Let's continue the plot from our last article. You are strolling at night and see a bright speck. Since you are concerned, you call up the NASA office and request them to investigate the speck. But to your horror, your greatest fear came true. It is an asteroid and it is headed straight for our Earth. Turns out NASA, ESA, ISRO, and Roscosmos have already been investigating the speck. We decide to head for Proxima Centauri B, the closest exoplanet to our solar system.
Unfortunately, this will take time and we just have about 4 to 5 years which is not even close to enough. Let's discuss what else we can do.
NASA decides to break the news to the whole world but the Governments do not support their decision and decide to keep the operation hush-hush. The governments of various countries congregate at the UN general assembly. After several rounds of thorough discussion, they create an operation called OAIE ie Operation Asteroid Impact Emergency (I couldn’t think of a cool name). It is predicted that the asteroid will fall near Australia.
This operation will require the greatest minds on Earth such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Elon Musk, Michelle Thaller, etc. Various governments decide to forget their fights like the USA and Russia along with India and China. They all pitch in to solve this problem. Steps to tackle this problem.
All the Space organizations in the world Roscosmos, NASA, ISRO, SpaceX, Blue Origin, ESA start building rockets one after another and tackle various previously impossible situations.
2. Meanwhile, laborers have been instructed to create extremely deep bunkers around the world to get sheltered from the flying debris created by the asteroid when it lands.
3. Australia and its nearby countries have been evacuated and the people have settled in Russia, Japan, and the deserts.
4. Farmers around the world have been toiling day and night to farm crops to somehow
outlive the impact of the asteroid. Geneticists and soil experts have been working together to create genetically modified crops with CRISPR(Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) which produce far more crops and grow faster. CRISPR is genetic technology that can edit genes. These seeds are then being sent to markets where these seeds are available for free.
5. Various weapon experts along with the military of various countries are creating many nukes. All these nuclear bombs are going to be sent in a fleet of rockets to hopefully destroy the asteroid or at least change its course. Every rocket should at least have 2 nukes and the explosion should be at once.
6. Various biologists, chemists, and biochemists should come together to create efficient hydroponic farms to farm water while underground.
Assuming that the asteroid will be a few kilometers in length, the impact winter will last for a few decades. (The impact winter is the winter created by a large asteroid or comet impact. A large amount of dust and ash ejected in the atmosphere blocks out the sun’s radiation and the temperature starts to fall).
Simultaneously the project needs to be planned in which we send people to colonize nearby rocky planets. Let’s hope that we don’t have people living on Mars and the Moon before the asteroid collides with Earth because when the asteroid that wiped all dinosaurs came to Earth, the debris thrown in the air reached the Moon and Mars.
I hope that when in near future an asteroid is heading towards Earth, you refer to my article. Maybe even 5-Minute Crafts also create some crafts which can combat this situation. Thank you for reading and enjoy your day :)
