Your alarm clock goes off.
You rise, stretch and look out the window.
Ah, another bright and sunny morning.
You’re walking the dog when all of a sudden, it goes dark, poof!--like God turned off a
gigantic light switch.
You look up into the sky, you can see a few distant stars, but the sun is gone.
The automatic street lights come on as you rush home.
What’s going on?
Reports on the internet and TV seem to indicate that the sun’s burned out.
But that couldn’t happen, right?
The sun couldn’t suddenly extinguish, could it?
What would happen to humanity if it did?
How long could we survive if the sun went out?
There have been a couple of times throughout history where natural phenomena has affected
the sun’s ability to reach and warm the earth.
Notably, this happened in 1816 which became widely known as ‘The Year Without A Summer’.
On April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted spewing an estimated 9.8 cubic miles
(41 cubic kilometres) or 10 billion tonnes of pyroclastic ash into the atmosphere along
with several gases including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen chloride.
Ultimately the volcanic eruption caused severe climate abnormalities for the next few years
including limited sun and a lack of summer in the Northern Hemisphere in 1816.
In New England, there were several large snow falls in June.
Lakes stayed iced over for the entire year in parts of Pennsylvania.
Salem, Massachusetts had triple digits in early July, but on the 4th of July reports
indicate that the temperature fell into the 30s and 40s.
In August a hard freeze dominated New Hampshire and Maine.
The temperature fluctuations were detrimental to crops around the world and ultimately caused
famine in many regions.
Famine led to disease and a cholera epidemic, killing millions.
Mass migration happened as people tried to escape food shortages.
The Year without a Summer also led to religious revivals as apocalyptic preachers thought
the world was ending and urged people to get right with God.
The surface of the Sun is an astounding 5,800 Kelvin, hot enough to melt or vaporize any
substance known to man including diamond or graphene.
Thankfully earth is rough 93 million miles (150 million km) away from the sun, where
the temperatures are much cooler.
The sun is just far away enough from earth to create ideal temperatures for supporting
life.
Scientifically, the sun wouldn’t just stop burning and go out.
When stars die, they expand.
Most likely, the sun will expand into a into a red giant star, and vaporize the inner planets
of our solar system including the earth as it collapses and dies.
However, the sun evolving into a red giant star will take 7 or 8 billion years, so don’t
worry too much about this happening.
However, let’s pretend that the sun suddenly just disappeared.
Citizens of earth actually wouldn’t know what happened for a few minutes because the
last of the sun’s rays would still be on their way to our planet.
Depending on where the earth is in its orbit, at the speed of light, which is roughly
671,000,000 miles per hour (1,080,000,000 km/hour), light from the sun reaches earth
in just under 8 and a half minutes.
So if the sun suddenly disappeared, it would be 8 and a half minutes before the earth went
dark.
After that depending on where you are in the world, you would be able to see the moon and
the planets in our solar system for the next several hours, until the residual sunlight
stopped reflecting.
The sky would definitely be darker than normal, because we’re use to ambient light coming
from the moon.
Distant stars would continue to shine and we would continue to have man made light as
electricity would continue to work...for a while.
The earth would immediately begin to cool.
Within about a week of the sun vanishing, earth's average surface temperature would
drop to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 Celsius).
After a year without sun, the temperature would be negative 150 degrees Fahrenheit (-101
Celsius).
Over time the earth would become an ice planet, rivers, lakes and the oceans would freeze
on the surface.
Depending on depth, the water underneath would continue to remain liquid for thousands of
years, insulated by the surface ice.
Just as much of a problem as the cold, is that crops, in fact most plant life would
rapidly die.
Without the sun, photosynthesis would immediately cease.
The majority of plants would be dead within a few weeks.
Large healthy trees could possibly survive for several decades without photosynthesis,
due to slow metabolism and substantial sugar stores.
However that assumes that the trees wouldn’t be decimated for food or kindling
Plants are autotrophs or primary producers in the food chain so as they die off, herbivores
would quickly follow.
Then they would be followed by carnivores.
Scavengers, assuming they could survive within the cold would hang on a little longer.
Another problem if the sun suddenly vanished is that it would disrupt the orbits of the
heavenly bodies in our solar system.
The sun’s gravitational mass controls orbit; everything: planets, passing comets, etcetera
would now continue their forward velocity in a straight line, heading off into space.
That means for the earth we’d move towards distant stars at 67,000 mph 107,826 km/ph).
