Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning right now? For you it would be like being in a car at 1000 miles per hour and stopping dead in your tracks—you would die instantly. But, believe it or not, it gets even worse after that, as this video explains.

The bullet points:

— Your body would fly east like a discombobulated mass of muscle and bone at an incredible speed: 465 meters per second if you are near the equator or 368 meters per second around San Francisco.


— Since Earth rotation as you go to the poles, people very near the poles may survive. But only at first.

— People on planes may initially survive the first few seconds...

— ...only to be killed by the gigantic storms that would ensue right after the stop point.


— The speed of the wind—faster than the blast of an atomic bomb—would be so high that it would instantly start fires all around the planet.

— The wind would also cause unprecedented erosion to anything actually part of the Earth's crust.

— The oceans would rise as gigantic tsunamis, and all water would move towards the poles, as shown in this computer simulation:


— The spinning iron core in the center of the Earth would stop too. Without the spin, Earth's protective magnetic field would be gone too. The Sun radioactive rays would automatically kill anything left.

— On top of that, half of the Earth would be constantly exposed to the Sun, rising temperatures to levels that would kill most life on the surface. The other half of Earth would freeze.


Life on Earth wouldn't be able to recover from this. Ever.