Small Near-Earth Objects Could Trigger Nuclear War
An NEO warning system could prevent high-strung countries from being jolted into a nuclear conflagration.
by Kelly Kizer Whitt


Near-Earth objects (NEOs) pose a threat to our global security, and not just from a catastrophic impact. A large meteorite exploding in Earth's atmosphere could trigger a nuclear war.

Such a scenario was in the making on June 6, 2002. Just as the tensions between India and Pakistan were reaching their boiling point, a meteor exploded as it entered the atmosphere over the Eastern Hemisphere, causing an energy release of 12 kilotons, equivalent to the blast that destroyed Hiroshima. Fortunately, the bright flash and damaging shock wave of the detonating meteorite occurred over the Mediterranean Sea, just west of the disputed Kashmir region. If the explosion had happened a little earlier while it was over the countries in conflict, the confusion and panic could easily have sparked a nuclear response from either country.

While the United States was able to quickly determine the source of the explosion, India and Pakistan, as well as most other countries, do not have the resources available to distinguish whether an explosion's source is natural or man-made. Brigadier General Simon P. Worden, the U.S. Space Command's deputy director for operations at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, would like to change that.



Brigadier General Simon Worden is vice director of operations for the U.S. Space Command.
U.S. Air Force


The Department of Defense already tries to notify nations that are facing potential missile attack of meteorite strikes; however, the data they collect is through classified systems, which can result in a several-week delay before the information is released. Worden recently told the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry in Washington, D.C., that an NEO warning center could be established to assess and release the data more quickly without jeopardizing sensitive information. He believes that no more than 10 extra people in the current centers would be required to catalog and provide warning of future NEO threats.

Ground-based telescopes are already detecting and defining the orbits of large, kilometer-sized objects. But there is no good system currently in place to find smaller NEOs. "Just about everyone knows of the 'dinosaur killer' asteroids," Worden says. "These are objects, a few kilometers across, that strike on time scales of tens of millions of years. While the prospect of such strikes grabs people's attention and makes great catastrophe movies, too much focus on these events has been counterproductive. We need to focus our energies on the smaller, more immediate threats."



This picture shows some of the devastation in the Tunguska region of Siberia.
Smithsonian Institution


In 1908, the well-known Tunguska meteorite exploded in the skies above Siberia and devastated an area 80 kilometers in diameter. This space chunk was probably not more than 100 meters in diameter but exploded with the energy equivalent of a 10 megaton nuclear blast, even though it never hit the ground. In 1996, a meteorite exploded over Greenland with a force of 100 kilotons (much greater than the June Mediterranean blast of 12 kilotons). If the Greenland or Tunguska events had occurred over populated areas, they would have caused massive fatalities.

In addition to igniting a nuclear war, another worst-case scenario is a 100-meter or smaller meteorite striking the ocean near a heavily populated seacoast. "The resulting tidal wave could inundate shorelines for hundreds of miles and potentially kill millions," says Worden.

"There are hundreds of thousands of objects this size that come near Earth. We know the orbits of just a few," Worden sums up. His call for the creation of a better NEO detection system would make Earth safer from threats from above. Until then, we have to wait until after an event occurs before we learn about it and hope that these incidents are limited to isolated corners of the globe.