February 15th

en.wikipedia.org

In the latest worrying news, the H-bomb asteroid DA 14 hurtled past Earth yesterday at a distance fourteen times nearer than the moon. Although experts had predicted the 148ft rock would not collide with our planet, it sent fragments in a meteor shower over central Russia, injuring over two hundred and fifty people.

Bright burning objects illuminated the sky for hundreds of kilometres as they crashed into the Ural region. Chelyabinsk residents reported shaking ground and car alarms being set off by shock waves. Windows shattered, causing most of the injuries which hospitalized over one hundred people. Emergency services are rushing to the devastated area full of collapsed buildings. The Chelyabinsk region is Russia's industrial heartland, an area that has many factories, a nuclear power plant and the Mayak atomic waste storage and treatment centre.

www.bahighlife.com

I find the whole scenario worrying—so much so that I've written a rough draft of a novel set in the future where a comet-strike sends the world out of kilter. In some sci-fi movies, the experts send men in a spaceship to disintegrate the meteor before it collides with Earth. Can we rely on our experts in the eventuality of another collision? 

Recent new evidence has revealed that dinosaurs did die out after a six mile long asteroid hit the planet. Before the cosmic explosion, many creatures were brought to the brink of extinction by dramatic climate swings in the preceding million years, including long cold snaps. The asteroid collision with Earth has now been dated to 66,038,000 years ago. The new extinction date is precise to within 11,000 years. 

I don't want to vanish like a dinosaur.