Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Earth in Flames : How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter - Owen Brian Toon

Earth in Flames

How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter

By: Owen Brian Toon, Alan Robock

eText | 2 June 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

eText


$40.29

or 4 interest-free payments of $10.07 with

 or 

Instant online reading in your Booktopia eTextbook Library *

Why choose an eTextbook?

Instant Access *

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

* eTextbooks are not downloadable to your eReader or an app and can be accessed via web browsers only. You must be connected to the internet and have no technical issues with your device or browser that could prevent the eTextbook from operating.

Sixty-six million years ago an asteroid as large as Mt. Everest hit what is now the Yucatan 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.

on
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

More in Environmental Science