© Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesRussell "Rusty" Schweickart, a retired NASA astronaut, speaks at an event in July 2006.
A former NASA astronaut says the agency he used to work for has a duty to protect civilians from
killer asteroids, but that it isn't meeting that obligation.
The threat of asteroid strikes might seem as abstract as outer space itself.
But the risk, while infrequent, is real - and potentially more deadly than the threat posed by some of the most powerful
nuclear weapons ever detonated.
Risk of death from aboveIn 1908, a space rock estimated to be several hundred feet in diameter screamed into Earth's atmosphere at many thousands of miles per hour, causing the foreign body to explode over the remote Tunguska region of Russia with the force of a thermonuclear weapon. The resulting blast flattened trees over an area nearly twice the size of New York City.
© Wikimedia CommonsA photograph of trees blasted down by the Tunguska Event in 1908.
More recently, in 2013, a roughly 70-foot-wide meteorite shot
over Chelyabinsk, Russia.
The concussive fireball smashed windows for miles around and sent
more than 1,000 people in multiple cities to hospitals, several dozen of them with serious injuries.
Comment: What if NASA
did fund such a project - or even a more robust version of the NEOCam - but instead of one space rock, hundreds (or even thousands) swarmed the planet over a short duration of time. There is no known defense for something like that. And what if the increasing reports of Near Earth Objects over these past many years is just a run-up for something so pervasive, and so devastating that it threatened
global catastrophe - why tell the public if you knew, and had no defense for it?
For more, read:
The Apocalypse: Comets, Asteroids and Cyclical Catastrophes
For untold millennia, comets and asteroids have struck fear into the hearts of humankind. Their stark radiance was observed everywhere with a sense of impending doom and interpreted as signs of the gods' judgment, omens of plague, mass destruction and the end of time. Astronomers recorded their appearance the world over, building large scale observatories to track their movements and predict their ominous arrival. What was it about these majestic wonders of the heavens that inspired such dread? Was it simply a product of mere superstition and social hysteria? The latest scientific analysis and historical analysis strongly suggest otherwise. Our ancestors knew something we have since forgotten, their secrets deeply embedded in the archaeological record and the myths passed on throughout generations. And we have only begun to unravel their mysteries ... Spurred by the discovery of a little known letter of warning to the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development by astrophysicist Victor Clube, author Laura Knight-Jadczyk began an in-depth research project to get to the bottom of the very real threat to humanity posed by these celestial visitors. In The Apocalypse: Comets, Asteroids, and Cyclical Catastrophes, Knight-Jadczyk shares what she found: historical evidence for mass destructions, comet-borne plagues, and repeated cover ups littering our past, as well as clues that a similar fate may be fast approaching.
Comment: This quake is reported to have occurred around 5pm, and earlier in the day, at around 8am, Alaska was hit with a strong M7. And so, when we considering the evidence linking fracking induced earthquake activity, along with the 2000% increase in major earthquakes since the 1900s, the rise in sinkholes, landslides and so on, it's clear society is suicidal in its pursuit of profit.
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