, could also manage to still draw breath (Monroe, 2014). Kämp Galleria in Helsinki, Finland now becomes a much sought-after haven with 10 million square meters of underground space comprising a shopping mall, hockey rink, swimming complex, karting track, and 40–meter deep reservoir. The earth’s population is 7.8 billion. Not enough math in the world for preparation to make that work huh?

Airplane occupants mid-flight might also consider themselves among the lucky ones but would be gripping their armrests in terror as the pilot negotiates those violent superstorms in the air turbulence hell previously mentioned. Not to speak of the rampant tangible anxiety when the realization hits that there’s nowhere to land and non-existent air traffic control towers or personnel...Guarantee everyone’s thinking, “How long can we keep dodging storms, trucks, and sea lions up here circling until we run out of fuel?”

International Space Station (ISS) astronauts would probably fare the best as they casually glance through a window and notice that the earth has stopped turning. But probably more so by communications loss as ground networks over seven continents take the biggest hits ever from those projectiles traveling at 1,600+km/h (or become projectiles themselves.) They would not have a home to return to unless they could transport directly to that subterranean haven in Helsinki for a well-deserved stiff drink, and provided there was enough room for them.

More pressing problems include how to grow food sans, sunlight, or bees for pollination and finding sufficient water to sustain what’s left of the population on an obliterated planet still in the throes of cataclysm.

In the earth-standstill summary, everybody and everything dies in the worst most horrific ways beyond imagination. Most instantly and some living a short while then dying.

Armageddon is pants (to use a British expression), compared to the earth’s rotational freeze which, according to scientists, could happen billions of years from now with galactic conditions maintaining variable constants.

So, like I said, who needs a flippin’ horror movie?!

In his book, Munroe ends this hypothetical question by stating that the earth's orbiting moon could be drawn closer to a non-spinning earth, inducing movement to kickstart rotation again.

He even has cute cartoon drawings and everything to make everyone feel better. Calmer. More relaxed.

Not me. I've just hit that moon with a hammer.

***

References

Munroe, R., 2014. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. London: John Murray Publishers.