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ESA Carries Out Asteroid Impact Drill
Zothecula writes: If there were any dinosaurs around, they could tell you that an asteroid impact can ruin your whole day. But if we did learn that one was actually going to strike the Earth in a month, what would the authorities do? To find out, the European Space Agency held its first ever mock asteroid drill to work on solutions and identify problems in how to handle such a catastrophe.
Except the people stuck on the surface are likely to take offence and bury those rich and greedy types as well as politicians and leave them there. Likely best action apart from trying to deflect the asteroid, give everyone a free supply of happy pills to last until the impact, lots and lots of happy pills. It wont help with the impact but most certainly will mitigate the harm caused by people acting out against other people. In fact inserting the happy drugs right into the food and water supply would make sense.
In a more serious vein, establishment of distributed localised support system that well seek and readily accept volunteers, so individuals can focus on supporting their local community rather than dwelling upon their own circumstance. Establishing that mutual support network well before hand, one that includes the whole community, would make sense.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
For a small asteroid, the best response is not to do nothing, but to figure out where the thing is going to hit, and if it's going to hit a populated area, advise the authorities to start an evacuation or advise people to seek shelter. That is what ESA's exercise was about: can they gather, process, and share the right information in a timely manner?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...