(Don't) Look Up

Either we determine the asteroid is going to miss Earth, or we find a way to deflect it.

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I hope you all enjoyed our time apart. We have a lot to talk about, so let’s back into it.

As longtime readers know, we talk about some serious stuff here on this Substack. Though my intention is never to alarm anyone, we still need to be able to talk about dark, scary topics because such things are part of life. They’d be the only thing we talk about if we hadn’t managed to create civilization to assure ourselves just one more day. If I’m unequivocally “pro-” anything, it’s civilization. It’s a major theme of my writing: we don’t appreciate it anywhere near as much as we should.

Well, in the next 10 years, we may all end up appreciating civilization quite a bit and I’m not talking about civil war. Not this time. What am I talking about?

An asteroid. Yes, those big rocks in space. Would you like to know more?

2024 YR4

A few months ago, scientists detected an asteroid in near-earth orbit that is cause for concern, if not alarm.

From Scientific American:

In late December astronomers using the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Chile observed a new asteroid near our planet. Dubbed 2024 YR4, the object—somewhere between 40 and 100 meters in size—was spotted on December 27. The asteroid’s closest approach to Earth, it turned out, had been two days earlier, when YR4 was about 800,000 kilometers from our planet, roughly twice as far away as the moon. “It was zooming right by Earth,” says John Tonry, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. Such objects are not uncommon; there are thousands of asteroids of this size or greater in our region of the solar system. But this one warranted further attention to make sure it wouldn’t pose a risk to our planet in future.

Let’s get to the point: will it hit us? The answer is “no.” For now.

However [bold mine]:

Rather than ruling out an impact, however, follow-up observations have done quite the opposite. On January 27 a NASA service called Sentry, which monitors potential asteroid impacts by pooling together observations from telescopes around the world, upgraded the risk of YR4 to our planet to an unprecedented degree. YR4, it seemed, had a 1.3 percent chance of hitting Earth on December 22, 2032. This assessment corresponds to a threat level of 3 on the Torino scale, a metric that ranks the danger an asteroid poses to Earth on an ascending scale from 1 to 10. Two days later the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it had estimated a similar impact risk, and as this story went to press NASA and ESA had both upped the impact risk to 1.6 percent.

Current estimates put the chance of impact at 2.3 percent. Still very low, but it doubled in just a few weeks. If it were to hit us, it’d happen seven years from now, just three days short of Christmas. What a holiday season that’d turn out to be. Anyway, that certainly seems like a long enough time to do something about it, but it’s not, not really. We’ll come back to that momentarily.

Despite the risk of it hitting Earth is currently overwhelmingly low, the reason for concern is that the risk of it hitting Earth is still among the highest ever. It’s one of two outer space objects that have been given a rating of higher than 2 on the Torino scale. The other was the asteroid Apophis, which was given a rating of 4 back in December 2004, the highest-risk object ever detected. Fortunately, it was later determined to not pose a risk of collision, not anytime soon, but even if it had, it was calculated to strike Earth in 2029, meaning we would’ve had a quarter-century to develop some kind of method of averting collision.

Here we arrive at the biggest demon of all, besides the asteroid itself: time. As I said before, seven years seems like forever, but it’s not:

And time is of the essence. The asteroid is currently moving away from Earth, and by April, it will no longer be visible to telescopes. Outside this slim window of opportunity, the next chance to observe the asteroid to assess its threat won’t arrive until YR4 next swoops near Earth in 2028—the only such pass before the unnerving deadline of December 22, 2032. If the asteroid still poses an impact risk by then, there would be perilously little time to stand up a robust response. Prudence may thus demand devising a mitigation strategy in the interim on the off chance—even if remote—that the asteroid could hit.

The article’s author, Jonathan O’Callaghan, underscored the urgency of the situation much better on X:

If we can’t rule out an impact before April, however, that poses a big problem.

The next pass, in 2028, might be our only chance to deflect the asteroid. This means we might have to assume it will impact Earth, and prepare accordingly, an unprecedented situation.

O’Callaghan points out that this may indeed be the first time a deflection mission may need to be seriously considered. Not because the risk of the asteroid hitting Earth is high - again, it’s not, not right now - but because we have such a short window of opportunity to gather the data necessary to make the determination of how much risk 2024 YR4 poses. If we can’t get it done by April, we’ll have to wait until 2028 - the next presidential election - and who knows what the situation will be by then?

