Must See Video: Today In Russia...(Meteor Shower)

quote jbh

Also double holy shit, KR_1250 has an avatar.

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EDIT: I can hear people asking if it was a missile, or gunfire. The cameraman at one stage says "I think it was that meteorite"... Apart from that just a lot of people saying watch out about the glass, it's pretty predictable stuff for that situation...No one seems to have thought it was a nuke.

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I can hear people unscrewing lids in the background, any excuse to get the Stolichnaya out

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At least 500 people have been injured in Russia after a meteor shower shattered windows and rocked buildings, according to the emergencies ministry.

Witnesses say a huge fireball was seen streaking across the sky above Chelyabinsk, an industrial city 1,500km east of Moscow, before a shockwave knocked people off their feet.

The meteor raced across the horizon, leaving a long trail of white smoke in its wake which could be seen as far as 200 km away in Yekaterinburg.

Several homes and buildings have been damaged and many people were injured by flying glass.

Car alarms went off, windows shattered and mobile phones worked only intermittently.

Russia's emergencies ministry says 514 people have sought medical help, mainly for light injuries caused by flying glass, and 112 of those are being kept in hospital.

It says search groups have been set up to look for the remains of the meteorite.

Residents say they heard what sounded like an explosion.

"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," said Viktor Prokofiev, a 36-year-old resident of Yekaterinburg.

"I felt like I was blinded by headlights."

Most of those injured were treated for minor cuts and bruises from shattered glass, the local police department told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Windows were shattered on Chelyabinsk's central Lenin Street and some of the frames of shop fronts buckled.

"I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," said Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name.

"Then there was a flash, and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shockwave that smashed windows."
Video: Blast in the sky over Chelyabinsk (YouTube: Gregory Chentsov)

A wall was damaged at the nearby Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant but there was no environmental threat, a plant spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy state corporation, said its operations - including a massive atomic waste storage and treatment centre in the region - remained unaffected.

Such incidents are rare in Russia. A meteorite is thought to have devastated an area of more than 2,000 square km in Siberia in 1908, smashing windows as far as 200 km from the point of impact.

The emergency ministry described Friday's events as a "meteor shower in the form of fireballs" and said background radiation levels were normal. It urged residents not to panic.

Meanwhile, Chelyabinsk city authorities urged people to stay indoors unless they needed to pick up their children from schools and kindergartens.

They said a blast had been heard at an altitude of 10,000 metres, apparently signalling it occurred when the meteorite entered Earth's atmosphere.

The meteor's impact has no connection with a flyby by an asteroid later on Friday (local time), according to Robert Massey, deputy executive secretary of Britain's Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

Mr Massey says the meteor strike has left the biggest known human injury toll from a space rock.

"I am scratching my head to think of anything in recorded history when that number of people have been indirectly injured by an object like this ... it's very, very rare to have human casualties," he said.

He says small space debris burns up harmlessly in the sky as it enters the atmosphere, appearing in streaks of light called meteors that can often be seen on a clear night.

But, very rarely, larger objects survive the early stage of descent before exploding in the lower atmosphere, causing a shockwave, which is what happened on Friday, Mr Massey says.

quote harbin

quote hiigaran

only german engineered umbrellas would work

I'd rather it be one of them Acme engineering trampoline umbrellas that just bounce the object away. I'm sure their quality controls after perfectly fine now since I'm not a hunter or a coyote.

EDIT: I prefer the video on here.

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President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas.

Oh for *bleep* sake.

I suppose religious nutters will put this down to 'God' being displeased with the Pope's resignation. After all, remember that lightning strike? Your benevolent god needs appeasing now.