Surviving planet Earth

Surviving the BIG ONE

Some people have very rigid routines.

For example, they may awaken at the crack of dawn, take a cool shower and a rapid 5-mile jog before breakfasting upon a piece of wholemeal, unbuttered toast and a half-segment of papaya, and one cannot help but admire that tortuous existence. I am afraid that I am at the rather far end of the scale when it comes to a healthy start to the day.

I tend not to have a reason to set my alarm, and as it is I don't need one, because my cat does an admirable job in its place. When he wants breakfast, which is usually between 5am and 6am, he simply announces the fact that I need to get up by scratching the door; repeatedly and in a manner designed to ensure I must drag myself out of bed to stop him. This accomplished, he will sit and watch attentively as I manipulate the tin-opener sleepily and wrestle the brown goo inside onto a small dish. I may sigh involuntarily because I am now still tired but not sleepy enough to go back to bed, so I go into my morning routine. This involved copious coffee to begin with, and as I inject more and more caffeine into my depleted system, I cannot help but wonder what people did before coffee was invented. I imagined our ancestors in the middle-ages having to wake up knowing that they couldn't get, say, a decent flat-white for another 800 years and uttering a short, heartfelt scream.

Next, I stumble to my office (it is technically actually a bedroom, but having replaced the bed with a computer and some books has allowed me to rename it) and tune the computer into the nearest free news channel.

Why 'free' I hear you ask? After all, reporters have got to eat too, haven't they? Yes, of course. I won't argue the fact that coverage of the news and assorted related 'content' is worthy of some coins. And I do indeed subscribe to some of them, but it also worries me that paying for news, world-wide events reported for our information, means that some people may not have access to it. Imagine a world where information had to be purchased before you could know it. If you couldn't afford to, it is entirely possible that whole pieces of history could have passed you by. The moon landings, various conflicts, coronavirus, all of these would only be known to you third-hand as those who could afford to buy the news related those bits of it that they wished to, assuming they wished to relate any of it to you, or indeed didn't leave stuff out or embellish it with their own twist.

"Yeah, so there's this thing apparently going around the world called a Clinkavirus, right?"

"Oh, my – it sounds dangerous!"

"It is, but only to some people..."

"Really? What kind of people?"

"People...with money. Yep, that's it. People who have money in their bank account are at increased risk of contracting this thing; its main symptom is that your head explodes without much warning."

"Gosh, mate, you're so clever, what with you having paid access to all this news stuff, while I'm just a dunder-head and have to rely on you, my best mate, to tell me things. What should I do to save myself from Clonkavirus?"

"It's Clinkavirus, mate. Well, you need to get rid of all your cash. Tell you what, how about I hold onto it for you?"

"Really, you'd do that for me, put yourself at risk like that?"

"What are mates for, eh?"

So, in the spirit of attempting to know stuff without always having to always pay for it, I locate my preferred news-feed and plug myself in. I tend to ignore the headlines on the basis that this doesn't necessarily constitute the news and go straight to the international section with the aim of finding out if anyone, anywhere, has started WW3. Satisfied that they haven't, despite their best attempts, I turn to articles I just find interesting, and this is where I found a small, tucked-away piece entitled:

'Much-feared asteroid Apophis won't hit Earth for at least 100 years, Nasa says'.

So that's allright, then: I relaxed, but not for very long.

Because I didn't know that there was an asteroid called Apophis, and I also didn't know that it was 'much feared'. I do now, though, thanks to The Guardian. As I ran down the article, my coffee became almost as cold as my spine.

This piece of space rock is 340 metres wide and has apparently concerned members of the space community since 2004 when it was first discovered. Well, when I say 'discovered' I mean when it was first detected. And this is because this particular planetary hazard was apparently blocked from our telescopes because it had the sun behind it.

Really? So, what we are being told is that we tend not to see approaching death if it's got the sun behind it, despite our powerful telescopes, satellites and space-craft? I find that a tad worrisome.

But it's OK, because those clever guys at NASA have predicted that the 'risk' windows of 2029, 2036 and 2068 are now no longer a risk. We have to assume some clever modelling here, hopefully using a computer and not the back of a beer-stained envelope. Having said that, the 2029 fly-by (Friday the 13th of April – had to be) will come awfully close to Earth, 20,000 miles close: closer that orbiting satellites. The article reminded us that this will have the effect of,

 "...enabling astronomers to get a good look."

Let's just hope that it doesn't nudge out of the predicted orbit, otherwise 2029 will be a quite short year.

The piece got me thinking about fiery destruction from the heavens, and to this end I had a quick look at the many and various pieces of space rock that have been or are being predicted to unleash the end of existence as we know it.

There is, for example, the relatively modest, 9-metre one called 2010FR12, calculated as having a one in sixteen chance of hitting earth just before midnight on the 9th of May 2095. Others, like the whopping 900-metre 1979XB may have a sporting chance of hitting the Earth in 2056 (searches for the same asteroid online reveal a confusing amount of information about its size, variously rendered as 660-metres, 700-metres and 900-metres, however the disparity won't make any appreciable difference when an Earth collision will severely impact the ability of the human race to survive generally, and the availability of coffee in particular).

Can we do anything about the chances of obliteration? The answer is, surprisingly, 'yes'.

Humans are relatively clever creatures and all sorts of ideas have been devised to destroy or deflect the oncoming wall of rock, from tiny space-craft that can 'nudge' these things onto a different path to lasers that can heat a small part of them, effectively powering them away from the Earth and our proven ability to actually land unmanned probes onto asteroids is of some comfort here. The problem is not one of actually being able to take action, it is one of how much time we are given to act, because space is big and filled with the potential for devastation and there are only a handful of people actively looking (glancing out of your window doesn't count). You also have to hope that they are looking in the right direction.

On the morning of the 15th February 2013, an asteroid careered into the atmosphere above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The 11,000 ton, 17-metre object exploded some 19 miles in the atmosphere and the scene was captured on dozens of dashcams and surveillance cameras. The resulting explosion was equivalent to an atomic device and injured 1,500 people as well as damaging over 7,000 buildings.

And we didn't see it coming.

So, on the basis that there is a reasonable chance of not seeing oncoming global catastrophe, can I suggest you start hoarding your espresso right away?