Back in early April, officials from NASA, FEMA, other domestic and foreign government agencies, and private think tanks conducted an exercise – Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise 5 – to devise ways to deal with an incoming asteroid that threatened the planet. You can see the presentation components and results in the May 13th NASA report.
Here is the scenario:
- 72% chance than an asteroid may hit Earth in 14 years.
- Requirements for preventing its impact are unknown.
- Models indicate the asteroid could devastate a regional- to country-scale area, if it should impact.
And the objective:
Awareness raising; space mission options; disaster preparedness; information sharing and public messaging.
Some of the takeaways were as follows:
- Many stakeholders expressed that they would want as much information about the asteroid as soon as possible but expressed skepticism that funding would be forthcoming to obtain such information without more definitive knowledge of the risk.
- Misinformation and disinformation would have to be dealt with.
- Although specific disaster management plans for an [Near Earth Object] impact threat do not currently exist, plans for response to other catastrophes may be a suitable starting point.
You can read all about the results in the report itself, but it is clear we are not ready for such an event.
Maybe we would do better with a NASA tabletop exercise covering an alien invasion 400 years in the future, giving us plenty of time to plan it out. Of course, this scenario is already being played out on television (as well as the book that started it all).
Our Awesome Universe 