Asteroid Destruction Read online

  There are twenty thousand near-Earth asteroids and they do occasionally make an appearance. In 2013, one slammed into Russia, injuring sixteen-hundred people and caused millions in damages.

  The same-day notice provided in the case of 2019 MO illustrates the weakness in preparing for a much bigger asteroid smacking into the Earth’s atmosphere.

  How the Space Force would help protect Earth from Future Asteroid Threats ~ Tariq Malik, SPACE.com, June 20, 2018

  If the Space Force like the one proposed by President Donald Trump becomes a reality, odds are, it would play a role in defending Earth from an incoming asteroid.

  In a report released today (June 20, 2018), NASA and other federal officials unveiled what the United States should do over the next 10 years to safeguard Earth from potential asteroid impacts. That 18-page plan, called the “The National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan,” would involve work from agencies across the federal government, White House officials said — even, potentially, Trump’s proposed Space Force.

  The U.S. currently has three possible methods for deflecting any potentially hazardous asteroid from hitting Earth:

  •A “gravity tractor” that would park a spacecraft near the asteroid and let the gravitational attraction of the two objects nudge the asteroid off course.

  •A “kinetic impactor” that would slam a spacecraft into an asteroid to knock it off course.

  •A nuclear strike aimed at vaporizing the surface of an asteroid, creating jet of material that would push the asteroid off course.

  All three of those options would require at least a 10-year lead time before a potential asteroid impact, NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson told reporters at the teleconference.

  Johnson even suggested that civilians, like amateur astronomers or the B612 Foundation for asteroid awareness, could play a response role.

  “Planetary defense is a team sport,” Johnson said. “We welcome capability wherever it comes.”

  You can download the full National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan here from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

  Epigraph

  “Up until now Congressional appropriators and senior NASA officials are mostly relying on luck to keep us safe from catastrophic fatalities resulting from the surprise impact of an unseen asteroid. So far, luck and the odds are on our side as evidenced by both the 1908 Siberian Tunguska impact and the 2013 Chelyabinsk airburst occurring in relatively remote areas of our planet.

  However, luck is not a plan.”

  ~ Professor Richard P. Binzel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  *****

  “Asteroid detection, tracking, and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously.”

  ~ John M. Grunsfeld, American physicist and former NASA astronaut

  *****

  “NASA and Congress criticized for proposed budget cuts.”

  ~ SpaceNews.com, March 13, 2019

  *****

  “Sooner or later, NASA will need to save us by detecting and deflecting an incoming asteroid. By most estimates, the mortality risk posed by an asteroid impact is put at about the same risk as flying a commercial airliner.

  However, you have to remember that the entirety of the human race would be riding on that plane, making an impact event one of the few risks that really could wipe us all out.”

  ~ Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft

  Prologue

  Eight Years Prior

  Unknown Location

  Gunner Fox was blindfolded and unable to see any of his surroundings. His body felt hot, sweaty, as if he’d been locked in a one-hundred-twenty-degree steam room. He was beginning to feel the effects of dehydration.

  His eyes felt like they were sinking back into his head. The lack of sleep from the heavy metal music piped into the dark, hot box of a cell was causing him to be disoriented. Dizziness had taken over and he felt faint.

  Gunner tried to roll over on occasion, hoping to get away from the vomit he attempted to keep confined to one corner of the windowless cell. But his sleepiness, lack of energy, and confusion left him lying in it nonetheless.

  Suddenly, a light appeared, barely discernible through the black cloth that was wrapped over his eyes and around his head. A clank indicated a small observation panel had been opened briefly and then forced shut. Gunner steeled his nerves, waiting to be tortured again. For days, as many as four, although he’d lost count, he’d been subjected to mental and physical abuse.

  No food. No water. No opportunity to see his captors. They’d brought him to the brink of death and insanity.

  A loud thump, followed by the sounds of metallic locks turning outside his prison cell sent him a message that his brutal captors were back. Would it be more of the same? Beatings, electric shock, and verbal abuse? Gunner prepared himself mentally, but physically, his strength and ability to survive the ongoing assault was waning.

  “Get the stinking bastard up!” The leader spoke in English but with a heavy Russian accent. Two men grabbed Gunner under the arms and attempted to bring him to his feet.

  His legs buckled underneath him, causing him to collapse against one of the guards, rubbing his puke-covered clothes against the man.

  The guard let out a series of curses in Russian. Words that Gunner couldn’t understand, but the anger in the man’s voice was apparent.

  Gunner’s face was smashed against the concrete wall, drawing blood from a gash in his forehead that had been received on day one when he refused to answer their questions. At the time, his reaction, a toothy grin followed by spitting blood that resulted from a punch by his captors, felt good to him. He was resisting them. He was denying them the satisfaction of breaking him.

  They, in turn, stepped up their tortuous game. Now, after several days, Gunner was beginning to question whether he would survive his captivity. The men were sadistic. Enjoying the torture being administered on their prisoner. Stretching out their tactics to have a maximum psychological and physical effect on the man held in solitary confinement, away from the other prisoners.