I brought up the next election because it ought to put into perspective how little time we’re really dealing with. Donald Trump was elected nine years ago. The Joe Biden presidency came and went Time really does fly. If scientists were able to observe 2024 YR4 over the next four years, that’d be a lot better than having to wait the same amount of time to decide what to do.

Which is exactly why the right thing to do is to start an all-out effort towards developing a realistic asteroid deflection capability. If, God forbid, in 2028, 2024 YR4 re-emerges and the risk of collision increases, there’s not going to be enough time to put together a mission. Forget what you saw in Armageddon, Deep Impact, or any other Hollywood production involving large objects hitting Earth. Even a full year isn’t enough to come up with a viable solution.

The article notes that space missions today require three to five years to get off the ground. This means that the capability to deflect a threatening object not only needs to be able to be implemented by 2028, the ability to deliver that solution against the giant rock needs to also be ready by then, preferably long before. But 2028 is three years away. Maybe enough to stand up a space mission, but is it enough to stand up a capability that can be realistically delivered against the threat with a decent chance of success?

And if we can’t stop it, what then? Is that it?

What Happens If It Does Hit?

This is the question nobody wants to hear the answer to, but answer it we must.

The good news: this isn’t a planet-killer, threatening to wipe life completely off the planet. However, the consequences of impact would still be cataclysmic.

Back to O’Callaghan:

If an asteroid the size of YR4 were to hit our planet, it would not end life on Earth, but it would be devastating. At that size, the impact would be equivalent to a “10-megaton bomb,” Tonry says—more than enough to cause widespread regional decimation. “Everything within three or four kilometers would be incinerated,” Tonry says. “Everything out to maybe 10 kilometers is smashed. It’s not a nuclear explosion, but it’s an extremely hot explosion. There would be a huge fireball that would start fires out to 15 kilometers, something like that. It would kill a lot of people if they haven’t moved out of the way.”

Observations suggest YR4 is a stony asteroid rather than a metal-rich one, says Melissa Brucker, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona. That means it would likely explode from the pressure in the upper atmosphere instead of reaching Earth’s surface. This could make its impact similar to the famous Tunguska event in 1908, when a suspected asteroid or comet burst over Russia and flattened 2,150 square kilometers of remote Siberian forest. “We think YR4 is about the same size as the Tunguska event [object],” Brucker says. A more recent example of such an impact occurred in 2013, when a meteor estimated at 20 meters wide exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia, shattering windows and injuring hundreds of people.

Put another way, it’d be the equivalent of a 10-megaton explosion. Most nuclear warheads deployed for operational use weren’t this powerful, even as more destructive ones were designed. The article makes reference to the 1908 Tunguska event, where an asteroid, comet, or meteor exploded in the atmosphere above a region in central Russia. The area was barely populated, so the lack of witnesses made what caused the flattening of approximately 80 million trees a mystery for almost a century, before more recent research determined that it was, in fact, an impact event. Basically, what we’re looking at in 2024 YR4 is yet another Tunguska-level blast.

Look at what happened then:

Now imagine that happening over a populated area, a city, a metropolitan area. Had the object that exploded over Tunguska exploded over Europe instead, we’re looking at a drastically different timeline, and most of us may not be here today.

Which brings up the next consideration: where would 2024 YR4 hit?

Based on current calculations, which are subject to change, the object will hit anywhere along the belt indicated in red, which, ironically, is almost in line with Earth’s equator:

Source

One of the most prominent urban areas along this risk zone is the city of Bogotá, capital of Colombia. Using the NUKEMAP tool, we can calculate both the extent of the blast and the number of casualties to expect.

Selecting Bogotá as the target, an explosive yield of 10 megatons, and an airburst explosion, which is far likelier than a ground impact, leads to estimates sobering as they are shocking:

Bogotá is a city of eight million people, with the broader metro area home to a further three million. We’re talking about half the city’s population dead in an instant, with millions more set to die in the days, weeks, and months to follow. Entire bloodlines, entire lineages, all gone in a flash. We’re talking about an entire city, the capital of one of the world’s more prominent countries, wiped completely off the map. They’re not going to rebuild Bogotá, or any city, after something like that. The entire country would come to suffer for it, and Colombia, along with the broader region, would experience a colossal crisis in all forms: economic, humanitarian, and political.

