Well when they’re saying there’s 2% odds, that’s…probably still higher than you want for the probability of a world ending asteroid strike.
It’s not a world ending strike. It’s 2.3% odds that a city ending strike lands somewhere on earth, most likely in the ocean.
It’s a fraction of a fraction of a % that it’ll hit somewhere with any humans at all, much less a populated city.
And on top of that, we have until 2032 to decide what to do about it, with enough time to potentially redirect it with technology we’ve already demonstrated that works. And if that isn’t enough, we just need one or two more data points to figure out almost exactly where it will hit, and can evacuate the area.
Just like we do for hurricanes and other natural disasters.
This is not an emergency, this is an easy mode try out for a real disaster.
In the world of astronomy a billion kilometers is like a missile hitting the neighborhood next to yours. So while there’s a good amount of hyperbole there, it’s still relatively close. You’re still shaken up by it hitting your town. And eventually we will win the lottery and have an astronomical event outside our control devestate the earth. It’s happened before.
Well, a billion kilometers is almost 7 times the mean distance between the earth and the sun. Asteroids pass in that distance all the time. We’re currently closer to Ceres (the dwarf planet) than that and its on the other side of the sun from us.