  “Strip him down!” the Russian bellowed. “He stinks like a rat in a sewer!”

  The guards quickly obliged. Gunner heard the sounds of switchblade knives opening. The men weren’t careful in their quick motions to tear his clothes off him. As his shirt was cut open, so was a long, thin line of flesh, causing more of his blood to begin running down the center of his chest.

  His jeans were torn apart with a series of slices of the sharp blades, jabbing into the fleshy part of his butt and also slightly puncturing his right thigh. The pain caused him to wince and bite his tongue. But he didn’t yell. He wouldn’t give them that satisfaction.

  They stood Gunner up, the salty sweat beginning to seep into the new cuts in his skin. Suddenly, the guards were forcibly shaking him. This was followed by an open-handed slap across his face, a sucker punch that he could never see coming.

  “Are you listening to me, Amerikanskiy? Are you?” The interrogator demanded Gunner’s attention.

  Gunner said nothing, which earned him a hard slap to the stomach. The pain raced through his body. His captors were expert at inflicting suffering and discomfort upon him without causing internal damage. They wanted him to stay alive.

  He was dragged out of the cell and his arms were yoked above his head. The guards clamped his wrists into large, three-inch-wide handcuffs attached to a chain. He was now suspended in the air, stretched upward, completely nude.

  “Do it!” screamed the man in his Russian accent.

  Gunner knew what to expect, so he braced his body. He waited. Listening for the wheel to crank. Mustering the strength to stand on his toes, for hours, knowing that if he failed, both of his arms would be pulled out of his shoulder sockets.

  Gunner had been stretched to his limit, physically and mentally. But he held on
. He kept visions of Heather in the forefront of his mind. Typically, when on a mission, he tried to block her out of his consciousness. He felt guilty about that, as he loved her more than life. But a soldier who was obsessed with the person he loved couldn’t perform as a hardened warrior on the battlefield. Heather understood this, allowing Gunner to ease his guilt.

  This, however, was different. He needed her strength. He had to focus on their love to keep his sanity. He needed a vision of Heather, and her voice in his head, to endure the suffering he was going through.

  “Are you prepared to answer my questions, Amerikanskiy?”

  Gunner remained silent, as he had throughout the ordeal. No name. No rank. No serial number. They would get nothing out of him, not even an acknowledgment that they existed.

  It infuriated his captors. He was certain of it. They had a job to do—make him talk, break him, and then declare victory as he begged for mercy. Gunner Fox had no intention of giving them that satisfaction. On the contrary, all he could think about was surviving, escaping, and getting home to Heather. After he killed them all, of course.

  Gunner was holding on, but his mind was slipping. It had been hours since the interrogator made his final efforts to get Gunner to talk.

  “It’s time,” the interrogator bellowed. “I am tired of coddling this Amerikanskiy asshole!”

  The crank was turned and Gunner was lowered to the ground in a heap. He was unable to move his arms at first, stiff from the hours of being suspended above his head.

  Gunner attempted to cover his genitals as the men kicked him in the thighs and back several times. He curled up in a fetal position, allowing his body to relax as the kicks continued.

  “I will kill you right now if you don’t tell us what we want!” The man was screaming in Russian. Gunner couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the tone of the maniac’s voice spoke volumes.

  Then the man became eerily calm. A massive swing in emotions that caught Gunner off guard. For the first time, he truly expected to die.

  A calm American accent appeared among his captors for the first time. “He won’t talk unless we make him. Let’s get on with it.”

  Two guards abruptly grabbed Gunner and began to drag him across the rough concrete floor. His body went limp as the hard surface ripped the skin off his knees and the tops of his feet.

  They lifted him up and rolled him over onto a wooden board. Two other sets of hands quickly bound his wrists and ankles with leather straps. Gunner fought them, writhing back and forth in a futile attempt to avoid the restraints. Somehow, he knew what was coming.

  First, he heard the water. The sound of a towel being dipped into a sink or bucket, being sloshed around to soak it thoroughly. He prepared himself for the ultimate form of human torture—waterboarding.

  His captor leaned over Gunner’s face and hissed—the sadistic man’s hot breath felt in his nostrils. “You will break. You will not make me look like a fool. I will give you this one last chance. Speak, or prepare to die.”

  Gunner did not give in. Instead, he spontaneously smiled. Give it your best shot, pal.

  And the man did. He forced the soaking wet towel over Gunner’s nose and mouth. One of the guards slowly began to pour water over Gunner’s face, further saturating the towel. The dousing lasted around fifteen seconds, during which time Gunner tried to turn his head away from the onslaught of water. It took three men to hold him still until it was time to assess their progress.

  Gunner was still smiling.

  “Talk! Talk, dammit!”

  Gunner refused. He lay perfectly still, his eyes wide open, staring at the black cloth that had become part of his body since his arrival.

  The interrogator reapplied the towel and the process continued. Waterboarding was first used during the fifteenth century. The Spanish Inquisition, instituted by Catholic monarchs in Spain, was intended to ensure converts to the faith of Christianity from Judaism and Islam remained true to their new Christian faith. A similar technique to waterboarding was just one of the many tools used by the monarchy. For some, simply burning the heretics at the stake was a more favored option.