I noted that the impact axis runs along the equator. The significance of this is that 80-90 percent of global population growth occurs along this belt. If the asteroid struck Africa, it’d likely arrest global population growth overnight. If it struck India, the world’s most populous country and also along the impact axis, it’d probably put a dent into the world population. Mumbai, a city of 12 million, is in the danger zone. Either way, the devastation would be unfathomable. The best we can hope for, if 2024 YR4 is indeed destined to hit, is that it explodes above water, far from shore, but this would instead cause tsunamis that would ravage coastlines.

There are some, primarily in the First World, who might think there’s no reason for concern for them. After all, there are too many people in the world and if it struck Africa or India, it’d mean less migration from the Third World, which is currently ravaging the West, wouldn’t it?

Maybe in the short term. However, migration is often driven by catastrophe. The reason why the Tunguska event of 1908 didn’t have any long-term impact is because it happened literally in the middle of nowhere. That won’t be the cases with 2024 YR4. Wherever it strikes, it’s going to end up affecting millions of people, driving migration even further.

Politics aside, lots of people dying or becoming displaced is never a good thing. It won’t bring the world closer together. It’ll just drive us all even further apart. Millions, eventually billions, will be forced to fight over a whole lot less to go around. It could be the start of long-term period of conflict and deprivation. When considering the ecological impact, we’re looking at an extinction-level event for certain animal species, along with plants.

What could bring us closer together, even if only for a short while, is a sense of shared vulnerability. Perhaps the risk 2024 YR4 poses could motivate us all to put our differences aside for a moment and focus our energies on the one thing we all have in common: we all share Earth as our home.

This is, of course, assuming we have a way of stopping the asteroid.

Do We Have The Technology?

That’s a tough question to answer. It’s sort of “yes,” but it’s also sort of “no.” Outright, we’re going to rule out two methods of stopping the asteroid: putting people on its surface or destroying it.

We haven’t mastered manned spaceflight to the extent necessary to land men on a rock moving thousands of miles per hour, to say nothing of the fact the furthest we’ve sent humans is to the far side of the moon. Though we’ve sent unmanned spacecraft even further, dealing with an asteroid involves more than just being able to travel long distances. It involves intercepting an object hurtling through vast expanses at high velocity, meeting it at an exact point in time and space. Then the hard work of deflecting or destroying the object begins.

Humans will absolutely be involved in any asteroid defense mission. However, if astronauts do go into space, they’ll be involved in delivering the solution as close to 2024 YR4 as possible and controlling it from the relative safety of their spacecraft. Don’t expect them to land on the asteroid itself like Bruce Willis and Robert Duvall and their respective crews did in Armageddon and Deep Impact.

And no, forget about blasting the asteroid like they do in the movies. It requires a tremendous amount of energy to do so. While nuclear weapons could get the job done, you’d need to be able to get enough of them into space and inside the rock in order to implement as a solution. The amount of effort required to do that is so extensive, it outpaces existing capabilities.

That leaves only one salvation: deflection. We need to find a way to alter the trajectory of the asteroid, if it is indeed determined that it’s on a collision course with Earth. It’s the best option also within existing capabilities. Unfortunately, those capabilities are currently quite limited.

Fortunately, NASA did successfully attempt a test deflection recently, in September 2022. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully altered the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos, which is larger than 2024 YR4 as currently measured. China is planning to launch its own test deflection mission later this year, showing that a preliminary planetary defense capability does exist. If an all-out effort is put into further developing this capability, along with a fleet of spacecraft capable of deflecting asteroids of varying sizes, we could, theoretically, possess the means of blunting 2024 YR4, should that become necessary. If it’s indeed smaller than Dimorphos, conditions could be favorable for success.

This is assuming it’s actually smaller - we won’t know the exact size without more data being collected. It’s possible the asteroid is larger, though it’s doubtful it’s that much larger. Otherwise, it would’ve been seen more clearly, at least one would hope. Having an accurate as possible measurement of 2024 YR4’s diameter and mass is paramount to determining exactly how much energy would be required to deflect its orbit away from Earth, or, worse, whether we’re even capable of harnessing the necessary energy and putting it inside a spacecraft.

There’s also the option of using nuclear weapons not to destroy the asteroid, but to generate a blast strong enough to alter its trajectory. It sounds simple enough, but again, we’d need to know exactly how much energy is required to affect that course correction. It may be a lot more than we imagine, despite the tremendous power of a nuclear explosion. I speak with no authority on the matter, but my gut sense is that it’d take quite a few nuclear blasts or one massive one to do the job. Maybe those dastardly weapons do have some use, after all!

