Do we have contingency or deflection strategies for Asteroids?

Question

A few questions..

Are we completely fucked if we have the misfortune of being on a collision course with one of these things?

Describe what the impact will likely be like? Say I'm on the opposite side of the earth from the impact what will I experience?

Is it gonna be absolute anarchy afterward?

Answer 1

Your question is not answerable at this time due to the missing,

most important factor in furnishing an answer to you...That is, the

actual size of the particular asteroid that you suggest might hit the Earth.

Meteors travel across the horizon at roughly 37 Kilometers per second. Another factor in making any realistic analysis of the size

of the disaster that would result in an asteroid striking the Earth is its speed or velocity. Naturally, the faster it is moving the more damage there will be.

Assuming a small asteroid were to hit Earth...say several miles wide.

We can assume that its structure will be mostly rock and some kind of metal such as iron and nickle. Given a meteor - like speed of 37 Km per second, this asteroid would penetrate the Earth's crust and create a huge volcano in the blink of an eye. This volcano would spew out hot lava miles up into the atmosphere along with millions of tons of ash and dust. This dust cloud would circle the Earth within two or three days blocking out all sunlight.

The asteroid's impact would send out massive shockwaves in all directions which would set off Tsunami Waves of giant proportion

which would most certainly flood all low lying areas around the world.      

Answer 2

The steps are these:

1 Mount a sky survey looking for large objects, say 10 km across, that cross the Earths orbit.

2 Mount a sky survey looking for 1 km objects.

3 Mount a sky survey looking for 100 meter objects.

4 Get a mission to put a transponder on a moderate sized object so that it's orbit can be accurately determined.

5. Try various missions to change the orbit of the object found in step 4.

6. Do missions to study the composition of comets, and various asteroids.  Determine structural integrity.

We've done most of steps 1 and 2.  We've done some of step 6.  We're breaking ground on an observatory for step 3.  We need to get on to step 4.

The steps are logical, because, although we are vulnerable, the chances of getting hit in the near term are fairly low.

It'd be really nice to have protection from a long period non-ecliptic comet.  Having a Hale-Bopp hit the Earth would be a day-ruining event.

Answer 3

The short answer is no.

We don't yet have the technology to move something massive

out of its orbit, and 'blowing it up' is not an option as most of

the mass would still hit the Earth.

Answer 4

We have several hypothetical ideas on how to deflect an approaching asteroid.

As for the impact, that would depend on the size of the object, if it was a small object you wouldn't be affected at all, but if it was big enough it could wipe out all life on the planet.

Answer 5

We have ideas for plans, but no plans.

A major impact will affect the whole Earth.  It'll disintegrate everything in the local area, and likely spew hot, molten mantle around the globe.  No place will be safe.  The shock wave will travel through the atmosphere and everything within 1000 to 1500 miles will be blasted, and smoke and ash from the impact and resulting global fires will darken the skies for weeks to months.

All but the hardiest plants will die, and with them, the animals that eat those plants (including us).  

On the bright side, traffic will be much lighter in the metropolitan areas.