We interrupt our regular schedule of fish puns and naughty jokes about holes to warn you that a huge chunk of celestial debris has a 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in December 2032 and wiping out the city of Bradford. I name Bradford because it’s the first city that occurs to me and also, because several of my ancient enemies live there, but the asteroid could hit anywhere. Where do you live? Maybe wear a hard hat when you go Xmas shopping in 2032. Asteroid 2024 YR4 loiters somewhere along our planet’s orbital trajectory, like a rake in the grass.
If this were the 1980s we’d seek comfort in the pages of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which has the words “DON’T PANIC” in large, friendly letters on the cover. But it’s the twenty-twenties and nobody reads Douglas Adams anymore, so instead I’m playing Neal.fun’s free tool Asteroid Launcher, which lets you pick asteroids of different sizes and compositions like you’re choosing brands of cereal, then splat them capriciously against world map data provided by Apple Inc.
YR24 is said to be 130-300 feet across, and is made of stone. Let’s split the difference and say it’s 215 feet across, or a few short of 70 metres. According to Asteroid Launcher, if a 70 metre wide stone asteroid were to explode in the atmosphere 2.4 kilometres above my flat*, while travelling at 17 kilometres a second, the devastation would be catastrophic. The resulting 211 decibel shockwave would totally obliterate my favourite chippie down the road. My local Cafe Neros at the bottom of the hill would experience winds faster than the storms on Jupiter. My favourite curry shop in London would likely be levelled, which I guess is fine because I think they’re planning to move anyway.
It sounds unbearable, but it could be worse. My favourite London takeaway joint would fall slightly outside the blast radius, and people eating in my favourite vegan pizza place might not even glance up from their Pepper-no-nis. Curiously, if the asteroid were 30 metres bigger, big enough to make landfall, the area-of-effect would apparently be smaller and the casualties, fewer, give or take a few extra from earthquakes. I can’t remotely speak to the accuracy of whatever science Asteroid Launcher runs on. I’m fairly sure it’s not a standard reporting tool at any major space agency. If it is, we have more immediate problems to worry about than YR24.
What drives somebody to read about an extremely unlikely asteroid impact and immediately load up a free browser game in order to simulate their own destruction? I don’t know, but it’s an instinct that informs a lot of video games. Patient zero could be the original SimCity. We’ve all had that moment in SimCity, right, when the infrastructure is humming and all your residential, industrial and commercial zones are in perfect equilibrium, and a rasping voice in your ear says “Screw it – die, you pack of filthy little law-abiding conformists”, and you push the Godzilla button.
It’s the same nihilism that flowers within my spleen when I read the label on a bottle of shower gel made by a company that whimsically declares its boss to be “Nature”. Video games are great at venting such feelings, which is perhaps less constructive when it means, say, dissipating pent-up anguish about climate change, but surely forgiveable enough when it comes to the fickle motions of marauding space rocks.
Anyway, if you need a pick-me-up after reading all that, I recommend sumptuous planet-nurser Reus 2. Oh look, it was recently updated! With a selection of… natural disasters.
*FAO stalkers, the image header is not where I actually live