bolides

According to that Wikipedia article, kiloton-range bolides (airburst meteors) typically occur on Earth more than once per year.

And this is the most optimistic scenario, assuming no gamma ray bursts, bolides, or super-volcanoes strike first.

More realistic scenarios with smaller (city-scale) bolides would be absolutely devastating, too, but still way more survivable.

There were probably bolides a'plenty, it's just they took down some trees, killed some animals, and interrupted a villagers sleep.

Sometimes these are referred to as shooting stars, but if they are exceptionally bright they are called bolides or fireballs.

A lot of smallish bolides could be much worse than one big one.

There's lots of fireball cameras nowadays watching the sky for bolides / meteors.

Up to that point, it was a matter of belief among paleos that bolides were not a significant factor in the history of life.

There are still many who can't accept a strike 13kya; they have fallen back on demanding a crater, knowing not all bolides leave one.

And also, since 75% of the Earth is covered in water, it stands to reason that 75% of bolides exploded over an ocean, with literally no impact we could meaningfully measure.

And I'm sure that we saw over a dozen bolides, at least one or two bright enough to cast shadows on the ground.

These systems would also be able to distinguish non-nuclear explosions such as bolides from nuclear explosions, which is important for MAD if you don't want an accidental war.

As the discussion was with bolides, I assumed we were talking in an "impending danger, no time to act" framework.

I guess because it's the it's the "seven eves" that are the big bolides the moon breaks into, and the "seven eves" of the new species of humanity in the second part.

As the pieces begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that Moon fragments will begin entering Earth's atmosphere, forming a white sky and blanketing the Earth within two years with what he calls a "Hard Rain" of bolides, causing the atmosphere to heat to incandescence and the oceans to boil away, rendering Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Bolides will very rarely hit a city precisely, especially in the periods where cities were small and not sprawling.