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New York City was struck with an asteroid, killing more than one million. … In a simulation.
In a NASA simulation of a fictional scenario, a 200-foot wide asteroid struck New York, leveling buildings and killing an estimated 1.3 million in Manhattan.
The simulation was part of the “National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan,” which was published by the White House this week at the Planetary Defense Conference in Maryland. The simulation was held in a fictitious 2027.
The asteroid would have packed a punch approximately 1,000 times the force of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. In the simulation, there was a one in 10 chance of it hitting the earth.
In the scenario, an asteroid upwards of 260 meters had a projected impact in Denver, before the simulation team used spaceships to deflect it. A fragment of that asteroid then broke off over Manhattan, forcing an evacuation of New York City.
The small asteroid would enter Earth's atmosphere at 43,000 mph on April 29, 2027, producing a large fireball or "megabolide," and predicted to release 5-20 megatons of energy in the airburst.
In a statement, Leviticus Lewis of the Response Operations Division for FEMA said, "this exercise is valuable in that it continues the work currently in progress to identify key questions and issues for this low probability but high consequence scenario,”
Paul Chodas, the creator of the scenario and director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted that “no one at the conference believes that this exact scenario would play out this way in real life. More likely, any asteroid heading towards a certain Earth impact would end up in an ocean. But that's not the point of an exercise like this.
"We need to challenge ourselves and ask the tough questions," Chodas said. "You don't learn anything if you don't study the worst possible case each day."
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