Theoretically earth could get caught in the gravitational pull of another star and begin
orbiting it.
However, that’s a process that would take several thousand years.
Now that you have a sense of some of the underlying issues that would occur in the long run, let’s
return to our scenario from the beginning.
You rush home from walking the dog because the sun suddenly vanishes.
Within the first 24 hours widespread panic has ensued, social upheaval is happening and
society is breaking down.
Immediately after the sun winks out, the media and internet will flood with a bazillion theories
as to what’s happening and why.
It’s the end of the world.
God has forsaken us.
Aliens have destroyed or blocked our sun.
North Korea or Russia or whichever enemy country has killed the sun!
It won’t take long before people begin to loot and riot.
Sure governments will attempt to implement martial law and to keep control, but within
a few days everyone, everywhere will be severely affected by the cold, if not already dead
from it.
Warmer regions will maintain higher temperatures longer, but the residents will be even less
prepared for the cold as their manner of dress and housing is often designed to maximize
cooling.
Extremely cold climates such as the Arctic will rapidly become unbearable.
If the sun vanishes while it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, humans and other
life dying off would accelerate.
As the poles of the earth cooled, the overall atmospheric height would begin to drop as
density grew.
As the atmosphere drops, strong winds would begin to blow towards the equator worldwide.
These winds would increasingly grow colder and disrupt the jet stream, most likely creating
strong currents at ground level.
The water vapor in our atmosphere would condense and it would snow in most regions of the world.
Many places would be hit with blizzards.
In addition to cold, wild weather, our atmosphere would begin to separate into its component
gasses by density.
The higher density elements would drift to ground level and the lower density gases would
rise, thus disrupting the amount of breathable air available.
There’s also the possibility that within the first 24 hours of the sun disappearing
a country would launch a nuclear weapon to retaliate against another country they deemed
responsible and start a nuclear war.
Luckily no country started a nuclear war, it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere and
you were living on the west coast of the US when the sun disappeared.
Living near the ocean is helpful, as the water will slow the surface cooling in your region.
You were smart, you spent a few hours braving the weather and other people to loot items
that would help sustain your life such as cold weather clothing, first aid supplies,
fuel and non perishable food.
After that, you and your family barricaded yourselves in your house.
Assuming your group can stay alive for the next few days, the danger from other humans
rapidly becomes far less of a problem as the majority of the population dies off from hypothermia,
starvation, hypoxia, or violence.
The first to pass away with be the old, infirm or very young.
As society breaks down and people die, your electricity stops working.
In fact, as your town used solar powered street lights, there’s been limited light from
the start of this catastrophe.
No electricity means no TV, internet and as your house had electric heating, no heat.
As people struggle to keep themselves warm and resort to fire for light and heat, it’s
possible that large swathes of cities could end up burning as people’s fires get beyond
their control.
While the fires won’t accelerate because of hot conditions, there’s too few people
to try to put the fires out either.
But your dwelling doesn’t catch fire.
As you live slightly inland, thankfully you weren’t inundated with coastal flooding
due to the wild weather and tidal changes.
Three days after the sun vanishes, your group emerges out of hiding to a grotesque winter
wonderland.
Most of the population is dead, there’s always the potential for violence, however
most of the remaining survivors are willing to work together.
Your only chance for survival would be to rapidly build an artificial temperature controlled
habitat to live in.The best bet would be to burrow into the earth and live deep underground.
Away from tectonic plate boundaries, geothermal temperature rises about 1°F per 70 feet of
depth (25 °C per km of depth) in most of the world.
So if you were able to create a habitat roughly a mile (1.6 km) underground, you could live
at a balmy 75.5 °F (24.1 °C) degrees.
That is assuming you could create and maintain a society that had cooperative citizens, sustainable
food sources and breathable air systems.
Also you would need good artificial light and possibly mood enhancers.
Sunlight is a natural pick me up for humans.
Other options might be to build a habitat underwater near geothermal vents.
If you lived in Iceland, you would probably have a head start using geothermal energy
to heat your habitat.
So if the sun vanished, the majority of humanity would perish in under a week.
If you’re willing to prepare for this possibility ahead of time by building an underground domain,
you might be able to sustain the human race by creating a Matrix like society of sad,
pasty skin mole people.
What’s the first action you would take to survive if the sun suddenly vanished?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called How Did A Whole Village Disappear?
The Lost Colony of Roanoke Mystery!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!