A new continental landmass on Earth is created, what would the world's reaction be?

Long story short, I'm coming up with a new work that takes place in the modern day, except a few years back, an alien object crashes into the Pacific Ocean, and via strange tech/supernatural ability raises up a new continent about 1/3-1/4 the size of Australia. There's not much flora/fauna on it nor radiation, it's pretty much a rather safe but barren landmass fit for colonization.

I don't know too much on world reactions to an event like this, so I'd need to know how the world would react to such a thing. Mainly because most of the story involves this continent.

Edit:

Assume that the landmass is created gradually via matter creation, meaning no sudden continental shifts or breakups

edited 13th Feb '17 3:29:20 AM by ironcommando

Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Plus, you know mass mourning as the nations of the Pacific Rim are hammered by tsunamis the likes of which have not been seen in recorded history (mostly because any civilisations that saw them were no longer around to record them afterwards).

Plus you know the cataclysmic earthquakes everywhere else on the planet as an entire tecontic plate is torn asunder, a process normally taking tens or hundreds of millions of years happening instantly (and when talking about these processes, anything less than about ten thousand years is instantly).

Asking how modern nation states would react is the wrong question. Asking how the civilisations that arise from the ash and rubble of the modern ones react is more what you're looking for.

.... Actually on second thought, that's still the wrong question. Your second question is if humanity survives. Your first question is if life survives in any form more complicated that cyanobacteria. You're looking at an event that would probably surpass "The Great Dying".

The Siberian Traps which are probably what caused The End Permian Extinction Event aka "The Great Dying" erupted a volume that covered an area of land roughly equal to the size of Australia. Now you may be dealing with a smaller area, but the Siberian Traps were believed to have erupted over a period of tens of thousands of years and you're compressing the time period immensely which is going to concentrate those effects into a smaller time period and thus make them exponentially worse.

Edit: fixed some formatting

edited 13th Feb '17 12:18:30 AM by KnightofLsama

It depends how the thing is created, really. The "Great Dying" was apparently caused by a volcanic winter followed by a catastrophic global warming. Also, let's not exaggerate: macro-fauna suffered heavy losses, but wasn't completely wiped out. And humans are one of the species most able to survive an extinction-level event.

Now the matter making up the new continent has to come from somewhere.

• If it's volcanism (the most "likely" possibility) then it's indeed very bad news.

• If it's some sort of restructuring of the tectonic plate (from oceanic floor to continent!) then we're looking at cataclysmic earthquakes, which would do enormous damage to human infrastructures and possibly set us back several centuries, but not do extinction-level damage to our population or the biodiversity at large.

• If it's Clarke's Third Law-powered conjuring of matter out of seemingly nowhere, then there shouldn't be too much damage beyond the Pacific Rim.

Ah, sorry for the confusion as to how I worded things.

I'm thinking about some kind of more... well, the third option in 's case. An alien craft thing that uses a supernatural/highly advanced tech to conjure matter without cracking the Pacific tectonic plate. Kind of more "adding more land gradually on top of the seafloor", not some "huge tectonic shift/breakup".

There's probably a good bit of supernatural involved, and matter creation is a thing the alien tech can do considering that some of the powers people gain from exposure to it are the ability to summon temporary vehicles out of thin air without care for conservation of matter.

edited 13th Feb '17 1:56:36 AM by ironcommando

It will crack the tectonic plate most likely, purely from dumping a continental landmass on top of it where there wasn't one before, but that's going to play out on geological timescales, not human ones.

If it's suddenly there's suddenly a landmass where there wasn't one before... see my point about tsunamis the likes of which have never been seen before. Depending on the depth of the ocean you're looking at displacing between two and ten million cubic kilometres of water. That's a lot of water and it has to go somewhere. There's a very good chance that several some pacific island nation will cease to exist, just having been scoured clean by the waves. And some of the really low lying islands won't resurface because that's going to cause a rise in sea level because you'll have the same amount of water but the smaller ocean basin.

So yeah, FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and the single greatest humanitarian disaster ever. Tens, maybe hundreds of millions dead, depending on the exactly where it happens. And the US is very, very likely to be one of the nations hit. Hawaii almost certainly will be badly effected, but it's possible for California, Oregon and Washington and Alaska to get pretty badly hammered. So if you think they're going to be leading a land grab, its unlikely. China, maybe, but there is a chance for them to get hit pretty badly as well depending on the exact configuration of the displacement and be in a similar boat.

Would a gradual "fill up that part of the ocean slowly, over the course of a few months" cause any trouble? Not a sudden "huge landmass appears/is generated like that" sort of thing.

I guess the best option would still be "reality warping alien tech made it appear while removing any dire/harmful effects", such as gradually "swapping" the water around it with land. Although that would cause other effects in the long run...

edited 13th Feb '17 8:45:22 AM by ironcommando

It seems that Ironcommando wants to get past the seeming physical impossibility of it and discuss the socio-political ramifications.

