Protecting the planet from large meteor strikes
Cosmic debris such as meteors pose a significant threat — how is technology shaping up to meet it?
For the inhabitants of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, the events of 15 February 2013 will never be forgotten. Just after 9.00am, a 20m-diameter meteorite exploded above the city with a force equivalent to 30 Hiroshima bombs. Amazingly, no one was killed. But the resulting shockwave and shower of cosmic debris wreaked havoc over a wide area.
The Chelyabinsk meteor was thought to be the largest object of its kind since the so-called 1908 Tunguska event, when an asteroid of around 40m in diameter devastated a 2,000km 2 area of remote Siberian forest.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/protecting-planet-large-meteor-strikes/
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Important topic. I wish humankind would invest more in matters like this.
Interesting trivia: Many of the residents of Chelyabinsk thought that that meteor was an attack on their country by the US - especially after it exploded.
As for humankind investing more into matters like this, the problem is there are always "more pressing" needs than some event that may or may not happen in the next 1000 years. A couple of year in the future is an eternity to a politician. We can barely manage an annual budget plan out of our politicians. Most will feel it's better to present something that will affect more people now than more people in the future. Those people a hundred years future won't be voting in the next election.
We may make long term plans for future projects but I suspect you'll start seeing less and less of that. It's hard to fund long term projects when politicians are bickering about every cent spent now. Telling them that next year a billion dollars is going to be yanked out of their budget to cover something else is going to drive them insane.
Pretty much the only way to get the governments to seriously act on things like these is for the very thing they need to plan for and protect from to actually happen. Then they will be happy to make plans to protect people from it happening again. It's probably going to take a Tanguska like even on a major world city to get the world to act to prevent another one.