Not everyone in the waning Obama administration is working on a new rule intended to tweak the incoming administration. Indeed, it appears that some staffers are busy doing something very useful: planning for humanity’s survival in the event of an asteroid impact.
And developing some pretty amazing acronyms for it, too.
The White House has released a “National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy” — a document developed by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) for Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN).
According to the strategy document, it “seeks to improve our nation’s preparedness to address the hazard of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by enhancing the integration of existing national and international assets and adding important capabilities that are currently lacking.”
The plan is pretty basic. It calls for improvements to near-Earth asteroid detection, development of methods for deflecting such objects (anything from a beam of light to a nuclear bomb could theoretically do the trick given early enough detection), and procedures in the event of an impact.
As improbable as a major direct hit is in any given year, it has happened before. And a “Sweet Meteor of Death” of sufficient size could literally end the world in a matter of moments. It’s nice to know someone is thinking about this, just in case.
