We have canned food and water in stock, but will it be enough if an asteroid hits the earth?

We are busy preparing for war, flood and pandemics – but do we lack a contingency plan for what we do if one of the many thousands of so-called near-Earth objects hits the Earth?

This is the opinion of tech and science communicator Anders Høeg Nissen from the podcast RumSnak.

There are currently around 35,000 so-called near-Earth objects registered in the space around our planet. A near-Earth object is an asteroid or a comet that comes within a distance of just under 200 million kilometers from Earth – and some of them come much closer.
As recently as early September 2024, astronaut Matthew Dominick was lucky enough to take some nice time-lapse photos from the space station of a meteor hitting the atmosphere and exploding in a greenish fireball, thankfully without harming the Earth’s surface.

On the whole, very few weeks rarely pass between stories about passing asteroids or comets, or meteors lighting up the sky. Because we live in a solar system with lots of stones and pieces of rock that rush around everywhere, and therefore work is also done hard to discover them and keep track of where they are.

We collect and analyze lots of images from telescopes using advanced software, and try as best we can to find and track the many near-Earth objects out there – especially of course those that could potentially be heading towards Earth.

Anders Høeg Nissen emphasizes that one should not live in fear, because it is after all not very likely that larger near-Earth objects will hit Denmark – at least not if you think of the giant meteors you know from disaster movies. But there are many objects out there that, although smaller, can easily cause colossal damage and cost lives. So maybe the threat should be taken more seriously than it is today?

“When we are so aware of other crisis situations, it is perhaps a little strange that we have not also laid out a strategy for emergency response in the event that we should be hit by an impact from space. It is a threat that should probably also be part of our national preparedness,” says Anders Høeg Nissen, co-host of the podcast RumSnak.