One side effect of a Kessler event would be an increase in shooting stars on display. Socially, having such a display every night makes the annual meteor showers less of a special thing, and making a light-streaked sky the norm could lead to imagery such as “beneath the shooting stars” to indicate nighttime. Lovecraft’s “When the Stars turn right” trope takes on new meanings that will probably hit popular culture. And at least for a while there will be an increase in the amount of space junk hitting the ground in recognizable pieces. There is already a collectors market for space artifacts, it would be reasonable for it to grow and possibly create a fandom. Pieces that can be identified to a specific satellite would be more valuable than an anonymous fluff of fiberglass, with less well-off space artifact otaku spending hours trying to track down the origins of said fiberglass. Lastly, once the Kessler event starts, a lot of unscrupulous insurance companies will start hawking satellite debris insurance to the gullible public.
I do note that a class back in 1988 I took, War in the Nuclear Age, the professor mentioned that he had reason to believe that one of the first actions to be taken by both sides in a full exchange would be to launch a couple of tons of sand into the more useful orbits.
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