All things considered, time is still the biggest issue. DART took over four years to prepare and get off the launchpad. It took an additional 10 months for the spacecraft to reach the asteroid. Perhaps we can shorten the preparation time somewhat, but I doubt it can be shortened by years, let alone one year, especially if multiple spacecraft are going to be involved in the mission. Even then, we need enough time to be able to intercept the asteroid while it’s still a safe enough distance away. The closer it gets, the more energy will be required to alter its trajectory even more dramatically, whereas the further away it is, even a minuscule alteration would be sufficient to result in great divergence over time.

There are other methods of deflecting asteroids, but they’re almost all theoretical at the moment. Slamming into it or trying to blast it off-course seem to be most viable, most within existing capabilities. I don’t know what’s more feasible or practical, but my thinking is that slamming into it is the best option with time on our side, the explosion the best option if time isn’t on our side.

All this is to say, we need to get to work yesterday. My personal belief is that this anti-asteroid capability needs to be developed immediately, whether or not 2024 YR4 is destined to hit Earth. I’m dismayed by the fact projects like a mission to Mars seem to take precedence, when not only are our manned spaceflight capabilities still so limited, such a mission would be of little benefit to us at the moment. We’re not all going to escape to Mars in the event of an asteroid strike.

If a deflection mission is ruled out for whatever reason or fails, that leaves evacuation of the impact zone as the only other recourse. It really is a last-ditch option and would be a tremendous undertaking in its own right.

Consider Colombia. It borders five countries - Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. All of them would need to be willing to take in some, if not all, of the evacuees, of which there will be upwards of 11 million, likely more. Many might be able to go other parts of Colombia, but many still will need to go to other countries.

You also can’t put refugees anywhere. Though there’s tremendous amounts of land available, not all of it’s habitable. For example, there’s a reason why Brazil’s population of over 300 million is concentrated in large cities, specifically the megacities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: most of the country is a rain forest. You also need to find a way to provide tens of millions of humans food, water, shelter, maybe even jobs, since they won’t have a home to return to when it’s all over. Besides building brand new cities or establishing new countries outright, I don’t know what the answer to this is.

Regardless of where the asteroid aims for, evacuating the impact zone would be a humanitarian undertaking of biblical proportions, one without historical precedent. There’s no guarantee it’s going to be successful, either. Just look at the current crisis of mass migration at the moment. Most of the time, this sort of thing only leads to a lack of living space, stretching of resources, and, inevitably, conflict. Perhaps, after the asteroid strikes, they can return and attempt to rebuild, but there’s no guarantee of success. The land may be rendered inhabitable due to the extent of the damage.

Planning for 2024 YR4 striking the planet is a non-starter, effectively. Either we determine the asteroid is going to miss Earth, or we find a way to deflect it. Period. Anything else is missing the point.

There’s No Hiding From It

As you might imagine, there’s nothing you nor I can do about this asteroid. Flippant as it might sound, if it’s headed this way, it’s headed this way. It’s up to the people with access to the technologies capable of stopping this terrible threat to step up and confront the danger. It’s a lot to ask, I know. So what are the rest of us supposed to do in the meantime? Hide? Run to our bug-out bunkers and seal the hatch?

Don’t get so caught up in the uncertainty of it all that you forget that this asteroid will most likely miss us. At the same time, for now, there’s no reason we can’t learn lessons in preparedness from it. I consider it a real-time study in risk management, which is what preparedness effectively amounts to, at the end of the day. It’s an example of what to do in a situation where there’s little information to go on, but the risk of inaction is potentially high. Obviously, if 2024 YR4 were the size of a small house, there wouldn’t be as much worry about it.

But it’s a big rock. It’s not a world-killer, but wherever it hits, the devastation will be unfathomable. So even if the chance of it hitting Earth is around two percent, the fact that we won’t know for sure until three years from now necessitates immediate preparatory action.

For example, I was once driving a car that had been in the shop recently after it wouldn’t start. When I attempted to start it later, I noticed something wasn’t right - it was struggling to start again, despite the fact it had just been repaired by the mechanic. As a result, I immediately decided to drive home, figuring that if the car was going to die again, I’d rather it be at the comfort of home instead of some parking lot miles away. This is as simple an exercise in risk management in your daily life as it gets in a situation where there are many unknowns.