No landmass on Earth is currently unclaimed in some sense. Even Antarctica is under international management via treaty. This new landmass cannot just become "open territory" and the various powers on Earth are going to set in motion whatever processes they think are most appropriate. At first, those will most likely focus on scientific exploration, to determine what potential dangers this new landmass might represent and what exploitable resources it might have. Whether the first scientific teams to go in will be international in nature, or sent by individual nations (and therefore be in competition with each other), or some combination of both, is somewhat unpredictable. If you are using this as the basis of a possible story, there is lots of potential political tension to exploit in this scenario.

Considering the first reaction from fellow tropers to "a new landmass appears" is planet Earth/the Pacific is F.U.B.A.R., there would be some alarm in the scientific community pertaining to the alien device that can reterraform the planet. In the news, CNN and other new souces would be following the story for as long as it lasts.

I'm sure someone would dispatch the means to cordon off the initial crash site to prevent any incidents, especially if some of the world's scientists start voicing their concerns. Your Pacific Rim nations would be highly concerned in that situation, due to the whole "push the wrong button, say good by to California".

Also, alien device crash lands in the Pacific would be one hell of a first contact. Pertaining to that, will there be any associated aliens with said tech? If so, congrats, we have official first contact with an alien species, and can confirm we are not alone in the universe. If not, we're still not alone in the universe, and one question on some people's minds would be: "Will they send someone to retrieve the device? What would happen if they do?"

You'd still have to account for the quantity of water being displaced. Flooding of coastal lands and low lying islands is still in the books because you're still displacing a lot of water. And you've somehow handwaved all the water away, the scientists and defence planners collectively reach for their brown trousers because you've violated one of the most fundamental physical rules. Conservation of matter.

Also what sort of landmass are we talking about. Shallow and flat or tall and mountainous. Or perhaps some sort of high plateau. The first is going to cause major disruptions to ocean currents and the second and third will have major disruptions to air flow as well which in turn are going to have major effects on the climate. Summers will get hotter and winters colder in the entire Pacific Rim with less ocean to act as a thermal buffer. You could shut down the El Nino/La Nina cycle in the southern Pacific to who knows what sort of effect. You could lock Eastern Australia and Chile and Peru into permanent droughts rather than their current drought/flood cycles.

Hell worst case scenario you shut down the monsoons and India, Bangladesh and large portions of south east Asia starve to death.

The problem is there is no way to do this without dealing with some of the effects. The appearance of a new land mass overnight (or near enough) is going to have major effects on the Earth, especially on the atmosphere and hydrosphere and there is no way that doesn't have major effects no matter how frantically you wave your hands.

Also since we're dealing with aliens that are clearly sufficiently advanced, new religious movements and new religions spring up who welcome our new alien overlords (or at least want to avoiding more smiting).

Ok, just got up... that's a good amount to absorb in. Thanks for all the responses, by the way, since I was trying to see how feasible this idea would have been. Mainly because I initially didn't know what kind of drastic side effects this would all have.

In the end, either way, the environment would get screwed over, from what I see, just a matter of how bad it would be. Thanks for the responses, I'd need to know how Earth would be physically affected, not just socio-political ramifications.

As for aliens, they wouldn't be physically appearing in the story.- no aliens would emerge. This would probably be the vessel of some interdimensional being that rarely interacts with humans on the "continent", but does give them the above vehicle-summoning powers through distant mental contact. Other than that the vessel doesn't seem to do anything.

It'd certainly put an end to all that "climate change ain't real like wrasslin'!" I wonder what the effect on renewable energy and/or power generation would be? There's... well, how many nuclear power plants would a rising sea level actually deactivate?

So let's say they put in a dike - a continent-sized wall from the bottom of the sea to, say, 20 meters above it - and then drained away the water inside? That leaves a "continent" in the middle of what used to be an ocean, with minimal damage to... well, the planet. Travel far enough into Wallandia and you won't even be able to see the walls, thanks to the curvature of the Earth.

Planned carefully, the effects on climate might be fairly minimal, depending on the part of the ocean used. My physics-fu was never very good, so could someone else work out what effect a (geological time) sudden increase of the Earth's albedo due to a sizable fraction of the ocean being replaced with more-reflective land would be?

You still have indisputable proof of alien existence and all that implies. The fact that they don't appear just makes their motives that much more opaque and increases uncertaininty. And the fact that they don't appear to clarify means that my point about Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and new religious movements (both within existing religions and new religions) still stands.

Ah, thanks for the explanations. True, there would most probably be some kinda cult/religion at the very least.

edited 14th Feb '17 4:09:13 AM by ironcommando