In the early hours of Tuesday, 15 May 218BC, at around 04.30 in the morning, Rome is struck by an asteroid and totally destroyed. The asteroid breaks apart 3km above the earth; the force of the blast is equal to a 15 megaton nuclear explosion, releasing an energy about 1,000 times greater than that of*the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. As with the Tunguska event of 1908, an area of 2,000km square is flattened; the shockwave from the blast measures 5.0 on the Richter scale and utterly destroys the entire metropolitan area.
The entire city of Rome is wiped from the face of the earth. Central Italy is utterly devastated; Latium and the heartland of ancient Rome is obliterated. My question is, what happens now? With no Rome, how will civilisation develop? What will happen to the barbarian tribes of Europe? To Carthage? And to the Greek and Parthian cultures to the East? Will another empire emerge in western Europe? And what would all those cultures have achieved, had they not been conquered by Rome?