I see a certain acceptance of unverified assumptions here. There is speculation as to the nature of the stellar collapse. There is complacency in that the big gun is aimed away from the earth...what percentage of the total radiation is emitted at other angles from the poles? What is the total radiation output? What confidence level do you have that the previously observed data will bound this event? From what I am reading, the facts seem to be that a very nearby star is shrinking at an accelerating rate and becoming oblate. That is very worrisome. I do agree that panic would not be helpful. There is very little you could do to protect yourself from a severe gamma wavefront, other than somehow being able to interpose a large amount of shielding (i.e., deep ocean immersion), which is not practical. But on an intellectual level, the idea that a supernova about 500 light years distant is a non-event does not seem to be a given to me.
Quantification
There is speculation as to the nature of the stellar collapse. There is complacency in that the big gun is aimed away from the earth...what percentage of the total radiation is emitted at other angles from the poles? What is the total radiation output? What confidence level do you have that the previously observed data will bound this event?
From what I am reading, the facts seem to be that a very nearby star is shrinking at an accelerating rate and becoming oblate. That is very worrisome.
I do agree that panic would not be helpful. There is very little you could do to protect yourself from a severe gamma wavefront, other than somehow being able to interpose a large amount of shielding (i.e., deep ocean immersion), which is not practical. But on an intellectual level, the idea that a supernova about 500 light years distant is a non-event does not seem to be a given to me.