If you need a more dramatic example, consider the aborted Apollo 13 mission to the moon. After an explosion wrecked the spacecraft, NASA had a choice: either fire the engine attached to the command module and turn the spacecraft around immediately, getting them home sooner, or shut it down, get into the lunar module, using it as a lifeboat, and swing around the Moon to put itself on a path back to Earth. Obviously, the second option would take much longer. However, given the explosion, firing the engine attached to the command module was terrible risky, nor did they have much power left to spare. As a result, they opted for the longer route home, which was absolutely the right decision, in the end.

Many of these decisions seem like no-brainers, but the key lesson to impart here is how quickly the decision was made, how the decision that was made was the one that put as much in their favor as possible, even as there remained many factors beyond their control. When assessing risk, it comes down to three main things: increasing chances of success and lowering the chance of failure, containing the impact of any potential failure, and ensuring you have a firm handle on the factors which are within your control.

Basically, leave nothing to chance. If you can do something about it, do it. If you can’t do something about it, either find a way to mitigate the impact or put it out of your mind and don’t let it become a distraction.

Of all its forms, high-impact, low-probability risks are the toughest to prepare for. They require the most pro-activeness, since you’re planning for something that may never occur. It’s difficult to create an artificial sense of urgency unless you’re neurotic and paranoid, but dispassionately analyzing risk is more than a sufficient substitute. None of this means any of us have to drop everything, quit our jobs, and focus all our energy and resources on dealing with a potential problem. The key is to take early, consistent action, and pay close attention to it, never allowing it to take you by surprise.

I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing

Let me stress in closing: nobody should be worried about Asteroid 2024 YR4 striking Earth. Not yet. A two-percent chance leaves us with a 98 percent chance of it missing. Those are pretty good odds.

The problem is that the risk has doubled in a short period of time. Furthermore, we are just a few months away from an information blackout, a period of uncertainty lasting three years, and the prospect of a very rude awakening at the end of it. I don’t think there’s any excuse for not preparing a deflection mission, whether impact is ruled out or not. But do the people in charge see it that way?

I wrote about this in large part because it’s an important topic for me. Earth isn’t just our home - it’s the only place in the universe known to support human life. Like I said before, we’re not all going to escape to Mars if it turns out that asteroid is headed for us, to say nothing of the fact the Red Planet cannot support human life, not on its own. The same way we should all prioritize the security of our residences, we should, as a civilization, prioritize the security of Earth. It only takes one impact event to change everything. Or end us.

Uncertainty has been a theme of this essay. Something else we must consider is that the big rock that hits us may, unfortunately, be one we never see coming. The last major impact event was the Chelyabinsk meteor, which air burst over the southern Ural region of Russia on February 15, 2013 (a dozen years ago today, in fact!) and it struck without warning.

Here’s a montage of footage capturing the event:

The asteroid (which became a meteor upon entering the atmosphere) was only about 60 feet in diameter. However, it was also approximately 10,000 tons. Though it hardly destroyed any cities and didn’t kill anyone, it caused extensive property damage across a wide area and injured over 1,400. It was a wake-up call, a reminder of how much damage even a relatively small object can cause. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is much larger.

We’d like to think that we didn’t see the Chelyabinsk impact coming because it was so small, but this serves as cold comfort. Surely, a planet-killer ought to be big enough that it can be seen, but what about the smaller objects that can still do a lot of damage?

I remember a Russian astronomer commenting on the Chelyabinsk impact remarking, at the time, something to the effect of, “There are many objects like it out there, so try not to worry about it.” It’s a very Russian thing to say, and I think it has merit. Obviously, it’d be terrible if we got hit with an asteroid of any size, but we can’t do anything about it, either. This one really is up to the people in charge to do something about. For the rest of us, it’s a call to begin living our lives with an understanding that there are few guarantees in life, that there’s always a tomorrow until there isn’t.

While reading up on this story, I couldn’t help but play Aerosmith’s 1998 smash-hit “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” in my head. As we all remember, it was the theme song to Armageddon, as perfect as one gets.

It’s one of the greatest ballads ever, for sure, and it also matches the sense of urgency imparted by the film: we really don’t have that much time. Three years from now, we’ll know for sure just how much time we have, or not, hopefully. In the meantime, it’s past time for us all to focus on figuring out what we don’t want to miss out on, and take immediate action to make sure that we don’t.

Let’s discuss Asteroid 2024 YR4: Should we be worried about the space rock hurtling towards Earth? Do you think we should be taking the prospect of impact more seriously? If not, what are some ways we can convince the people in charge to do so? What are some risk management strategies you apply in your daily lives?

Talk about it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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