  The former Soviet Union perfected the art of waterboarding. It was often used against American spies during the height of the Cold War. The KGB found that sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, and hours upon hours of placing their captives in uncomfortable, stress-filled environs was effective at breaking a spy.

  When the normal tactics didn’t work, the Soviets adopted waterboarding as a technique. At first, the interrogators let their emotions get in the way of the task at hand. Many spies were killed by the torture. The technique was intended to create a feeling of suffocation. In practice, prisoners were drowning.

  Gunner’s captor, however, was a professional. He knew how much torture to administer to break a prisoner. He’d saved the best for last—waterboarding.

  Yet it wasn’t working, causing the leader to become increasingly frustrated. On the last attempts, the bucket of water turned into two, and then to three. For nearly a minute, water was poured over Gunner’s face, and, at times, he was certain the interrogator loosened the pressure on the towel so water could find its way into Gunner’s mouth and nose.

  He wants to drown me!

  Gunner was at his lowest point. His hope was almost lost, but he didn’t outwardly manifest it to his captors.

  Frustrated, the interrogator ripped the towel away from Gunner’s face and slapped the last bucket, sending it careening across the concrete floor.

  The man’s frustration got the better of him, and his fit of rage gave Gunner an opening. His blindfold had been moved so that he could see the floor and the feet of his captors. He also could sense a glimmer of hope, which gave him newfound strength.

  “Take him back!” the Russian yelled in English.

  The guards brusquely unstrapped Gunner, who played the role of faint, semiconscious prisoner. As they had done for days, they dragged his lifeless body over the concrete floor and down the hallway toward his cell.

  The farther he traveled into the bowels of the prison, the less he could hear the voice of the interrogator. After past torture sessions, he’d counted in his head each time he was returned to this cell.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

  It was a throwback to his days as a kid when his friends, including Cam, would get together to play a pickup football game in the backyard. The rule was that the defense couldn’t rush the passer for three seconds—counted out in Mississippis.

  Gunner knew it took about thirty seconds to be returned to his cell. Despite his sleep-starved brain preventing him from thinking clearly, he’d remained singularly focused on one task—escape.

  It was a prisoner’s duty.

  Now he could see the floor. He could study and anticipate the guards’ movements. He’d prepared for that moment, that brief opening in which one of the guards would release his grip on Gunner to prepare the door to be locked while the other carried the burden of shoving Gunner into the cell.

  Gunner’s body tensed, a change in his demeanor that was noticed by the guard. But it was too late. Gunner spun and thrust the palm of his hand upward, striking the guard in the throat. He was immediately released, and without hesitation, he spun around and kicked the other guard’s legs out from under him.

  Both men groaned in pain, a guttural noise that could be heard down the all-concrete hallway. At this distance, to the interrogator and the unknown American in the torture room, it sounded no different than Gunner’s usual moans after a brutal session of abuse.

  He ripped the blindfold off and quickly adjusted to the light, thankful that the hallway was dimly lit. He pounced on top of the first guard, who was holding his throat in agony. Gunner reared back and slammed his fist into the side of the man’s head, instantly knocking him unconscious.

  He turned his attention to the other guard. He clamped his hand over the man’s mouth. The guard’s eyes grew wide at
the sight of Gunner. He hadn’t shaved in a week. His hair was matted with vomit. His naked body reeked of bodily fluids and feces. Gunner was more animal than human.

  And the formerly caged animal’s eyes were maniacal. He felt along the man’s utility belt for a weapon. There was nothing. His captors must’ve anticipated Gunner’s capabilities, knowing it would be a deadly mistake to have a gun or knife in his presence at any time.

  Attached to the guard’s belt, Gunner found a key ring—a large brass oval that held skeleton keys and vehicle fobs. He ripped it from the Velcro attachment and forced the skeleton key, the one used to open and close his cell, toward the guard’s eye.

  “You can either shut up, or lose your eyes, or you can die. Your choice.”

  The man couldn’t speak. He shook his head violently from side to side to avoid the key jabbing toward his right eye.

  “I need your uniform, asshole,” hissed Gunner as he dragged the man into the cell. The guard was much thinner than his chubby partner, and his uniform would fit Gunner just about right.

  Gunner turned the man around with his hand clamped over his mouth. The man began to unbutton the Russian military uniform and quickly dropped the clothes to the floor.

  Gunner then gathered the strength to administer a choke hold. He looped his right arm around the guard’s neck and began to squeeze. He lifted his left arm and pressed against the side of the guard’s head, creating a figure-four appearance.

  Then he squeezed. He resisted the urge to kill the man. He wanted to, but didn’t. Cutting off the blood flow to the man’s brain was sufficient to render him unconscious, thus giving Gunner the opportunity to escape.

  With the man incapacitated, Gunner quickly dressed and dragged both guards into his cell, making sure to dump their bodies in the pools of urine and vomit on the floor. After checking the other man for weapons, a radio, or anything else of use, Gunner gently locked the cell door and eased down the hallway.