George J. Smith wrote:I would think with all the debris thrown into the atmosphere as a result of the kinetic strikes there would be a "nuclear winter" effect.
Well ... RFC concentrated on the military action (naturally) - but we don't know what else the Shongairi did during their stay. After all, they planned to use the humans as "think tank" with an additional usefulness as battle food, should the need arise. For that, they had to make sure the planetwide climate on Earth was a little bit more than only tolerable for humans - so they probably worked some time to minimize the side effects of the KEWs. Cleared the Atmosphere from dust, for example. After all, the Shongairi, too, wanted to live on Earth - so they did it not only for the ones they regarded as their new slaves, but for themselves, too.