Scientists estimate that a life-ending asteroid, such as the one which put an end to the dinosaur’s reign on Earth, would collide with the planet every 100 million years or so. By that reasoning, Earth should be safe for another 35 million years, but there is always a very slim chance a massive civilisation-ending space rock could strike sooner. For that reason, global authorities should have a plan in place – but it seems they do not.
NASA employee Robert Frost, who works as an instructor and flight controller for the space agency according to his bio on Q+A website Quora, said the best thing governments could do is tell the public to “hunker down”, as there would be little which can be done to prepare for the inevitable.
Mr Frost was writing in response to the question: “If it were discovered that an asteroid was going to wipe humanity out, say in 2 months, how would the governments of the world respond?”
He said: “That’s a tough one. Movies tell us they would keep it secret. There’s a lot of sense to that. Mass panic can be more dangerous than the actual event.
“But my experience working in government is that the government really isn’t good at keeping anything secret unless it begins within a secretive part of the culture, like the military.
“Something like this would likely be first discovered by someone that couldn’t spell ‘security clearance’. It would be evident to astronomers all over the world.
“Feeling helpless, the government would likely just tell us to ‘hunker down’ and duct tape our window seams.
“Then the Democrats would blame it on the Republicans for ignoring global warming and the Republicans would blame it on the Democrats for not praying in school.”
Despite talks of using nuclear weapons to obliterate asteroids or rockets to push them out of their path, NASA admits that if an asteroid got too close, it would be too late to save the planet.
NASA said on its website: “An asteroid on a trajectory to impact Earth could not be shot down in the last few minutes or even hours before impact.
“No known weapon system could stop the mass because of the velocity at which it travels – an average of 12 miles per second.”