If Earth stopped spinning all at once, it would be enormously catastrophic for much of the planet’s surface. Though we don’t feel it, we’re all moving along with the planet as it rotates; at the equator, this works out to around 1,000 miles per hour. Stop the planet suddenly, and everything sitting on top of it would go flying eastward. Imagine people, houses, trees, boulders and more being launched sideways at hundreds of miles an hour. In the aftermath, high speed winds, still rotating nearly as fast as the planet, would scour the surface clean.
