Crater, Sweet Crater: It's "Crater-Safe"!

Come to Crater City! It's, "crater safe"!

Are you afraid of meteoric impacts? Well, the safest place on earth is quite literally all around you! It's here and there, in locations well-known and obscure. Some are literally in your face. Many are forgotten... but not for long.

Da-da's talking about terrestrial impact craters.

Statistically, the safest place to build a city, town or village is INSIDE an existing impact crater -- at least here on earth. The odds of a space rock or comet or galactic frozen pizza impacting the same place twice on our little blue ball are... well, astronomical. Here are a few "safe" building sites for a better tomorrow!

Note: The below data comes both from Da-da's head and the Terrestrial Crater List (which are amazingly similar) at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, part of the USRA in Houston, TX. Void where prohibited.

Can't you just see that sprawling, golf course gated community! Like living in a giant sand trap!

1. "THE BIG TRAP" (aka, Meteor Crater, AZ). This three-quarter-of-a-mile (1.2 km) wide unique fixer-upper formed about 50,000 years ago when politics still made sense. Look at all that undeveloped real estate! Comes with Big Sky view and... well, need we remind you: It's CRATER SAFE! Even comes with has its own gift shop and visitor center!

Half-a-mile-worth of Vegas Outback real estate! 99.9999% safe from future impact! Plenty of parking!

2. "Outback Circle Ranch" (aka, Wolf Creek Meteor Crater, Australia). Views views views! Meteorite-smacked about 300,000 years ago the day Dick Clark was born, this half-mile (0.8 km) wide beauty has lots of space for boomerang golf! Here, your wombat won't ever escape, and a comet will never knock the shrimp off the Barbie! Not sure how Barbie feels about that.

Jeez, it even looks like a puck.

3. "The Toque Palace Super Rink" (aka, New Quebec Crater, Quebec, Canada). This 2.5 mile (4 km) wide hockey puck was made over a million years ago and contains enough room for 829,000 hockey rinks! Storage! Ice fishing! Penalty boxes! Frostbite!

Just needs a bit o' landscaping. A nice shrubbery. And some humanity.

4. "Circle Plateau Commonwealth" (aka, Roter Kamm Crater, Namibia). Talk about getting away from it all! This South African gem is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide and was formed 3 million years ago and would make a perfect spot for that cute little Welsh Village recreation! Rich in gem diamonds, uranium, gold and silver, the beleaguered native population may or may not kill you -- unless you create a commonwealth! Share and share alike... in crater safety!

A bit humid and buggy, but it's CRATER-SAFE!

5. "Cloud Circle Ranch" (aka, Basumtwi Crater, Ghana). 6.5 miles (10.5 km) wide and formed about one million years ago, Cloud Circle Ranch is the perfect tropical getaway, like Disneyland but with more rot! And snakes! And mokele mbembe! And ants the size of earth moving machinery! And Da-da should shut up, now! But it's got a great view of the swamp! And... does Da-da need to say it?

That's a big sucker. 250+ miles wide.

6. "YOUR-NAME-HERE BAY" (aka, Hudson Bay Crater). At only 250 miles (400 km) wide and age unknown, this marque, crater-safe cash-cow property comes with low low HOA fees! And lakehouses galore! Sure, you'll have to grease the Government a little, but who doesn't?! Once they see you turning it into an international crater-safe Shangri-la, they'll just smile, shrug and say, "Ok, then!" Sure, it's freezing cold in winter and has mosquitos the size of B-17s in summer, but your odds of being whacked from space are now lower than ever? ( Actually, that's not true, since it happened a very long time ago, but no one reads this far anyway.) Besides, some of us are whacked and spaced already. Parenthood hits harder than any asteroid!

There are more craters, as you'll see below, but Da-da's only counting ones that are a million years old or younger (except the rather controversial one above, which happened eons ago); he figures the odds are starting to rebuild against older sites, and most of the real estate opps below have already been sewn up in the last 525 million years. However, there are still some crater-safe bargains out there!

Huh. Maybe there's a good reason why aliens and governments are always digging underground bases.