NASA's 2019 doomsday simulation, dubbed Chodas, saw an asteroid 1,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb obliterate New York in 2027, with scientists failing to save an entire city.
The simulation, created at the Planetary Defense Conference Exercise 2019, was set during the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) held April 29 to May 3, 2019, in Washington, D.C. The scenario began on the first day of the conference, where a large asteroid - 2019 PDC, between 330 and 1,000 feet (100 and 300 meters) - hurtled towards Earth.
Simulation timeline
At first, according to the simulation, the asteroid had only about a one per cent chance of hitting Earth. Then a fake press release was issued, as per the Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). It read: "College Park, Maryland, USA, April 29, 2019. The International Asteroid Warning Network has announced that a recently discovered near-Earth asteroid could pass very close to the Earth 8 years from now, on April 29, 2027, and there is a small chance – 1 in 100 – that it could impact our planet."
Day two of the conference was set in the simulation year 2021, when NASA had launched a probe to study the asteroid more closely. At that point in the simulation, the space rock was on a collision course with Earth, and the impact site had been narrowed down to Denver, Colorado.
Failed deflection attempt
On day three, every nation's space agency decided to build a fleet of six "kinetic impactors," spacecraft designed to ram into the asteroid, slowing it down and hopefully deflecting it off course. These vehicles were launched in 2024, three years from impact, and three of them hit the earth-destroying asteroid.
However, although the asteroid fractured, it was not broken, meaning a smaller fragment would still impale the east coast of America. The asteroid was imagined as striking Earth's atmosphere at 43,000 mph and hitting New York in a blast that was 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
Evacuation as the only option
As with the 2027 projected destruction of New York City, the only remaining port of call is a mass evacuation. Roughly 20,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered so far, with another 150 or so new ones found every month, according to the CNEOS.
NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released an 18-page document in 2018 outlining steps the agencies would take over the next 10 years to prevent actual asteroid strikes and prepare for a potential doomsday scenario. The bottom line is that mass evacuation is often the only port of call.
