100 Million People To Face Highest Risk Of Catastrophe

When 100 million people face a real existential threat on a record-setting-high level. What will be the outcome? With all the chaos between world governments, imagine it happened today.

Image created with Microsoft Designer 365

Another week has passed, and there’s been another update on 2024 YR4, and the news wasn’t good. Unfortunately, this Statue of Liberty-sized asteroid has rocketed straight to the top of the charts, competing with the speed of a Taylor Swift new release. It’s now the most threatening thing in space, about life on Earth.

What does that mean? 2024 YR4, the asteroid newly discovered in the last days of 2024, saw its chance of hitting Earth rise to 3.1 %. It’s been in multiple news posts and the men and women at NASA and every space agency around the globe on pins and needles. There was an emergency declaration made to retask the James Webb Telescope.

NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because you’ve seen the movie Armagedon, and remember the actor playing the role at NASA excitedly telling his co-workers, “We’re moving the Hubble.” We could be living in an example of life imitating art.

Even though the reality is there’s still a 96 to 97% chance that 2024 YR4 will miss us, it has people concerned because as the asteroid is studied, the chances continue to grow, albeit, in small increments. We’ve seen it go from a 1.1% chance to a 3.1% chance.

Photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash

Then there’s the projected path of the asteroid. This is the path that covers the approximate areas where it could impact. Unfortunately, this also covers an area where nearly 100 million people reside. Several major cities are included in a list of potential impacts, with one area in India having nearly 28 million people.

Imagine the devastation of something 50 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WW2. That’s the early estimate, before a complete analysis of the asteroid’s composition. With a stellar speed of 38,000 miles per hour, the impact would be unlike anything humankind has seen.

References:

[embed]2024 YR4 - NASA Science How big is the asteroid?science.nasa.gov

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