Australia and the world's response to city-killing asteroids hitting the Earth may not be too far of a stretch to imagine

Sky News AU

3 days ago

Did you know that a fleet of asteroids following Venus' orbit could one day collide with Earth?
These asteroids, or Near-Earth Objects (NEO's) have the potential to take out entire cities and alter our very existence.
Venus travels closer to Earth than any other planet, and there are around 20 known asteroids that orbit with it.
Some of them are not completely stable, sparking fears the asteroids could head towards Earth's elliptical trajectory.
Three of these asteroids would have over one million times the energy of Hiroshima if they were to strike Earth's surface and would easily take out a major city, causing cataclysmic disaster that would be felt around the world.
The risks of this happening anytime soon are slim, but then again, according to NASA, asteroids 10 metres in size enter Earth's atmosphere once every 10 years and asteroids 50 metres across, hit the Earth every 1,000 years.
There is also another asteroid, the size of a 10-storey building, lurking around our solar system that has a small but increasing chance of a rendezvous with our moon which is just 384,000km away.
If the asteroid hits, it will have the effect of a nuclear bomb. The consequences of that Earth scenario would be felt the world over.
It is important to have a conversation about how society would cope and whether governments would be up to the task to ensure stability and control, so populations do not descend into anarchy.
If one of these asteroids was on a collision course with Earth, how would we react?
Would it bring humanity together or pull it apart?
In the 1990's movie, Deep Impact, a reporter discovers the truth about asteroids heading to Earth, prompting the US president to announce that the story is real.
In the movie, two comets head towards the Earth with one hitting the Atlantic ocean, creating a 914m high wave, while another the size of New York City, threatens to cause untold destruction to Canada.
Tunnels are constructed for a million people to live in, via a national lottery, as a fair way to be selected for survival.
Mass panic ensues.
The hope is that society would cope well in the face of this type of adversity, acting with assertiveness, while emergency services, the police and military keep the peace and employ strategies to make us as safe as possible.
We also believe that many of us are above descending into illegal activities as a reaction that others resort to, who fight over diminishing commodities, and loot and steal from shops and neighbours.
But what if money became irrelevant in the face of looming disaster?
Would we all descend into a dog-eat-dog mentality?
It might begin with moments of justification, where filling up the car without paying, and stealing food from the supermarket is necessary, before the stations and shops close or run out of supplies, while you and your family bunker down, or escape into the country with as many supplies as you can gather.
Remember what Covid was like at the supermarket, where a small minority began buying up essential item stocks, fighting in grocery stores.
It triggered an avalanche of copycat buying everywhere.
Geopolitical lines have also been redrawn over recent years, with emerging market economies such as the BRICS nations – which include China, Russia and Iran, forming closer alliances as a counterweight to the West, with goals of replacing the US dollar, and creating their own banking system to rival the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Would the governments of BRICS nations such as China work together with the West to find a solution to stop the asteroid?
What if the US was hit by a catastrophic asteroid, would China and Russia take advantage of a weakened US, and undertake military advances on certain territories?
If China's industrial hubs were destroyed by an asteroid, manufacturing would instantly be disrupted, affect world trade, impacting economies, all while China's population of 1.4 billon people were thrown into chaos.
In the case of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, there would be cries for help, aimed at the scientific community and the military, to find a way to stop the disaster.
If time was running out, new protests would replace all manner of other protests the world over.
NASA has in fact put into place a 'National Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan for Near-Earth Object Hazards and Planetary Defense'.
Its strategy aims to improve mission planning, emergency preparedness, response and international engagement.
Fortunately, more observatories are being built over the coming years to find and track asteroids that threaten the Earth, so scientists and governments can predict if a galactic Armageddon is on the way.
While presidents and a handful of the rich may be able to escape into underground bunkers, the rest of us will be left to cope with the fallout from the asteroid itself, as well as the social upheavals that will arise from such a disaster.
But perhaps a better version of humanity would come to the fore.
Even if an asteroid caused international disaster, there would need to be a time when people worked together to make their environment livable and workable again.
Having an asteroid take out humanity as a natural disaster, has different connotations to that of human-induced catastrophe where nations attack each other with nuclear weapons.
With an asteroid strike, it removes international blame and finger-pointing.
The clean-up would need to begin, and if there was any chance of survival, it would only happen if people worked together.
Robert Weir is a freelance journalist whose work has also been published in The Spectator Australia. He enjoys writing political, lifestyle, and environmental stories as well as film reviews