BBiA_duchessrocketslaySpaceCadetI really wish Trump was into this stuff.i feel like we're screwed no matter what if an asteroid of any considerable size decides to mosey on down to planet earth
Everything people worry about would be so small and petty if we were all in real danger.
Yes we completely are there is zero way to stop it. Nuking it is impossible, and even if we could, we would just be hit by a lot of smallish meteors instead of one big one, which isn't really better
this isn't true for multiple reasons
1. Space is fucking huge. If we saw a minor planet about to impact us it'd have to be so close that we realistically couldn't warn everyone before it hit for us to not be able to redirect it by ~.5% and still have it miss by a wide margin. Space is so big and the earth so small that even absolutely tiny changes in the path of the object would cause it to miss massively
2. multiple small rocks hitting is objectively better. Any explosion that would shatter a meteor would spread them far enough that most would then miss or be deflected. The few that hit would be much more degraded by the atmosphere (surface area to volume ratio wins again) and less likely to deal damage
3. we're pretty aware of most things that will approach earth in a reasonable time span. It is highly unlikely anything significant enough to actually threaten humanity would have been missed by now